Chapter 30
What’s to Come Will Pose Even Greater Challenge Than What Has Already Passed
Micaela was gone. She’d even taken with her that primordial darkness.
Left behind, though, was the darkness that thrived inside me, the wound that was my brother’s absence ripped open and oozing freely. That darkness I felt acutely.
We had never left Baz’s rooms, and once more our companions were visible. He and I were crouched exactly as we had before Baz acted as a conduit for Micaela’s darkness.
The Bazrians were already beginning to ask questions, but I clutched Baz’s arm. “Did she do it? Did she rid herself of enough darkness to make it to the Etherlands?”
He was shaking his head and frowning, looking so fucking sad.
Even the slim braids that he wore through some of his hair drooped as if weeping.
He looked exhausted, as if he hadn’t slept properly in weeks, maybe months.
Or perhaps that was his own sadness making his broad, strong shoulders sag.
For the first time since laying eyes on him, I questioned what I thought I knew about him.
This man didn’t look like a killer—or not like one who killed without remorse.
He appeared as affected by Micaela’s suffering as I was.
Those beautiful eyes of his now contained an entire ocean of pain.
“I don’t know. She was close, so close. But I don’t know if she made it.”
“Can you check? Is there some way to find out?”
“If you’re suggesting Baz go into the darkness for you,” Zi said, “then no. Fuck no, actually. He won’t do it. The cost to him is too high. Right, Baz?”
When he didn’t glance at his friends, only at the space Micaela had before occupied, Night spoke:
“Baz, no. Don’t.”
Finally, Baz looked at where my fingers still squeezed his bare arm, hooked into him like claws. I loosened my hold. He patted my hand, then left his atop mine, caressing the back of it.
“I’ll do it if it’s really important to you.”
He knew it was. He might even guess at all the reasons why.
The Bazrians erupted in protests. Marina sidled closer, so that the hem of my friend’s frock glanced across my back. But I had eyes only for Baz, for that sorrow that encompassed vast oceans.
“It’s not worth it. It won’t change anything for her, will it?”
“No. She’s beyond my reach now.”
“Then, thank you, but no.”
Ed’s exhaled relief was loud as a snore.
“What happened?” Félix asked. “Who was she?”
I waited for Baz to answer. After all, these were his friends. Due to their relationship with him, they were, by extension, my enemies. But Baz looked to me in a silent request to spare him from it.
So I recounted what Micaela had told us, leaving out what wasn’t any of their fucking business.
I omitted the cages and how Rafaela had likely chosen to rebirth Teo and me just because we were also bonded twins.
And I definitely left out the loop de loop of craziness that was Micaela and Baz’s theory about his and my supposed connection—which couldn’t be, absolutely couldn’t be.
There was no way. Perhaps he wasn’t the enemy Rafaela and Alonso had led me to believe he was, or the one I’d conjured in my imagination. But he was not my mate.
The mate bond between lovers was powerful, a gift so rare that it was coveted among fae. Among s?nglures, who lived even longer than the long lived fae, even more so.
Keeping my hand on his arm, Baz guided us to rise.
“It’s time I share something momentous with you all, my friends.
” He glanced at Marina. “With you, too, since you are loyal to Vee.” At the nickname, Marina arched her bald brow.
“Because of who you are to her, I absolve you of the punishment for breaching Ombrash Island without invitation, and for trying to free my prisoner.”
“What?” Zi said at the same time that Lev, who’d been uncharacteristically quiet since Terencia, also erupted.
“What the scorch, Baz? You don’t punish the princess of our most enduring enemy, not even when she tries to freaking kill you, and now you won’t punish her agent for breaking the dominion either? That’s too much.”
Ed’s pointed glare at him suggested that his questioning of their leader was what had gone too far.
“Why?” Night asked.
Some of Baz’s sorrow retreated. When he smiled, it was small, but genuine enough for my heart to thud—just the once, but every s?nglure in that room would have heard it. Their attention, especially Félix’s, skimmed across me.
“Because Vee is—”
“Uh, no,” I interrupted. “Vee’s not anyth—”
“Vee and I are destined mates.”
They gawped, every single one of them. It would have been a comical sight had Baz not just lobbed a fucking fireball. Marina’s face was all eyes—I’d never seen those dark, pupil-less eyes of hers so round, so freaking huge.
The silence drew out.
Finally, Night said, “Come again?”
When memories of Baz coming inside me flashed through my mind, I rolled my eyes. I was screwed. Soooooo super screwed. Not much else was clear in this clusterfuck of a situation, but that one singular point most definitely was.
“She’s my mate,” Baz said, making it sound so simple, like it was an indisputable truth.
“That’s just … not possible,” I said.
Zi hitched her thumb in my direction. “What she said.”
Baz squeezed my hand that rested on his arm. I slid it out from under him.
“You’ll get there,” he told me.
“I will not. I came here to assassinate you.”
“That’s an excellent reminder,” Moncho said. Some of his pallor had receded, though the man’s usual bravado was still lacking. “Along with: she’s the crown princess of the D’Arcos. The D’Arcos, Baz. The motherfucking D’Arcos!”
Baz chortled darkly. “How could I forget?”
“Oh, you haven’t forgotten?” Lev said. “’Cause it sure seems like you have. Junot will skin your ass.”
Baz’s demeanor sharpened. The commander was suddenly back. “Junot can never find out. Nor can Terencia. Our mate bond—”
“No mate bond,” I interjected.
“Our mate bond is a secret. A take-it-to-the-Etherlands secret.”
“Shit, none of us are going there,” Lev said. “But point taken. To the Igneuslands it goes.”
I shook my head so hard my hair bounced all around my face and shoulders. “There’s no bond. No secret.” I tacked on, “Just enemies,” because I really needed the reminder, when I really shouldn’t have.
The Bazrians looked at me with resignation. Marina’s eyes were still so big they seemed at risk of rolling right out of their sockets.
“There’s no mate bond happening here,” I added.
As if I hadn’t spoken, Félix asked Baz, “Beyond protecting your secret bond to the death, what are your orders?”
Baz walked toward a dresser, withdrew one sword, then the other from the harness at his back, and set them down. He unsnapped the harness, then reached for a dagger at his hip.
“We have numerous problems to solve and missions to complete. Junot and Terencia are missing.”
As was the bothersome little tattletale, Cosette, but I wasn’t about to remind anybody about her.
“Good riddance,” Lev muttered under his breath, while everyone pretended not to hear him. Such sentiments were punishable by death in the empire, even for a soldier in Baz’s elite squadron.
“We won’t be able to keep the absence of the emperor and empress quiet for much longer,” Baz said. “Already, it’s shocking that more guards haven’t noticed.”
“Incompetent fucks,” Night grumbled.
“That they are,” Moncho said.
“Once the guards notice—” Baz said.
“If they notice,” Lev interjected.
“They’ll notice,” Baz said. “They do a decent job of protecting their charges. It’s just that my … Junot and Terencia wanted a diminished protective detail since the castle is so remote and it’s only supposed to be us here.”
Lev smiled peppily at me. “Along with their sworn enemy.”
Baz sighed. “She doesn’t know about our mate bond, but she knows Soravelle is back and very much not dead.”
Lev’s smile turned vicious. His fangs elongated to protrude from beneath his upper lip. “So it behooves us to have Terencia never return.”
Baz tipped his head Lev’s way but wouldn’t agree aloud. To do so would amount to indisputable treason. “Once the guards realize we’re dealing with actual disappearances, they’ll wonder why I haven’t deployed the small contingent I keep stationed on the island.”
“That lack of deployment in a search and rescue effort could likely be explained away by the castle’s temperament,” I said.
“She did murder a bunch of drakes and drakesses, or whatever they were, assuming the blats were her doing. At the very least, she didn’t stop the blats, when she surely could have.
” Was I joining in like I was part of the team?
By the Ethers, it sure seemed like it. “You wouldn’t want to endanger soldiers’ lives by exposing them to the castle’s attacks without direct need. ”
And how did I know this about the “merciless Razer,” who had kept me as his prisoner?
Baz scratched the stubble across his cheek; the Rillis rope danced between us. “That is true. Though if Rishaq is truly on his way, that complicates things. Rishaq is…”
“A spoiled brat of a prick?” Lev offered.
Another tip of Baz’s head. “Complicated.”
“And not particularly reasonable or level-headed.”
“Takes one to know one,” Zi chimed in.
Lev scowled at her. Affectionately, she bumped her hip against his, and Lev wrapped his arm around her shoulders. She leaned into him, wrinkling her nose at the dampness of his pants and long hair, but then leaned farther into him regardless.
“Maybe the dragons’ll blow smoke down on us, and Mauldrene will take care of Rishaq for us,” Lev said.
“That’s the optimistic man I … put up with,” Zi said.
Lev snorted and pulled her head against his chest. She giggled.
“About Mauldrene…” Baz said.
“Here we go,” Night said.
“Trust me,” Baz said, “there’s no way you’re guessing what I’m about to tell you.”
“No way at all,” I offered, as if I were indeed part of the crew.
“I still wanna guess,” Lev said, sounding more like his usual self by the passing minute.
“We don’t have time for that,” I said. “You’ll never guess, not in a millennium.”