Chapter 27
We Never Would, Never Could, So Watch and Enjoy the Show
It didn’t take long of my banging, tearing, and clawing to accept that I’d rip my fingers off before Mauldrene allowed me through that wall after her most recent catch. Whatever Mauldrene was made of, it was tougher than mere stone.
“The empress,” exclaimed the servant girl who’d earlier licked said empress’ blood from her finger, rising to her knees. “She’s…”
“Gone,” I murmured in a gap of silence between crashes against the portcullis. My fingertips dripped blood; they were healing rapidly enough.
At my back, the rhythmic pounding ceased abruptly. First there were surprised inhales, clear and loud, immediately followed by the rapid footfalls of running soldiers. The portcullis had vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.
“Where is the empress?” demanded the same man from earlier. “Where has she gone?”
“The wall swallowed her,” I mumbled, truly stunned that such vital information pertaining to my brother had been within my grasp and I’d lost it.
“The wall swallowed her?” Demander said, his deep voice going high.
“Swallowed … sucked her into it … disappeared her inside,” I said. “Whatever.” I probably sounded numb to him, but I could hear my frustration, disappointment, and fury that I’d missed my chance. How could I have failed Teo yet again, for dragon’s sake?
“Commander,” a woman said at my back, presumably to Baz. “Are you in need of our assistance?”
“No,” Baz said. “Nothing you can do. We have to wait. The castle will let us go soon.”
Maybe Mauldrene would, maybe she wouldn’t. I couldn’t quite figure out her motivations. If holding Baz, Ed, and Félix was solely to keep them from interfering with her taking Terencia, then that need was complete.
“The shadows are receding,” Ed said with a relieved sigh.
I turned. Indeed they were, though at a tenth the speed that they’d initially woven their cages.
The shadows withdrew not just from Baz, Ed, and Félix, but also from where they’d come to cover much of the hall’s surfaces.
With an eerie silence, shadows slunk in all directions at once in perfect synchronicity.
Though they grew up from the floor and dipped down from the ceiling, and though they clung to walls and furniture, constructing a multi-layered film of darkness like dozens of spiderwebs, they did not tangle.
They had purpose … and perhaps their own united intelligence.
The castle was unnerving as fuck. Mauldrene was attacking the supposedly invulnerable and unreachable, plucking them off one by one.
How many people and creatures out there wanted to punish the empress and emperor for the wrongs they’d done to our world?
Hundreds, surely. Probably thousands: most of those who remembered what the world had been like before the birth of the Domdurron Empire.
“Which wall claimed the empress?” Demander asked.
I pointed with my chin. I stood a mere foot away, hoping to conjure some clue as to how to recover the woman I’d only so recently wanted to murder. Oh, the irony, chasing after an empress and an emperor to rescue them when I really wanted to kill them both.
Demander and several guards began beating on the same wall I’d bloodied myself on, so I positioned myself to the side. If they got through, I was going in first. I was taking Terencia up on her deal. I would save her, and she would tell me where my brother was.
Was it truly possible? Could Teo really be alive?
I knew Baz was behind me without turning to look.
It wasn’t because of the slack that suddenly loosened the Rillis rope.
It wasn’t even his scent, so distinctive, or the fragrance of his blood, a delight I now craved, damn him.
It was the heat of him, the way my body tingled in anticipation at his proximity, and the anticipation of his touch.
I felt it coming a second before his hand clutched my wrist.
I looked at where he grabbed me, wondering if there was a point to shaking him off.
“You’re not going after her,” he said.
I scoffed. “You heard her. Of course I am.”
He held up the rope. “No, you’re not.”
“I don’t need the visual reminder. How could I ever forget I’m tethered to the most irritating man in the entire Opalese?”
Baz glanced at the empress’ guards, who were smashing the wall with their battering ram—to no particular success—and pulled me aside.
“Be careful what you say,” he said under his breath.
“Why?” I asked at normal volume. “You think I care about your reputation with those who take commands from you?”
He grunted, his hand tightening on my wrist, and tsked, sounding like an angry crute chittering into his big front teeth.
“No, I don’t think you care about that. I don’t care about that.”
With a thick finger, he zigzagged the air in front of my face.
“See a bug or something?”
He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed.
“If that works for you, let me know. It never works for me.”
His eyes snapped open. “It’s you. I can usually find all the patience I need.”
Ed snorted what sounded like it was on its way to being a disbelieving laugh before she aborted.
“Yeah, sure you can.” I pulled my wrist free, a gesture that lost a lot of its punch when I could only move a few feet away from him afterward. “I’m going after her as soon as it’s possible.”
“No, you’re not. You’re not going anywhere without me.”
“Then you can come with me.”
He scowled. Was it wrong to delight in the anger that made his eyes sparkle like sunshine on ocean waves?
“Obviously I’m going to retrieve the empress,” he said. “It’s my duty as commander of the empire’s armed forces and … as my sire’s son.”
“Fine. Spin it however you wanna spin it. I’ll go with you, then, to see the empress, instead of you coming with me, if that makes your dick twitch.”
The female soldier, who’d offered aid to her commander, choked a little.
Baz growled, “For fuck’s sake, woman.” He zigzagged the air between us again.
Of course I knew what he meant; I’d known the first time around. In a world of s?nglures and their perfect symmetry and perfect faces, it was impossible to forget about my scar for long. Plus, it tugged at my skin when I smiled, one of the reasons I rarely did.
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, yes, I get it. Careful not to sprain your finger there.”
He put down the finger, but not before giving me a hearty glare. While holding it, he called over the slamming of the ram, “Centurio, send Captain Shmooly to find me the moment you break through that wall.”
“Aye, Commander,” Demander answered immediately.
But Ed was shaking her head at Baz. “I’m coming with you.”
“No, you stay with Félix. Help find the empress.”
Félix, whom I’d never seen appear displeased, pressed his lips together, still holding his bow aloft—the danger hadn’t yet passed; smart elf. “You’ll be alone with her.”
“It’s not a concern.”
If Baz wanted to delude himself into feeling all warm and fuzzy with me, he could go right ahead.
“I’m safe with her,” Baz assured his friends.
As one, Ed, Félix, and I stared at him. Our looks all conveyed a similar message: Have you lost your ever-loving mind? Of course you aren’t safe with her. She tried to kill you, remember?
“I am safe with her,” Baz said, drawing closer to his friends. “I’m sure of it now.” His eyes bore into theirs, passing on some secret message I didn’t catch. Too bad, because I would have liked to know why I wasn’t going to kill him.
Baz passed some more secret eye messages with his friends before lowering his voice. The guards could probably still hear since they were all s?nglures, but maybe not.
“Stay on Terencia,” Baz said. “We need to find out what she knows.”
Félix looked from him to me. “It’s likely what she said was an act of desperation.”
Meaning, the elf believed the empress was a filthy liar.
“I’m not so sure,” Baz said, and hope twirled on tiptoes through my chest.
Immediately after, my chest constricted. Hadn’t I been down this road before? Heartbreak and Hope were no less vicious bitches now than when I’d first slammed awake in my underwater grave.
Félix flicked his head toward the open threshold that had been previously blocked by the portcullis.
The four of us strode to its other side, farther away from earshot of soldiers and servants.
When the three of them dipped their heads together to conspire, so did I.
Ed stiffened. Félix only studied me with fresh curiosity.
Gone was the disapproval—odd. What had all those eye-messages said?
“We can’t wait for Terencia,” Baz said.
My mouth jerked open to protest.
“She might never come back.”
My mouth opened again.
“That doesn’t mean we won’t follow through. If there’s a chance your brother is alive, I want to find out too.”
Why? It almost slipped from my lips, but I clamped them shut. Why didn’t matter. Results were all that did. Teo was all that was important.
“But there may be better ways of getting Mauldrene to cooperate, and I won’t waste our time. We still have to go back for the others.”
Ed’s face clouded over.
“You should have let me kill her,” I said.
Ed crossed her arms over her chest, her muscles twitching. A one-sided sneer emphasized that they hadn’t stopped me.
I’d failed. I’d acted impulsively and without a plan, and so I’d failed, when the Bazrians hated her enough that they might have just pretended they couldn’t stop me in time.
I harrumphed. “I should have killed her.”
Ed sighed a, Yep, you damn well should have.
Woman had a point. I sighed too.
“If they can’t get through,” Ed said, “what do you want us to do?”
Baz considered. “Get to the others. Check on Lev and Moncho.”
“And Crute and the kitchen hand?”
Storm clouds raced across Baz’s face. “I’ll pay for them to be buried in Galmeen. Off the island.”
“What of the nobles?”
Their cries had quieted, which I assumed meant that they were suddenly safe … or that they were being sucked into walls, or already dead.