I’m Not Hugging You Until You Clean That
I’M NOT HUGGING YOU UNTIL YOU CLEAN THAT
The ride from the Stomach to the Head was much longer than an hour, especially in the Wallain holiday traffic.
Carriages clogged the curved streets, most of them lost in the whirl of the city.
Luckily, everyone in Amaris knew what a midnight-blue cloak soaked in blood meant: a Wraith.
One of the king’s seven blood-drunk, black-eyed fiends returning from a mission.
Mothers snatched their children to their chests as Esme blazed through the Stomach.
Others were so astonished by the view of a real Wraith that their mouths hung open in shock.
It was well known that there were two female-looking Wraiths, a maiden as blonde and bright as a midmorning sun and a viper as dark and vile as blackest night.
They never really expected the darkness to be physical, though.
They expected black hair and pale skin, and were confused to see the reverse.
They cocked their heads at her smooth, darkened skin and touched their own noses when contemplating the shape of hers.
Girls pulled at their hair, trying to understand how Esme’s reached to the sun instead of being fried straight by it.
“Stop gloating,” the raven croaked in her ear, watching her enjoy making people uncomfortable. “You’re pretty. We know.”
“Let me have fun. The world is ending.”
Usually, Esme flashed a fang or made the shadows grab at people just to hear them scream, but today was no day for tricks.
Turiel Asterou was dead, and, in a way, Esme would miss him.
He’d been so lazy, she’d had time to have a whole second home and he’d never noticed.
Who else could care that little? Certainly not his father, who’d wielded ambition like a knife and always kept the blade bloody.
She’d never have gotten away with what she had with Mina under Omniel.
He’d have killed Mina—and Gia, too—just to remind Esme that the only things that could be important to her were him and his gilded kingdom built on a continent of dead.
Esme had murdered thousands for that kingdom, and it had never been enough.
Omniel went north until the mountains themselves fought him back.
He went south until the ocean threatened to swallow him whole.
He went east and west until he’d reached the jagged edge of the world, and even then he drew up plans to conquer the lands across the seas.
But Turiel… Song’s breath, had it been nice to live under him.
He’d hungered after nothing but ham and things he could put his penis in.
There’d been no conquering, no quartering, no public executions.
Sure, he’d sent her on the odd “Bring me their beating hearts!” mission, but Omniel had once ordered her to murder a whole village because he wanted to build a bathing house on their land. They didn’t compare.
Except now, Turiel the Horny was dead.
He had no legitimate heirs. He had children, of course.
One for every day of the year and several for holidays.
But bastards were not heirs. That meant that there would be a fight.
A million muddy-haired children would crawl out from under their mothers’ skirts and try to make a claim to the throne.
If they could impress a local lord with their kingly attributes, they could have an independent army within a month, march on the royal city within a year…
And then the country would go to shit.
The vision of the royal city of Amaris burning under the flame of some accidental sperm-splurt, and her burning with it, had Esme speeding up.
While the Stomach was a fine place, maintained well enough and lined with townhouses and corner shops, it was nothing compared to the Amaris into which Esme veered her shadow mare. She crossed a set of guards in an alley, and all of a sudden she was the darkest thing for miles.
The Head was the pale pearl of the crown city.
The bricks of Amaris’s cyclone streets there were molded in curves, bleached white and diligently repaired at the first whisper of a crack to ensure the smoothest ride for the extravagant red-and-gold carriages rolling over them.
Red roses bloomed out of ornate flowerpots, their vines crowning every building and spilling onto the sidewalks.
Tight-laced ladies hid their powdered faces in their fans, their skirts so wide they pushed the servants holding their yappy little dogs into the street.
Noble husbands walked three customary paces ahead of their wives, chins raised so high it was a wonder they could even see their ugly shoes.
This time, when Esme went barreling down these streets, there were no gasps and screams. People stopped, turned to watch her, and their lips hitched in disgust.
Just to piss them off, Esme’s mare left black footprints down their pretty white roads.
Esme darted through the cross-streets and sped right up to the base of the hill on which the castle sat.
It wasn’t built level with the city; Omniel knew better than to sleep in the midst of those who wished to see him dead.
Instead, he’d plopped his prized castle atop a craggy hill overlooking the Wyvern Sea.
The guards manning the foot of the winding trail that led to the castle leapt out of the way to avoid being bowled down by the shadow horse.
Esme raced the thin trail in record time, coming to the front gate before news of her arrival even made it up.
The guards cracked the finely smithed iron gate open for her the second they realized who she was.
Esme didn’t care about the welcome, though. She cared about the six heads speared upon the spikes of that gate, which had no doubt belonged to the guards on duty when Turiel was murdered. What had gotten through six men?
Esme urged her mare forward. The second she crossed into the courtyard, the Bond’s teeth eased from her throat an inch more.
The closer she got to Isobel, to returning that necklace, the less the Bond hurt her.
Right now, its ache was a dull drone behind the screaming of every other problem she’d be faced with as she stared down Omniel Asterou’s castle.
His favorite color had been red—he had a fetish for blood and had never mastered the art of subtlety—so his castle had been built in bloodred brick.
The front entrance was more a mouth than a door, made of glass and arching high above Esme’s lofty head.
The Asterou crest, a gleaming sword of truth rising from the rioting Wyvern Sea, crowned the top.
The first fifteen floors of the castle were banquet halls and libraries and everything a castle had to hold.
Above them, the structure split into three towers.
The middle was the tallest and was where the royal family lived.
To the right was the Wraiths’ tower, where they were kept while they were in the city.
The left was a war tower. (Esme never understood why Omniel needed a whole separate tower for meetings about wars.
He probably just liked the symmetry.) On top of all three towers were glittering domes of raven’s glass, a precious black glass used in Micrean death ceremonies.
Omniel had pillaged sixty miles of mountainside towns to get enough, bathing his castle in blood and crowning it with the jewel of death.
Esme rolled her eyes whenever she saw it.
Urias waited for her at the castle entrance. His raven flew off as soon as Esme got close. She dissolved her mare, ignoring the gasps from surrounding castle staff.
“You’re early,” Urias said, mouth pressed into a weary line.
He was confusing to the average Micrean.
His skin was too warm-toned and his eyes too shiny, not to mention the wrong shape, and his cheeks weren’t round enough.
People thought he was from Jingim, maybe, but Esme knew that wasn’t true.
Urias was like her: far too interesting to be from this infant world.
This age, this set of cosmos, was just one of millions, and a particularly boring, Magic-starved one to boot.
Of course the man that whispered to birds and the woman that slithered with shadows were transplants.
They moved through the castle wordlessly, but it was impossible not to feel it—the newfound heaviness settling over everyone. No chattering maids, no giggling children. Just the roar of shuffling and muttering and quiet fretting, out of sight.
Urias led her down into the second basement, a long, cold hall of rooms sculpted from the naturally chilly rock of the cliffs.
At the end there was one last door, and Urias dug out the world’s oldest key to open it.
Inside, boulders of frigid stone stood in the corners and frosty stalactites dangled from the ceilings, all in service of preserving Turiel’s rapidly decaying body, lying on a slab in the center of the room.
They did have to have a funeral for the bastard.
He could at least wait until they’d sunk him to go gushy.
But Esme and Urias weren’t caring about him right now. Urias closed the door behind him and flashed her a toothy grin.
“How’ve you been?” he asked, hugging her so tight that Esme had to wiggle out enough room to breathe. She’d been waiting for this since she saw him, but hugs weren’t exactly a Wraith move and they had to maintain their image.
“Tired,” she said. “Turiel sent me to go get some necklace for Isobel. It wasn’t that bad.”
“Is it pretty?”
“Terribly ugly, actually.” Esme hung the little necklace between them. Both made a face. “I killed a man for something that looks like it came out of an ass.”
“Such is our duty,” Urias said, rolling his eyes as Esme tucked it away. “But, on a prettier note, how’s your Mina? Have you two finally settled your bet on who could seduce the block fastest?”