Chapter 2
Is It Possible to Murder a Castle? What about Someone Not Man Enough for the Size of His Sword?
After taking the fastest shower of his life, possibly in all of Opalesian history, Baz pressed his sword to his side to prevent its bouncing and dashed from his quarters to the dining hall, where he’d last seen his friends.
The Bazrian Seven had been fighting together many decades longer than they’d been stuck with the idiotic moniker.
They’d watched each other’s backs since there had been eight of them—before Baz met Shen and fell for her seductive deceptions.
Before Cal had paid for Baz’s mistakes with the ultimate sacrifice.
Baz trusted the Bazrians with his life. With practically anyone’s life.
Turned out, just not with hers.
Not Velle’s.
At least, not yet he didn’t.
He didn’t want his friends to find out about his prisoner’s identity, and he especially didn’t want them to learn it from somebody else.
He hadn’t told them that Cosette and the goblin, whose name was Marina, knew precisely whom his prisoner was—that the great mystery was resolved.
He’d told them only that Cosette wanted to arrest her, and since Baz had used his position to exact her discretion, Cosette hadn’t revealed more.
The goblin—Marina—had glared murder at them both, when Baz had never witnessed a goblin being anything but subservient.
Mauldrene, being the spiteful cunt that she was, threw obstacles at him while the music now obnoxiously matched his frantic run across the castle.
Loudly, the violin raced, the viola pursued it, and the cello thumped out the menacing footfalls of an enemy on Baz’s tail.
Mauldrene narrowed hallways until Baz had to angle his broad shoulders sideways and duck his head to squeeze through to avoid being eaten by her shadows.
She did away entirely with the main hall that connected to the dining hall.
And in one instance, she snuffed out all the ambient lumoons.
When Baz created his own, she dimmed those too—even though she shouldn’t have been able to—but then, when had Mauldrene ever obeyed the laws of nature or logic?
Was it possible to murder a castle? Please let it be possible…
Without his enhanced senses, he was practically human as he rushed along, knocking nose-first into a heavy bronze bust of a D’Arco ancestor he should have gotten rid of but hadn’t—that wasn’t normally in the middle of the pathway.
He kicked some object that was hard as stone, but oddly spiky, and bruised a toe through his boot.
All the while, Mauldrene’s shadows stalked him, creeping much too close.
Baz felt their caresses—cold and gelatinous like the tentacles of the carnivorous umbrac—and their bites—like the stabbing pricks of needles. Hundreds of them.
Mauldrene’s fuckery was a problem he was obviously going to have to address—just as soon as he got an inkling of how to discipline a castle—a castle, for fuck’s sake!
Short of breath, mostly from his mounting frustration, finally Baz slid into the dining hall.
Only to find Junot, Terencia, and their traveling retinue standing beyond its opposite entrance, in the grand hall he should have already crossed to get here—more of Mauldrene’s fuckery, no doubt.
Surrounding them were Baz’s six friends and Cosette.
The goblin, Marina, was noticeably absent.
He was equally relieved not to see the rescued boy, Crute, among them.
Cosette the Pest, as Lev and Moncho had begun calling her, hovered in front of his friends as if angling for Junot’s attention. Her chest was pushed out, her hands clasped beneath buzzing wings. Her tiny face beamed with glossy smarm. Her lips might as well have been puckered to kiss the man’s ass.
Baz cast a quick glare that swore retribution to the dining hall’s ceiling, which was covered in a fresco of a dark-haired and darker-winged beauty, stepping through a tear from another world into this one.
Mauldrene’s grand crystalline chandelier shook, its hundreds of crystals tinkling—as if the cunt were laughing at him. Shadows sprinkled down on him like drifting snowflakes, settling lightly onto his head and shoulders.
His anger spiked sharply as he brushed them off. If Mauldrene’s antics had endangered his prisoner…
Baz forced himself to calm. Junot was worse than a shadowray when scenting weakness.
Baz inhaled, steadying his heartrate.
“There you are!”
Baz sighed inwardly at Junot’s pinched greeting, and began walking toward him.
Junot Ninian, emperor of the entire Opalese World save for the two outlying Wonderwater nations, looked smaller than he had the last time Baz saw him more than six months before, when Junot had stationed Baz here at Castle Hawxfure for no apparent good reason.
Junot’s physique had never been as mighty as Baz’s—few men were as tall as Baz—but he’d appeared strong enough, definitely capable of pointing Baz at any enemy he wanted eradicated.
Now the man looked … slightly shriveled.
If he were a plant, Baz would think he needed watering.
He wore a variation of his usual attire: a tunic and doublet woven through with gold threads, matching britches, wompa leather boots so shiny they gleamed, and a cape much more resplendent than he was, made purely of golden fibers.
The clothes were bigger than the man, and his crown, a gem-studded, golden monstrosity, was slipping down his brow.
Maybe the man really was shrinking. Wouldn’t that be something?
Even the sword that hung from the weapons belt circling his hips drooped, as if he weren’t man enough for the size of his sword.
“I expected you to receive me. I sent notice of my arrival.”
Junot extended his hand into the thirty feet that still separated them, waiting.
“I only received your missive minutes ago.” Bitter on his tongue, Baz forced out the word, “Father.”
Baz refused to call him Your Dominance. Junot would have to kill him first.
Junot hiked disbelieving brows. They met his crown.
“Just minutes ago? That isn’t like Poriel.”
“Well, it’s what happened.”
When Junot’s brows slammed downward, Baz cleared his throat.
In a less defensive tone, he added, “Poriel pierced me with his talons. I didn’t wish to receive you with blood dripping down my arm.”
Junot tipped his nose into the air and sniffed. “Hm.”
At his side but a step behind, Terencia smelled too. Then again. “It seems you didn’t do a thorough job of scrubbing yourself everywhere.”
Already reaching for Junot’s hand, Baz flicked his eyes to hers. They glittered for an instant before her face resumed its mask of practiced innocence.
Baz kissed the air above Junot’s signet ring—two dragons, back-to-back, spewing fire beneath a crown—then smiled at her as genuinely as he could, which wasn’t much.
He sensed his friends’ appraising gazes studying him and his stepmother. Even Cosette’s eyes were narrowed as she sized them up.
Only Junot was oblivious to the way Terencia’s voice grew husky and suggestive at the mention of Baz “scrubbing himself everywhere.”
“Terencia,” Baz said, and had no choice but to kiss the back of her hand when she held it out toward him. At the press of his lips to her skin, she shuddered and inhaled deeply.
Baz released her hand as quickly as he could without smacking it away. “The blood you scent isn’t from Poriel, but from the castle.”
“Smells…”
Guessing she’d say “delicious,” Baz froze. The damnable woman didn’t risk just herself with her nonsense, but him too! And if she risked his wellbeing, she risked that of those he had to protect.
“Strong,” she settled on, openly trailing her appreciative stare up and down his body.
When Junot glanced over his shoulder at her, she smiled beatifically at him.
Junot reached for her hand. Delicately, she placed hers in his.
“The castle is…” Terencia glanced around the hall, noting the creeping shadows lurking in every corner, slithering across the walls, and dangling from the buttressed ceiling like vines, if vines were to writhe on occasion.
“Well, it’s truly abysmal, isn’t it?”
She chuckled at her reference to the castle’s original name, the Abysmal Fortress. Every one of the aristos at her back joined in immediately.
Of Baz’s friends, Félix was the shrewdest political strategist, but he lacked the duplicity to fake much of anything. Aziza, however, had no problem faking whatever needed faking. She laughed loudest.
“So true, Consort Empress,” Zi said on an appreciative laugh that sounded true enough to Baz’s ears, except for that Baz—and all the Bazrian Seven—knew how much Terencia detested being referred to as “consort.”
Terencia’s lips, stained a dark berry, widened to reveal the tips of her fangs.
Baz hurried to speak: “The castle is temperamental and causes us significant problems.”
“Is that so?” Junot asked. “I had heard the stories, of course. They claimed the castle, then the ‘fortress,’ had a personality of its own. So it’s true, then?”
“It’s true. The castle makes living here all but unbearable.”
Junot smiled—like a mean dragon, Baz thought. “Ah, but for tried and tested warriors like yourselves”—he looked at Baz’s friends, alighting for a moment on the parvnit—“it should feel like a vacation.”
It doesn’t, Baz wanted to say. A vacation would be freedom from him and his wife.
Junot glanced around. The hall might have been grand, opulent even, with its darkness dispelled. But the dozens of lumoons didn’t breach the shadows, and the shadows concealed most of the castle’s ornamentation behind their persistent gloom.
“Compared to a battlefield, it’s downright pleasant.”
Baz felt Lev go rigid. Of all the battlefields upon which the Bazrian Seven had spilled blood, Junot hadn’t made an appearance at a single one. Lev was actually biting his lip so as not to release whatever well-deserved quip he was holding back.
“I’m glad to know that … Father,” Baz eventually said. “I would like you to enjoy your stay with us. How long will that be?”
“Oh, hm? I don’t know quite yet. It depends.”
“On what?”
Junot’s head jerked in his direction so sharply that his crown slid. He tipped it back with his signet finger.
“You question your emperor?”
Baz wanted to scream. Instead, he dipped his head. “Of course not, Father. Would you care for some refreshments? Or would you like to retire to your rooms?”
Baz had no idea if Mauldrene had rooms prepared for the emperor and empress. If his sire provided them with five-minutes warning, then he’d get what he’d get.
Terencia sniffed the air another time. “What is that other scent?”
Baz stiffened. “What other scent, Stepmother?”
“On you, your skin. The scent of another woman.”
Another woman?
Baz blinked at her while his thoughts raced several stories below them to the dungeons. To Velle, still collared and chained to the bed with no way to protect herself.
“You know how Baz is, Empress,” Lev said, turning on the charm and omitting the “consort” jab. “He does love his whores.”
Baz glared at him. How did Lev manage to not help even when he was helping?
Terencia’s berry lips puckered with distaste. “Always such a wordsmith, Levin.”
Lev grinned. “Thank you, Empress. I appreciate that. No one’s told me that before.”
Terencia harrumphed.
“Father and Stepmother, perhaps you’d enjoy visits from feeders to allay the weariness of your journey?”
This, this was one of the things he hated about his parents the most. They turned him into a sycophant.
Out of necessity, yes. His pandering protected his friends and his soldiers, ensured Junot continued to provide for their needs, however basic.
But still, he hated every simpering word that spilled from his lips in their presence.
“Shall I arrange it?”
“Yes,” Junot said. “Send two for me.”
“Very well. And you, Stepmother?”
Behind her husband’s back, Terencia looked Baz up and down. “Send me two as well. Make sure they’re men.” She rolled the n.
“Of course.”
The feeders from Slake who’d remained behind at the castle were all female. Baz would have to seek male volunteers from the staff, who barely interacted with him, taking their commands instead from the castle itself.
Baz gave Lev a meaningful look.
Lev bowed. “If you’ll excuse me, my emperor. Empress. I’ll help see to your comforts.”
Junot took several imperious steps forward, during which Baz was careful not to glance at Cosette.
The parvnit was vibrating with intention.
Here was her chance to meet the man she idolized.
But decorum demanded she not speak to the emperor unless he first spoke to her.
And if Baz or one of the others didn’t introduce her, she was supposed to remain silent and unobtrusive.
Junot took another step away from her.
Her wings buzzed faster, bobbing her upward then back down in place.
Still, Junot continued walking. Terencia began to follow. Their retinue of thirteen pampered nobles examined Mauldrene’s shadows, thicker than centuries-old cobwebs, with abject disgust and wariness.
Junot glanced at Baz. What he saw in his face, Baz couldn’t be certain, but it was likely he hadn’t concealed his apprehension as well as he’d hoped.
Junot spun on the heel of one shiny, buckled boot. His cape twirled wide behind him, forcing everyone—including his wife—to bob out of its way or be smacked with it.
Baz’s breath stuck in his lungs.
“And who … are you?” Junot demanded of Cosette.