Chapter 11 #2
“You’re the one talking.”
“Only because you’re so fucking dull I have to talk to keep myself awake.”
Baz sniggered. “I’m dull.”
Eyes blazing an angry golden brown, she straightened her spine until she was a scant half head shorter than him. “That’s right. Dull as piss water.”
“Piss water?”
“You heard me.”
With both hands, he clutched the rope between them and tugged hard. She stumbled toward him, catching herself with both hands against his chest. Immediately, she began to push away.
He caught her by both wrists. She struggled to free herself.
“Let. Me. Go,” she seethed.
For several frantic beats of his thumping heart, he stared into those feral eyes of hers. Her rising temper made the brown practically glow even in the dim lumoonlight.
He sighed and released her. She backed away from him hastily as if he were a puddle of said piss water about to splash on her boots.
“I…” he started.
“You what?” she demanded in a hot rush of fury.
“I…” He shook his head. “Never mind.”
“Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten for a second that I’m your prisoner.”
“And I haven’t forgotten for a second that you’re my family’s worst enemy, and that you already tried to kill me once.”
“Good. I don’t want you to forget.”
“Then fucking great, ’cause I didn’t. Won’t ever.”
“Fine.”
“Fine,” he growled.
She backed away from him until the rope was taut between them. The length of black silk looked like just another writhing shadow, out to get him.
“Now that we’ve cleared that up—”
“Cleared what up?” he asked.
“That beyond rumors and history books, you and your friends are ignorant about the castle—”
“‘Ignorant’ is taking it a bit far. We know she’s dangerous, so we stay away. It’s not like we can keep her from doing any of the things she does.”
“Because you’re ignorant.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause I don’t like it.”
“You don’t? Well then, I’m so glad to know that.” She slid a book from a shelf and clutched it to her chest. “Since you’re ignorant about the castle, and since she’s made you all her little bitches—”
Baz growled and prowled toward her. Pulling on the rope, she ducked out of his reach.
“I’m going to go ahead and say my farewells.”
The nape of his neck prickled. Urgently, he glanced around the room. He noticed nothing but the usual, unmoving surfaces, draped in layer after layer of shadows and dust.
She smiled so coldly that it chilled his pumping blood. “Thanks for the feeding-and-fucking frenzy you forced on me.”
“What? No, it wasn’t—”
“Oh yes, it was. You locked me up and caged me, took away my choices. Everything that happened since is on you.”
He threw up his hands, tugging on the rope. “You tried to murder me!”
“And I failed.” Her eyes pulsed with what he only now was identifying for the hatred it so obviously was.
She really did hate him, just as she’d claimed to over and over again.
How stupid of him not to believe her. Just because he couldn’t bring himself to hate her didn’t mean she was equally idiotic.
“You kept me in the freezing cold—”
“All the castle’s like that. Even with a raging fire, she’s so cold I can never get warm.”
“That’s your fucking cold icicle of a heart, Alobaz.”
He stilled.
“You slicing me practically in half? Fair, totally fair, I’ll give you that. Retribution, as even as it gets. But dampening my power? Putting a collar on me like I’m your fucking slave? No, just no. You’re not supposed to do that, not to anyone for any reason. It’s just wrong.”
Fuck, she really did hate him.
“You made me want you.”
Baz couldn’t even manage a joke about his something-something sex-appeal.
“Till I couldn’t help but want to fuck you.”
His dick twitched, dammit. If it wouldn’t have drawn attention to his reaction, he’d have punched himself in his own crotch.
“You made me fuck you and drink from you, even after I told you I never wanted to feed from anyone’s Majora, and especially not from yours. You made me do all the things I never would want to do with”—she breathed in deeply before sneering—“with my brother’s killer.”
Baz didn’t bother refuting her assumption yet again. What would be the point?
“So now I’m going to take my leave.”
“How?” The question sounded foreign, like it came from someone else. But in this room that felt like it was rapidly closing in on him, it was still just the two of them—and her hatred and shadows, so much hate, so many shadows.
She waved the book she held. “The book’s title is Every One of the Abysmal Fortress’ Secrets and How to Escape It. You should’ve been paying better attention.”
Yes, he should have. When he was around her, it seemed all he saw was her.
“By the Ethers,” she exclaimed. “So you’re gullible too?”
“No, not gullible,” he said in a deep protest that sounded more like Night’s voice than his.
“Ah, I see.” Her lips tipped up in an infuriating little, So just stupid, then?
He growled yet again, sounding more and more like the monster she was accusing him of being.
“We have a deal,” he said.
“We do. And if I have anything to thank you for, it’s for that, for agreeing to release Marina too. Now I’ll take care of her.”
“We sealed the deal with a kiss. It’s unbreakable.”
“Ah.” She hitched a shoulder up and down. “Not so much. If neither of us meets our end of the deal, there’s no deal.”
“That’s not how deals work.”
“It is today. See ya later, Baz.” It was the first time she’d ever used his nickname, and she made it sound like the foulest of insults.
“I’ll come for you someday when you least expect it.
” She winked at him. “Maybe I’ll starve you and make you fuck me, eh?
All with a collar wrapped around that thick neck of yours.
Fair’s fair, I like to say. Or, ooh! I should find a tiny, teeny collar for your tiny, teeny dick. That’ll teach you.”
“I have a big dick, and you damn well know it.”
“Hm, maybe I do, maybe I don’t.”
After all her enthusiastic outbursts, he expected that Velle would keep going long enough for him to figure out what she was up to and how to stop her.
But Baz blinked, and where a solid hardwood floor supported her, with wispy shadows swirling across it like smoke, the floor opened into a gaping maw, as dark and terrifying as the abyss.
One moment she stood there, looking as fucking infuriating as she was gorgeous, and the next …
well, the hole sucked her into it with a squelch that made his insides lurch.
She and her book, whatever its true title, had already disappeared when Baz, holding on to the rope that bound them together and could never be broken, lunged after her.