Chapter 30 #2
“Oh yeah? You say that only ’cause you don’t know Levin Brant.”
“No, Lev,” Baz said. “She’s right. There’s no chance—”
“Mauldrene’s a dragon.”
Baz hmed. “Not bad, bro, not bad at all. But that’s not it.”
Anticipating the effect the news might have on my small friend, I turned toward her, placing my hand on her slight shoulder.
Her eyes widened impossibly more. Never once had I touched her so openly in front of others.
Only Teo had witnessed us sharing any degree of affection, and Teo wasn’t “others.”
While Marina stared at my hand on her body like it was itself a dragon, I said, “An unknown demigod is trapped inside this castle.”
Marina gasped so hard she coughed. I removed my hand as her body shook with it.
Night whistled.
The implacable Félix said, “Wow.”
And Lev said, “Damn, bro, you’re right. I never woulda guessed that.”
“That’s scorching crazy,” Ed said. “How?”
“We don’t know,” Baz said. “Micaela didn’t know either. She said that not even the demigod knew what had happened to her, or even who she is.”
“She doesn’t know which demigod she is?” Moncho asked.
“That’s right.”
“By the Ethers,” Félix said.
“Yep.”
“Now her actions take on different meanings,” I said. “Like, why did she have those select books in that small library separated from what I must presume is a larger library? A castle such as this one must have a grand library. Do the books she set aside hold some sort of important information?”
To my lower back’s relief, I finally slid the dragon hide book from my waistband. After taking in Baz’s discarded pile of weapons, I placed the book beside them. I couldn’t very well carry the thing with me everywhere I went as if it were a dragonling.
Félix hummed. “I’ll start reading. To behold an actual demigod is remarkable.”
“Absolutely remarkable,” an awestruck Marina whispered. “I wonder which one she is, and if she could be the key to restoring the demigods’ power in the Opalese.”
“Maybe,” Baz said. “We also must discover the truth about my mate’s brother.”
“Don’t call me your mate,” I said, but even the Bazrians ignored me this time.
“But the brother will come second, after Junot and Terencia, won’t he?” Moncho said. “With Rishaq coming…”
“Mateo is a priority to my mate,” Baz said. “That makes him a priority to me.”
“And therefore to us as well,” Zi said, earning a surprised squeak from me.
“As far as I know, my brother is dead.” Those words hurt more than a knife to the gut.
“I don’t feel him anymore. I haven’t since I woke up from my abduction.
” That was as much detail as I was going to offer.
That he and I were bonded twins was a secret not even Rafaela, Alonso, or Marina knew, unless they’d inferred it, a secret I would need to ask Baz to keep.
“My mate and her brother are bonded twins,” Baz said.
Fuck a dragon.
“We must discover the truth of the matter. If there is any chance that he still lives, my mate needs him.”
“Terencia is prone to exaggerating, if not outright distorting the truth,” Félix said. “But I believed her when she said Mateo lives.”
“I did too.”
My heart squeezed painfully hard. “But she was motivated to say it. She wanted me to save her. She knew that would do it.”
“Without doubt,” Félix said. “I still believed her. There is hope.”
My heart fluttered with it. If Hope and Heartbreak were looking down on me right then, I knew I wouldn’t survive their fuckery a second time.
Waking in my underwater tomb as I had to feel Teo gone was the most agonizing moment of my entire life.
Not even finding Isi’s mangled body in the streets of Montressón, discarded like trash, had felt half as devastating.
“If he’s alive in Orania, or anywhere else in the Opalese, we will find him,” Baz said.
Right then, I considered for the first time that such a man might actually be my mate. He sounded formidable, fierce, and ferocious, as if he would demolish any obstacle that stood in his path, as if he would take out anyone and anything that interfered with me.
Never before in all my life had I been able to count on someone to protect me. Always, I had been the protector. Could this man, this enemy … could I actually trust him? Or was this a ploy of the Rubors to finally crush me in a way from which I would never, ever recover?
I was no longer certain of much of anything.
“Rafaela and Alonso were sure he’s dead.
They were totally devastated by his death.
” But Rafaela had murdered her own family, her own bonded twin, and then lied about it.
And if the conniving empress Terencia was to be believed, Alonso had screwed the worst of our enemies. Perhaps it had been to gain advantage?
“We will verify it for ourselves,” Baz said.
We. Ourselves. As if Baz and I were partners.
“We won’t take any chances,” he added. “Not with something so important.”
“Someone so important,” I said softly, without need. He already seemed to understand. How … unexpected.
“We have a great deal to accomplish, all of it urgent. First, however, we must rest. What’s to come will pose even greater challenge than what has already passed.”
“That sounds like one of your feelings about things,” Ed said.
“It is.”
“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Lev muttered. “I can scarcely wait.” He and Moncho, who rubbed at his nape, exchanged a laden look.
“Ed,” Baz said. “Assign a room to Marina.” My head and Marina’s jerked up. “I won’t have my mate’s loyal friend staying with the servants.”
“Consider it done.”
“Everyone, rest up. We’ll meet tomorrow at dusk. Then we’ll feed and organize ourselves.”
“You’re going to sleep with her?” Moncho said, his eyes narrowed on the Rillis rope. “She’s at full power now.”
“She is. But she won’t harm me.”
Moncho snorted in disbelief. Night and Zi studied me a little too intently. Night cracked his thick neck to either side. Zi’s fingertips grazed the handles of her mordaris at her hips.
“We’re bonded mates. She can’t kill me.”
“How certain are you?” This time it was Félix, the one whom I’d never witnessed questioning his general.
“Completely.”
Félix nodded. Apparently that was confirmation enough for him. But while Félix started toward the door, the rest of the Bazrians didn’t leave Baz’s side.
“Go. You know I hardly sleep anyway. I’m safe.”
Moncho grumbled but followed the rest, including Marina, when they filed out.
And then it was just me and my … not-mate … and my maybe not-enemy…
“Come, my vicious viper. We need the rest. We’ll be grateful later we took this time to replenish our strength. I fear we’ll need every bit of it before we’re through.”
“I’m fine.”
“Then I’m not. What I did with Micaela, it drains me.” An admission of weakness no man should ever make to his enemy—unless he fully believed I wasn’t his enemy, not anymore.
“Your power, it relates to death?”
“No, my dove, my faithum relates to darkness. There’s a great darkness inside me. You’ll soon discover that you may not want me as your mate at all.”
“I already don’t want you as my mate.” Was that fair? “There’s great darkness inside me too,” I offered instead of taking it back.
“I know. I feel it. It beckons to me.”
“It does not.”
“Oh, you have no idea.”
I swallowed.
He took my hand and led me to bed—to his bed.
“Our bed,” he said, as if reading my mind.
I held up our joined hands. “Then you’ll be happy to remove the Rillis rope.”
“No, Vee, I won’t. Until I’m sure you aren’t going to run from me, you won’t be leaving my side.”
“And if I want to bathe?”
“Then I’ll bathe you.”
I swallowed again, the memories of his naked body—and how fucking beautiful it was—achingly vivid.
“So I remain your prisoner?”
“If you want to see it that way: my prisoner.”
“And if I don’t want to be your prisoner?”
“Then you can be my mate. Either way, you’re mine. Mine, Velle.”
~ Alobaz ~
Since the brutal murders of my Arabella and our Carina, I hadn’t slept, not in any real sense. Not deeply, not fully. Both asleep and awake, I’d lived a nightmare that had begun the day I burned their corpses, and it hadn’t yet ended. It would probably never end.
So when I curled my body around Velle’s and wrapped her up in my arms, I never expected to truly sleep for the first time in centuries. For once, the faces of the dead that had haunted me without respite didn’t coalesce from the darkness.
I was darkness.
Most days and every night, it was all I felt, all I was. All I could remember how to be.
Now, my mate was darkness too.
And her darkness sang to mine, the most magnificent of lullabies.