Chapter 5
Monsters Thrive in Darkness, Predators Kill Fawns, and Rubors Kill D’Arcos
When Baz jumped through the trapdoor in the floor, he hadn’t had the wherewithal to guess where he might end up.
Mauldrene was plainly trying to kill him, or at least to maim him.
He was only wearing a vest, and thanks to Mauldrene’s biting, lashing shadows, his arms and shoulders were crisscrossed with crimson, and his forehead, cheeks, and chin stung with lacerations.
Mauldrene surely hadn’t carved out a trapdoor for him so suddenly without sinister purpose.
His thoughts had been singularly on his immediate survival.
The trapdoor might have led to a frigid pit that would freeze him in an instant; perhaps to the gullet of some monstrous beast Mauldrene kept as her man-eating pet; or, simply, to the abyss, that endless chasm from which no one had ever returned.
Mauldrene had been trying to do away with him practically since the moment he stepped across her darkened threshold.
Mauldrene had never deigned to provide a direct path from his quarters to the dungeon. The castle played keep-away with Soravelle and was far better at it than he was, able to rearrange her rooms and passageways at will. So when Baz landed so abruptly in Velle’s dungeon cell, shock assailed him.
Along with her scent: intoxicating.
As always, his gaze swept across her body. He’d landed in a fighting crouch. By instinct, he leaned in her direction—toward danger—even before he took stock of the entirety of his circumstances.
He knew the goblin Marina was there, illuminating the cell with lumoonlight.
For the moment, he ignored her, his attention jumping to Velle’s face.
Her eyes were mostly black pupils, her lips parted in what would have resembled passion if not for her fangs, long, menacing, and sharp, peeking out from beneath her plush upper lip.
This was why Mauldrene had finally, for fucking once, brought him directly here.
In all the vast castle, with her unexpected dangers at every turn, there was currently no greater threat to Baz than his prisoner.
More beast than woman, she panted and snarled with her fingers curled into claws.
What had he thought would happen when he demanded she feed only from him when she staunchly refused?
This, precisely this. Deep down somewhere, he had to have known.
And yet he wouldn’t—couldn’t—allow anyone else to touch her.
She had to feed off him and no one else.
She tipped her head back and smelled the air with a flare of delicate nostrils. Moaning, she sniffed again, her black eyes tracking the slashes of blood that had dried on his skin. All but the deepest cuts had healed closed.
In a slow, languorous swipe, she licked her lips, flicking her tongue against first one fang and then the other. His cock stirred and hardened, and the monster inside him shoved the man out of the way, needing to join with hers.
He batted back his monster’s advances. It fought him, but retreated—for now.
“Sora,” the goblin said. She stood between his prisoner and the door, which stood ajar. Not even a goblin’s faithum should have been able to breach the spell that kept it locked.
“Sora,” Marina said again. “Feed from me.”
Sora didn’t so much as twitch in the goblin’s direction, full focus trained on Baz.
“You’ll hate yourself later if you were to feel anything for him. You can’t feed from him. You can’t share that with him.”
Black eyes glittering, his prisoner muttered, “Hate.”
“That’s right,” Marina said. “You hate him. You can’t drink from him.”
Did the goblin not scent Baz on her? Or did she not want to acknowledge that Soravelle was already his?
Soravelle groaned, long and salacious, as if picturing herself already drinking from him.
His dick went rigid. His feet shuffled a step closer.
The chain that bound Soravelle to her bed was taut; she couldn’t reach him.
He took another step closer before recalling that she had to be a dark sorceress to get him to willingly move toward her—the only person to nearly kill him in decades.
Even now, behind the bloodlust, she had to be working her faithum, enchanting him, tempting him … luring him into her web.
He willed his feet to still—and they did, but just. His torso tipped forward, his cock pulsed.
“Princesa,” Marina snapped.
Slowly, Soravelle blinked, for an instant seeming to come back to herself. Just as quickly, the self-awareness was gone, and the monster stared back at him.
She moistened her lips with a curl of her tongue.
Her chest heaved with deep breaths that scented his blood, probably his arousal too.
Hers was so dense in the air, it was all he could smell, overpowering her usual scent of iron, olandry flower, and the sea, a scent he’d know anywhere, and never forget.
“Get out of here,” Baz ordered Marina on a growl.
“No,” the goblin said, when he’d used his command voice, the one legions of soldiers didn’t hesitate to obey. “I’m not leaving her.”
“This is no place for you.”
“My place is at her side.”
“She’ll devour you.”
“No, General, she’ll devour you.”
Baz whipped his head around to glower at the goblin, and he knew from experience that his glare was formidable enough to cause soldiers to quake. “Get. The fuck. Out of here. I’ll deal with you later.”
Marina had the gall to scoff and arch her bald brow as if to say, You wish, when she was plainly here to break out his prisoner.
“Haven’t you heard the stories? You don’t want to disobey me. You won’t like what happens to you if you do. This is only for her and me to share.”
“This? You have no claim to her. Release her at once.”
“She tried to murder me. Me, prince to the empire. Do you know what the punishment is for such an egregious violation of the dominion?”
“No, and I don’t care.” But her big nose twitched. She was lying, when goblins weren’t supposed to lie, and certainly not to princes and generals. For that matter, goblins weren’t supposed to defy or threaten them either.
Baz shouldn’t have deigned to explain himself to her. Junot would have a fit if he saw a son of his treating a goblin as an equal. For that matter, he’d lose all credibility as a commander among his troops if they were to witness him now.
Nevertheless, he said, “I have every right to torture her or to kill her or to keep her locked up in here for-fucking-ever if I want to.”
The goblin looked only as tall as his thighs, and yet she steeled her spine and turned to fully face him, her back to the door, her gaze darting from him to his prisoner and back again.
“You’re already torturing her. That’s what starving her is until she has no option but to be consumed by bloodlust: torture.”
Regret slithered through his gut, but he refused to examine his reaction.
Whatever this was between him and his prisoner, it was already fucked up.
He was fucked up. He didn’t need more evidence of what he’d already realized.
He didn’t like how he felt without the irksome goblin jabbing her knobby fingers in his affairs.
“She makes sure to never fall to bloodlust, you know. She doesn’t want this, not when it’s up to her she doesn’t.”
More regret churned his insides.
The goblin tucked her hands in the front pocket of her frock. “Now you know. She’s a princess as much as you’re a prince. These are no conditions to keep a princess in.”
Baz scowled and crossed his arms. “And do you know I can order you killed for your disobedience?”
Saucy, impudent wench.
“Of course. I figure you can save yourself the trouble of issuing an order and kill me yourself. I came to terms with my fate a long time ago. Loving Sora was never going to be easy.”
No, it wasn’t, he thought before he realized he would. He growled—or was it his monster that did?
Finally, fear brimmed in the goblin’s big eyes. Despite her claim that she wouldn’t abandon Velle, she inched toward the exit.
“Loving her brother Mateo wasn’t easy either.” Though she whispered the words, Velle’s eyes cleared. The goblin seemed not to notice. “Trouble follows them everywhere, Sora especially. Followed. Mateo is gone now. You killed him.”
“I didn’t kill him,” Baz said, his voice so deep and gruff he doubted she’d believe him.
“S?nglures lie all the time.”
“You lie too.”
Again she arched her brow. “I do what I must to protect Soravelle. I won’t apologize for that.”
“Apparently, you won’t apologize for anything, not even breaking into my prison to free my prisoner.”
Hair a dark halo around her head, Velle growled, sounding more like a jagune than a woman.
Studying her, Baz asked the goblin, “Would she do the same for you? Sacrifice herself to protect you?”
Damn his curiosity. What he should be doing is punishing the goblin for being a subversive brat, and punishing the woman for attempting to murder him, when he’d done nothing to harm her or her brother.
“Yes.”
“You think a s?nglure, a royal one no less, an heir to an entire territory … would die for a goblin?”
“Not for any goblin, but for me, yes, I do.”
When Marina looked at Velle this time, his prisoner didn’t meet her eyes, too busy devouring him with her gaze, panting hungrily, straining against her fetters. The goblin’s stern features melted into open affection.
“That’s…” Unusual, he almost said. Forbidden. Punishable by death to the goblin for overstepping the bounds of her servant class.
Soravelle scented the cold air. Mouth open in a low snarl, she lunged for him. The chain tugged her back by the shackle binding her ankle, and she landed on her knees. The instant her feet were under her again, she stretched for him again.
Here was the monster—a monster he’d unleashed.
A monster he wanted. Fuck, no. A monster he needed, Fuerin help him.
His jaw so tight his teeth ground against each other, he turned one last time toward the goblin. With a calm he was far from feeling, he said, “You will get out now, and if you don’t, I will personally make sure you live to regret it before you die a painful, awful death.”
Whatever she saw in his face made her gulp, her throat bobbing in her gangly neck.
“Go. Now.”
Nodding, she cast a final glance at Velle and bolted through the door, taking her lumoons with her. Her footfalls padded rapidly down the hallway.
He stalked to the door, pushed it shut, and welcomed the total darkness.
He didn’t need light to find what was his. His monster thrived in darkness.
She croaked a needy cry that awakened every nerve in his body, had his cock straining against his pants. Every part of him seemed to recognize her, to feel itself reflected in her.
Her darkness called to his.
He should have wrested the door open and fled, following in the goblin’s footsteps.
Instead, he prowled toward her, rumbling a deep, “Are you ready to feed, my dove?”
Dove, when he already knew her to be a vicious viper.
A strangled whimper that sounded like surrender burbled up her throat.
“Good. Take what’s yours.”
He walked into her outstretched arms, allowed her to wrap her claws around him, brushed his hair over a shoulder, and bared his neck to her like a helpless fawn.
She was his mortal enemy. Even if she hadn’t tried to kill him, she was a D’Arco. Predators killed fawns, and Rubors killed D’Arcos. It was the way of their world.
She has to be a sorceress, he justified to himself as she punctured his Majora with her fangs and drew the first gulp of his blood.