Chapter 4
A Bitter Aftertaste
A low, gruff voice boomed, “Get up!” into my ear.
I startled awake, but didn’t twitch or make a sound, as if I were back on the streets. The body never forgot.
I didn’t know where I was or what was going on, and my instincts were already reacting.
I sought out the blood of whoever had yelled, caressing it in a tender instant, so I could hold them in place. Threat or not, they wouldn’t be making a move.
My eyes shot open only for me to immediately squeeze them shut. When I tried again, I squinted narrowly. Blazing and blinding, the sun was directly overhead. I couldn’t even make out the bright Fuerin Star beside it.
Teo. By the Ethers, Teo…
Suffering his absence all over again hit me so hard that a whimper nearly slipped out. I clamped down on it. I wasn’t alone. Revealing weakness wasn’t an option.
My power, though not at full-strength, was better. I cast out a call to anyone else’s blood in the immediate vicinity, but none responded.
I was lying naked, flat on hot sand. I anticipated some sort of understanding of my circumstances to arrive while I scrunched my fingers through it at my sides.
My eyes watered from the sudden brightness.
I remembered coming to underwater, and then …
Teo. Losing him had stirred me from my unnatural slumber.
With a shuddering squeeze to my heart—I might have escaped my seabed prison, but I hadn’t escaped Heartbreak—I pushed up onto my elbows and took in my surroundings: the beach to my left, unending ocean beyond it.
Squat, dark, gnarled trees to my right, but only until a mountain of gray rock began to climb.
No one in front of me. I whipped around, the jerking motion making my head swim, as if I were recovering from too much drink.
Sunrise spirits…
It came back to me just as I was registering two unmoving lumps—human-sized—down the beach behind me.
“Dragon Mother…” My body was spattered in blood, sand caked onto it.
I touched my tongue to my lips: more blood and sand. A tang lingered. A bitter aftertaste.
A series of mouse-like squeaks had me swinging my head around to another quick swirl of my vision. I grimaced it away.
“What the…?”
Tiny legs stuck out from beneath a small chunk of driftwood on the ground. Were they … a bird’s? The squeaks, I realized with some surprise, were coming from the wood.
I rolled it off to reveal what I would have assumed was a doll if not for the fact that I held its blood under my thrall.
So not a doll. Something living. But what?
The not-doll was small and rigid, its arms and legs sticking straight out to its sides, with sand-dusted wings flat beneath its back.
Its hair was a fuchsia so vibrant I’d only ever seen its like among flower petals.
It was squeezed into tight, head-to-toe wompa leather I’d never don in this heat.
Though no larger than grapeseeds, its eyes were condemning beneath fuchsia eyebrows thin as thread.
From lips just as tiny emerged more squeaks I now recognized as infuriated.
I glanced around again. Something so small could not have yelled so loudly. I was missing something—someone.
I spotted no one else. Just the two lumps I suspected were the reason I was stronger.
I bent over the not-doll, and when my nose was within a handsbreadth of its little face, the thing spat at me. A single droplet of water rolled down my nose.
I snorted, and water dripped from both nostrils—my body still pushing out the water that had filled my lungs.
Those tiny eyebrows climbed its forehead as grapeseed eyes pinned on my face.
I didn’t have time for this shit, whatever it was.
Between forefinger and thumb, I grasped its waist and raised it to eye level.
“Mmm-mm-mmmm-mm-mmmm,” the thing whined.
By just a fraction, I released my hold on its blood. It exhaled through its mouth and nose—no water came out—its legs drew closed, and its arms slapped against either side of my hand.
It craned its head back to glare at me with those beady little eyes. “Put me down right this instant.”
An abrupt laugh bubbled out of me, surprising us both.
“Are you laughing at me?” the thing accused in a high-pitched whine that made me wince, then scowl.
“You spat at my face.” My voice came out scratchy, as if I had rusted in the ocean. “I’ll be asking the questions.”
“You deserved it. No one commands my body but me.”
“I’ll do as I see fit. Who yelled at me?”
The little thing squirmed in my grip before glowering at me defiantly. “I did. You’re under arrest. Under the power—”
“That wasn’t you. It couldn’t have been you.”
“It was. Under the power granted me by—”
“How?”
She narrowed those minuscule eyes at me until they were mean, glittering slits. “I was maybe only gonna arrest you for murder, but this level of stupid should be treated as a danger to the realm too.”
“I’m not following.”
“Like I said.” She thrashed for a few fruitless seconds, then sighed. “Faithum. Obviously. I used faithum to enhance my voice, okay? Now let me go.”
“Why?”
“So assholes like you take me seriously.” She crossed twig-like arms over her chest.
I lowered her onto the slab of driftwood.
She grunted from effort but couldn’t move enough to take a single step. “Not fair. Let me go all the way.”
“No. Just ’cause you’re small doesn’t mean you’re not dangerous.”
“I’ve been telling everyone that my entire life.”
“So you’re dangerous?”
“Yes.”
“Then why would I release my hold over you?”
“If you won’t do it to be decent, then do it because I’m acting under the authority of the emperor of Domdurro.”
My thoughts raced in Teo’s direction; my heart thudded.
“There is no emperor of Domdurro. He’s just a king.”
The creature harrumphed. “Just a king…” She shook her head.
“He has no authority here.”
Fuchsia hair sliding this way and that as she swung her head, glancing in all directions, she hissed, “Don’t say that shit around me. I don’t want trouble.” She flicked another look over a shoulder.
“There’s no one else here.”
“You mean, no one else but the people”—she uncrossed her arms just to jab a finger up at me—“you killed.” She stared at me.
I stared back. Bloodlust was a s?nglure’s downfall. Our kind liked to pretend it was a strength, but once anyone experienced it, they knew the truth.
“There is no emperor,” I insisted.
Another panicked glance tossed around. “Is this so I’ll let you off the hook? ’Cause I won’t, you know.”
“I didn’t commit murder.”
Those thin eyebrows arched in disbelief. “You’re covered in blood from your tits to your ass. And there are two dead bodies over there, drained of blood. Are you really trying to sell me on coincidence?”
“I’m not trying to sell you on anything. If I killed them—”
“You did.”
“If I did, then it wasn’t like I wanted to.”
“Oh. Yeah. Right. Of course.” She bobbed her head up and down obnoxiously. “You murdered them by accident. Okey dokey, sure. You’re off the hook, then!” She imbued her already high voice with extra gaiety.
I frowned.
“Under the power granted me by the emperor of Domdurro, you are under arrest.”
I didn’t move.
“Submit and release your control over me.” She used the booming voice again.
“Is this faithum your specific fae power?”
In her regular voice, she said, “My magic is none of your business. Obey me or I’ll charge you with assault on a soldier of the empire, as well as everything else.”
“Fine.” I withdrew the thrall over her blood but didn’t take my eyes off her. “Just go away. I’m not going anywhere with you.”
She shook her limbs out. “Are you resisting arrest, then?”
“You claim an emperor as your authority. There is no emperor, and even if there were, you’d still have no authority over me. I need to go to the palace of Zaraga immediately.”
“Well, isn’t this just your lucky day? That’s where I’m taking you.”
“To the palace? Why?”
“My gods, you really are playing up the ‘incapacitated by bloodlust’ angle, aren’t you?” After the air quotes, she slapped her hands to her hips, then spoke exaggeratedly slowly. “I’m arresting you and taking you to prison. The prison is at the palace. You’re going down for murdering two humans.”
I could have told her right then and there who I was, and did all the commanding from then on. But a squirming unease restrained me. My loss of Teo was by far the worst, but it wasn’t the only thing that was off. A sense of wrongness marched all over my skin like an entire colony of ants.
I suppressed a shiver. “I won’t allow you to put me under arrest. But I am heading to the palace.”
She smiled annoyingly wide. “Great. I can just as easily arrest you there.” She thumped her little palms against her chest as if that settled that.
I stood. Instantly, the creature zoomed with a blur of buzzing, translucent wings to hover near my head.
She wagged a finger at me. “Don’t go getting any ambitious ideas.”
Purposely looking only at the ocean and not at her or to the left where the bodies were, I stalked toward the water.
She trailed me. “Hey! What are you doing?”
“Washing the blood off.”
“You mean, washing the evidence off.”
I kept walking, the fine sand hot enough to sting against the soles of my feet.
“That’s okay. You have my permission. I already got everything I need from the scene before I woke you up.”
For the briefest of moments, I hesitated, but then waded into the water anyway, shoving away memories of discovering myself in an underwater tomb. Even so, I made quick work of scrubbing my skin and hair as clean as salt water were going to get them, then emerged.
The creature eyed me. “We’ll need to get you clothes.” She glanced toward the bodies. “The female was a couple sizes larger than you. Her dress won’t fit.”
“Isn’t her dress evidence?”
She shrugged. “Done and processed. Now it’s just in the way of the pygmy ogres. They don’t eat dresses.”
I blinked at her. The ants swarmed my body. “Are you a … pygmy ogre?”