Chapter 6
There’s Something Very Wrong with My Prisoner
“Okay, murderess,” Cosette called up—too cheerily—from where she sat atop my shoulder, swinging her legs to tap, tap, tap, tap-tap against me.
“Unless … maybe you’ve changed your mind and want to tell me your name after all? So I don’t have to keep calling you ‘murderess.’”
I’d been called worse, though by none who lived for long after.
“Alright. Suit yourself. ‘Murderess’ it is. I mean, it is what you are and all. Still … we could be friendlier, you and me.”
Tap-tap. Tap-tap. Tap, tap.
“If you keep hitting me with your feet, you’ll be getting real friendly, real fast with my fangs.”
Her legs stilled mid-swing before coming to rest gingerly against me. “Whoa. There’s no need for that. Keep your fangs to yourself.”
“Fangs aren’t my first choice either. But I’m fresh out of knives.”
“Are you intending to attack me, murderess?” Gone was the cheer.
“Wouldn’t you? We’re nearing the palace—”
“How did you know we’re close to the palace? You haven’t recognized anywhere else we’ve been, practically.”
I bristled. The parvnit observed too much, dammit. Read into everything I did and said—or didn’t do or say.
“We’re nearing the palace,” I said, “and once we get there, you plan to imprison me. Wouldn’t you attack you?”
She shifted her bony ass against my shoulder bone. The dragort went clop, clop, clop, clop over cobblestones, winding steadily up, up, up toward the palace.
“I wouldn’t attack anyone without lawful reason and authority,” Cosette claimed. “I adhere to the dominion of the emperor.”
I scoffed. “Yeah. Sure. I believe you.”
“Well, you should! I’d never break the dominion.”
“Of course you wouldn’t.”
“I wouldn’t. I’m a soldier of the empire.”
“Soldiers break the rules all the time. Especially when no one’s watching.”
“You’re watching me right now.”
“No, I’m not. My eyes blur when I look down at you.”
She groaned. “You know what I mean. I’d never violate the dominion, truly.”
Whatever this dominion was, I was going to break it, violate it, and uproot it the fuck up from where it didn’t belong.
“I only acquiesced to accompanying you to the palace. I never said I’d let you arrest and imprison me.”
“Well then, it’s a good thing I wasn’t asking.” She added a hmph for good measure.
No lumoons bordered the long, ascending path to the palace. Only the moon cast its pale glow across the cobblestones, gilding them in silver, limning the sparse trees on either side of the approach. Just enough for visual appeal, none so much that our enemies could use them for concealment.
This, finally, was exactly as it should be.
More or less as it had been since my father the king’s ancestors had moved their seat of rule to the coast so they could overlook the StarRay Ocean, which appeared to stretch without end, all the way into the Etherlands.
While Cosette brooded, probably plotting my imminent arrest, a plan she would have abandoned had she realized who I was, the unease that skittered along and beneath my skin as if it were my very life essence mingled with something new: an excited anticipation.
Every plodding step delivered me closer to the palace, toward whatever answers awaited, and whether or not I’d find Teo where he belonged instead of in some unexplained exile.
To home.
There I’d find Alonso and Rafaela. My adoptive parents, the king and queen of Zaraga, would explain everything. If Teo wasn’t there with them, they’d point me to him. They would know with complete certainty whether or not their son was alive.
They’d also know how long I’d been gone, and why.
The palace’s battlements were already in view when Cosette broke the silence.
“I’ve been thinking…”
“Congratulations.”
She tsked, a sound akin to the clicking pincers of an insect. “How did you drink the blood of your victims when there were no puncture wounds anywhere on their bodies?”
When I didn’t answer, she said, “We’ve established that you are indeed a s?nglure.”
I pursed my lips. I shouldn’t have offered even that much. Rafaela would eat me alive if my guard wasn’t properly up before we arrived.
“And s?nglures pierce the Majora vein in their victim’s necks to drink.”
“Not always the Majora. And not usually victims either.” Worried they too might have ceased to exist, I commented as casually as I could: “Feeding dens are voluntary.”
For several beats she didn’t speak. “True.”
I released a long, quiet exhale.
“That doesn’t change that you didn’t feed from them the usual way.”
Usual and I had never tangled all that much.
“They were very obviously drained of blood,” Cosette continued. “So how’d you do it? It was definitely you.”
Clop, clop, clop, the dragort climbed steadily if slowly.
“Come on. I can be a friend to you. I can help you out. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”
Her back was no wider than any one of my fingers. Scratching wasn’t happening.
Still, “When we get to the palace, if you fetch the king or queen for me, I’ll tell you how I did it.”
Her wings fluttered in a rapid buzzing burst before quieting just as quickly. She did it when something threw her off balance, something I’d done many times already, highlighting her tell.
“The king or queen, you say?”
“I do.”
“Hm.”
“What’s that mean?” Only, I had to understand what it meant by this point, didn’t I?
“No prince. No king. No queen.”
No princess either, presumably, which posed a distinct problem for me.
“Only the emperor, to whom I—and you—owe my allegiance.”
I focused only on breathing. On surviving the next moment.
If Teo wasn’t at the palace, or if he wasn’t elsewhere in “exile,” then I wouldn’t have to worry myself about any of this much longer.
Death would welcome me with open arms, if only to ferry me himself to the Igneuslands.
We stopped alongside a gatehouse. Cosette announced herself to a guard. “Cosette Darling, Investigatory Soldier of the Blue Band, Dominion of Emperor Junot.” And the guard called for the portcullis to be raised.
As it cranked open, Cosette told me tersely: “Do not try to escape when I put you under arrest. I was supposed to do it before, but since we’re friends, I waited.”
I sighed, exhaustion, weariness, and who knew what else catching up to me so that my body felt leaden when I needed to be sharper than ever.
“You can’t arrest me. Call for the king or queen of Zaraga, and you’ll understand why.
If you cooperate, I’ll make it worth your while.
A commendation? A promotion? What do you want? ”
A blur of fuchsia, she was shaking her head. “You have no leverage here.”
“You don’t realize the situation you’re in.”
“No, murderess. You don’t.”
Lightning-fast, she struck me in the neck with something sharp.
Hissing, I slapped her away from me—but she vanished entirely with a loud pop before I could touch her.
I felt my neck and yanked out a slim needle—like a mighty warrior’s spear for the parvnit. Where had she been hiding this?
With another pop, the little bitch materialized—just beyond my reach.
“What the fuck?” I glared at her then the needle. My blood beaded at the needle’s tip. But not just my blood, something else too. A foul-smelling foreign substance.
Its very darkness rushed through my veins. And a vital part of me … shifted … into something new.
Cosette hovered in the air. “Remember I offered you my friendship first. I gave you a chance, which is more than you deserve after what you did to the victims. You didn’t give them a chance.”
Barely hearing what she said at the end, I was busy calling on my power. First in my blood, then in Cosette’s.
Nothing.
That … had never happened before. Never, ever.
The dragort plodded to a halt.
“Prisoner check-in over here,” Cosette called over in a deep voice many times her size to a couple of guards standing outside a hulking structure that didn’t belong on palace grounds.
Its walls were impenetrable stone. Worse than that, the stone appeared worn to my eye.
A new building.
Worn by time.
In the span of a single heartbeat I went from feeling much too much to feeling nothing at all.
As if I were on a mission, I shut down my emotions.
“I need a curera too. There’s something very wrong with my prisoner.”
I called to the blood pumping through the guards stalking toward me.
No response, as if they had no blood at all, when I could plainly scent it flowing beneath their skin.
They were big and burly. Strong. Wearing wompa leather armor.
I allowed them to approach. To drag me off the dragort’s back.
When they flanked me and each went to grab an arm, I spun.
Drew a dagger from one’s sheath. Spun again. Sliced the throat of the other.
Sensed Empty Sheath leaping behind me. Shiiiing, drawing his own dagger.
When he sliced it in an arc, I dodged. Stepped toward his now unprotected throat—
Another dart punctured my neck.
Pulling it out, I turned. The blur of Cosette flying away was all I managed to make out before I slumped to the ground.
I blinked a few times, but only postponed the descending darkness.
I no longer had Teo.
I no longer had my power.
Death, may I never wake up.