Chapter 19
For Soldiers Who Never Fully Leave Behind Their Battles
Even as I was falling—or rather ascending while feeling like I was falling—I spared a moment from my fright to wish that I would never, ever, fucking ever have to experience something like this again.
Some invisible force, which I suspected was Mauldrene, had clutched me by the ankles and yanked me upward at a speed that had to rival the flight of the mighty dragons.
My internal organs felt piled up against my throat as if they might burst free through my mouth.
My hair streamed beneath me like a whipping banner while I resisted the urge to fling out my arms in what would have been futile resistance.
Instead, I gripped the dragon hide book to my chest as if it were a lifeline that would get me through this—when there was no guarantee the indecipherable treatise would ever help with anything at all.
I didn’t see Baz, but the Rillis rope tugged at my wrist, suggesting it remained attached to him, however the combined faithum of the rope and castle allowed.
The cave had long ago disappeared, replaced by what was perhaps yet another of Mauldrene’s long tunnel-like quasi-intestines.
In the absolute darkness, there was no way to tell while I was flying upward with my head and feet pointed in the wrong direction.
I didn’t scream. Being inverted at such velocity overcame every one of my usual reactions and emptied me of most thoughts save one: This won’t last forever. It will end. I told myself again and again. I held on to this singular hope as hard as I did the book.
So long later that I had no way to count, I was flipped right-side up and unceremoniously pitched onto a hard surface. I slammed onto my hands and knees hard enough to rattle my fangs, before coming to a stop. Thank Fortune, it was finally over.
Although I was no longer moving, my body still felt as if I was. The floor beneath me seemed to roll. The darkness, a little fainter than before, appeared to swirl.
With the grace of a lumbering pygmy ogre, I flattened myself onto a tangled curtain of my hair and groaned. For dragon’s sake, even lying fully down I couldn’t get the world to cease its horrific moving!
A heavy weight plummeted behind me—or was it beside me? With the impact of a star hurtling from the sky, it rocked my body.
Dragon down, I tried to say, but was only able to think it.
The dragons had long ago abandoned the Opalese. The mightier Fuerin had vanished before them. Dragons no longer tumbled from the sky when they died. But reference to them had never ceased. They had forever shaped the world with a lasting reverence.
A long, undulating moan, that conjured memories of sex, rang out from nearby.
“Baz,” I mumbled, though the garble I actually got out sounded more like “Aaaaaathhhhhh,” with my face smushed against my hair and the floor. But there was no raising my head yet.
He grunted.
“Are ya…?” I tried for more, but it was all I had.
Another groan: one that starkly reminded me of the first time he was inside me, when we’d gone at each other like beasts and all we’d been able to make were animal sounds. There had been no words for madness that drew two enemies together.
Muffled voices were growing closer, but my hearing, usually as sharp as the foxlike feethle’s, was buzzing dully.
“…came from over here somewhere.”
That was either Edwidge or Aziza, or maybe Levin or Félix. The buzzing had only grown louder, making the voices indistinguishable.
Footsteps padded quietly closer. My lumoons hadn’t yet caught up with the speed of my ascent, if they ever would. Baz’s hadn’t reached him either.
Foreign lumoonlight bobbed around a corner, revealing that Baz and I had landed in the very same parlor where we’d been in before setting out to search for Junot.
I lay wedged between a wall and the couch where I’d once sat.
Baz sprawled, face up, with his boots all but touching mine.
His neck was craned to keep his head from pressing into an adjacent wall.
Just the effort of glancing at him made the room swirl and my guts heave—in opposite directions. I glued my cheek to the floor and vowed not to move until the spinning and buzzing stopped.
“…you been?” someone cried out, way too loudly, and I realized I hadn’t been hearing a thing beyond what was in my own head.
Baz released a deep, prolonged moan that, even through my current discomfort, made my core clench. My body’s reaction to the man was not fucking normal!
“What in the Ethers happened to you?”
This time, the demand came through clearly—it was Aziza. The static in my ears was receding.
Aziza crouched beside Baz, and Félix knelt alongside the rope between him and me. From my vantage point, I could make out more boots, but that was it. I wasn’t risking moving my head.
“We’ve been looking for you everywhere,” Aziza said.
Baz grunted.
“You have to give us more than that, Baz. It’s been days!”
Days?
How? But I already had my answer: Mauldrene.
If the castle weren’t so competent at making me her bitch time and again, I would have probably been impressed. To survive in this shithole required such concerted effort, it was fucking exhausting.
Baz mumbled a string of nonsense. Aziza threw back her head in exasperation.
“You’d better not have been off somewhere screwing each other’s brains out,” she said.
“If only,” I muttered, sounding like I’d drunk olvidian and smoked olandule in the same day: a consciousness-rocking combination that lasted for days.
I sensed eyes on me, but not whose.
“Where were you, then?” Edwidge asked. With the buzzing nearly gone, I was certain it was her.
Baz attempted to push up onto his elbows but collapsed back down to the floor, banging his head. Edwidge ducked to prop him up so he could rest against the wall. His legs flopped out to the sides so that his feet dipped toward the floor.
“Mull … ene got us.”
Night crouched down too, his face popping into view. “Mauldrene got you?”
“Hm.”
“How?”
“Hm.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“We’ll have to wait for the details,” Aziza said. “Perfect. I fucking love waiting for shit.”
“Hm.”
She faced me. “What about the traitorous bitch? Can she string together more than ogre grunts?”
“Hm,” I said.
She leaned back on her heels. “Great, that’s scorching fantastic.”
Edwidge sat on the couch, keeping to the front edge of the cushions so she could leap to her feet in an instant. With the toe of her boot, she nudged at the Rillis rope, as if expecting it to rear up and bite like a viper.
“How can we tell if it’s still working?” she asked the others.
“It’s a Rillis rope,” Félix said. “It’s working.”
Night disappeared from my view. “Hey, look.”
“It’s a book,” Edwidge said in a tone that suggested she’d never seen one before.
“Yep,” Night said. “Can’t read it.”
So he’d picked it up from where it had fumbled from my hands. I tried to yell at him to drop it: that book was mine. I had found it. I had held on to it when it had felt like my own guts were going to come out through my nose. My hm didn’t succeed in conveying my outrage.
Night sank onto the couch beside Edwidge to open the book on his lap. At least the tail that emerged from the spine was tucked away.
The book’s secrets belonged to me.
Aziza and Félix sidled behind Night. Edwidge leaned over to get a closer look.
“I’ve never seen this language before,” Aziza said.
“Neither have I,” said Edwidge.
Night flipped through the book with far less care than I would have.
The static in my hearing and mind had finally quieted. When I rolled onto my side and got my hand under my head, my reality tipped and wavered, but I wouldn’t let myself go back down.
This won’t last forever. It will end, I reminded myself again.
I would break free of this prison and then I’d never allow myself to be captured again—not ever.
I had vowed something similar when I’d emerged from my underwater sarcophagus, and then again after I’d been released from Zaraga’s palace prison. But this time … this time I would achieve it.
Night swiveled to glance up at the elf.
“How ’bout you?”
Félix held out his hands for the book. Night snapped it shut then tossed it to him, like it was just any book. If it was bound in dragon hide, it was ancient and exorbitantly expensive.
Félix leafed through several pages before whistling under his breath. “I can’t believe I’m seeing it. I’d never seen it before, and I’m—”
“Old as dirt?” Night supplied with a menacing-sounding rumble that was apparently meant to be jestful ribbing.
Félix chortled. “Not quite that old, my brother, and not as old as dragons either. But I recognize it: the language of the fuerdlings. Acolytes to the Dragon Mother herself.”
Félix closed the book with a gentle reverence my dragon-loving self approved of, and glided fingers along the hide cover—thankfully not extending down the spine. For now, that remained my secret—well, and Baz’s. Scorch him and his Rillis rope.
“They wrote in an invented tongue,” Félix said, “so no one but those loyal to the death to the Dragon Mother would learn her secrets.”
“Wow,” I said, before knowing I would, or that I could properly pronounce consonants again.
All attention, even Baz’s, shifted to me. His eyes were still that terrifying black. Holding them as long as I could, I dragged myself across the floor and up the couch. Right next to Edwidge, I leaned back onto the armrest.
“I’m fine, really,” I said with minimal slurring. “No need for help, thanks so much.”
Aziza snorted. “I see that new scar on your face hasn’t fixed your attitude.”
I sighed, plunking my head back against the armrest. The world spun again, but only for a few seconds before it slowly came to a stop.
So three or four days, however many had remained of the sorcerer’s spell, had elapsed.
“Time distortion,” I said, with little enough garbling that everyone appeared to understand.
Night, Edwidge, and Aziza looked to Baz. Félix was studying me.
“How long did you think had passed?” Edwidge asked.
Baz lifted a hand to rub his face, I guessed, based on how many times he did it when frustrated, but didn’t get that far. Instead, he tossed the end of a braid, beaded through with copper and turquoise, then let his hand fall heavily.
“Hours,” he said. “A lot of hours, but not so many that they’d turned into days. Where are Lev and Moncho?”
Aziza and Edwidge looked at each other.
Night said, “In trouble.”
“Did you find the emperor?” Edwidge asked.
“No,” Baz said. “How are they in trouble?”
“It’s Terencia,” Night said. “Being Terencia.”
“Shit.”
“Yup.”
“Give me a moment to recover and we’ll go.”
Which meant I would be going too. I supposed the Rillis rope wasn’t all bad. At least he couldn’t leave me behind when it suited him.
Night said, “Your eyes.”
“I figured.”
So what Baz had done with the specter wasn’t new? That … was telling … but telling of what, exactly?
“Your arm?” Night asked.
“I’ll be alright. Just need some time.”
Night nodded, like that all made perfect sense.
“What’s happening with your arm?” I asked. What the fuck did I have to lose?
Aziza immediately barked at Baz, “You didn’t tell her, did you?”
“No.”
“Fuck. Good. At least you’re still thinking with your head.”
“I’m always thinking with my head, Zi.”
“Not everyone thinks with the right one.” As if that had reminded her, Aziza’s eyes widened. “Lev. We have to get to them. We thought … well, seems it was true, then … the shadows were herding us this way.”
“It was weird,” Night said.
“It really was,” Edwidge said with a cringe.
If the shadows were an extension of Mauldrene, then I suspected the same force had delivered Baz and me back here.
“We have to hurry,” Edwidge said. “Terencia called for Rishaq.”
“Rishaq?” Baz said.
“Unfortunately,” Aziza said.
“Fuck.”
“My thought, too,” Night said.
“Also, the nobles are a problem,” Edwidge said.
“A loud one,” Night said.
“And now they’ll all know who Soravelle is,” Baz said.
“Only if they’ve read their history,” I said.
“Everyone’s heard of you.”
I grimaced. “Great. Then they’ll know.”
“We can’t have that.”
“No, we can’t.” I held up the arm with the rope. “So unbind me.”
“No. But I can put you inside me.”
He grinned.
I didn’t. “You’re supposed to go inside me, not the other way around.”
Aziza snorted. “Maybe I can learn to like the bitch after all.”
I went to glare at her, but her smirk was spot-on and unexpectedly delightful.
I chuckled then covered my mouth as if I’d accidentally let slip a belch. “It’s Mauldrene’s guts. They got to me.”
Aziza’s brows shot up. “Mauldrene’s … guts?”
“That, or the phantom,” I said.
“What phantom?”
Baz sat up, testing out his balance. “We’ll tell you on the way.”
On the way had to be delayed more than an hour, until Baz and I could properly stand.
Then, I snatched the book from Félix, tucked it back in my waistband, and lined up next to Baz, who recounted everything—except for my intimate familiarity with our ghost’s cage—as we wound through the castle toward even more trouble.