Chapter 22
Here Is My Prey
The coastal village of Galmeen had certainly taken note of its infamous visitor.
Marina and I quickly discovered we could ask openly about Alobaz Hawxley.
He was the foremost topic of town gossip.
This afternoon, with fifteen days remaining on my countdown, the second subject was the sudden disappearance of a husband and wife, both locals.
They were the proprietors of a one-stop establishment called Slake that catered to satisfying a s?nglure’s most salient needs. It was tavern, inn, brothel, and feeding den.
Busybodies were concerned about who would keep the place running, especially now that Alobaz Hawxley had taken away all but two of Slake’s whores. Others were hopeful Slake would shut down, leaving one less den of depravity to corrupt its citizens.
I watched Slake from an alleyway. It was the last place Alobaz was spotted before he headed back to his pilfered castle. Slake’s door was locked, its windows shuttered. The exterior was a series of wood planks that I barely noticed as I pursed my lips.
“That’s your thinking face,” Marina said from behind me.
We’d agreed to keep our distance from each other. It was unlikely that anyone would notice a whore and a goblin, but my appearance drew attention wherever I went. Better to not unnecessarily associate Marina with me. An abundance of caution had saved my ass more than once.
Even so, I wasn’t surprised Marina was breaking our agreement. I didn’t want her far away either. Her presence soothed the hole in my heart that had belonged to Teo. With her at my side, I could pretend—at least for a while—that I wasn’t broken.
“He’ll still want you,” Marina said, her voice pitched low so the occasional passersby on the street wouldn’t hear. “It wouldn’t matter if he had a thousand tarts panting after him. You’re not like anyone else, Sora. Not even when you’re dressed up like a common whore.”
I sighed.
“You’re not convinced?”
“I don’t know his particular tastes. Men can be strange, want odd things, kinks. All Rafaela really said was that he likes pretty women. A lot. And his needs are already being met.”
As much as Rafaela had harped on the magnitude of Alobaz Hawxley’s legendary sexual appetite, I’d never imagined he’d surround himself with a scorching harem.
A harem. What an egotistical asshole. No one woman—or two or three—could satisfy the likes of him. The prick needed dozens, apparently.
Marina’s hand settled on mine. “I’ve never met a more striking woman.”
I wrapped my fingers around hers, knowing I’d make myself let go soon.
“Once he sees you, he won’t be able to take his eyes off you. I’m more worried he’ll become obsessed. Remember Landry?”
I shuddered. “How could I forget?” He’d stalked me—every time I left the palace, or via a spyglass when I was on palace grounds—for an entire year, before vanishing without explanation.
I glanced down at her. “Did you kill him?”
She shook her head, the sunlight glinting across her hair, its greens as rich as a forest’s. “Maybe Rafaela? Or Teo?”
I faced forward again, eyes on Slake, though now that Alobaz had twenty-fucking-five prostitutes with him—according to a chatty human outside the general store—there was no reason for him to return, much less to a place now closed.
But I had no better place to surveil. I wouldn’t attempt to approach the Abysmal Fortress until nighttime, when I would be able to conceal myself in the darkness.
“It wasn’t Teo,” I said. “He would’ve told me.”
“Rafaela, then. Maybe Alonso. Though Rafaela’s the one who took out Emeríl.”
I frowned. “I forgot about him.”
“Really? You never forget anything or anyone.”
Which meant I’d never, ever recover from losing Teo. It wouldn’t matter how long I lived, I would always be missing my other half.
“I’ve made a point of forgetting Emeríl,” I said. I would have done the same with Teo, but blocking him and all we shared would dishonor his memory. And I would never dishonor my brother.
“Well, good thing, then. Get back to forgetting him. Emeríl was nasty,” Marina said.
I’d refused his persistent advances. Also a s?nglure, he drugged my feeder with olvidian, heavily dulling my senses, then he’d tried to rape me. He drugged Teo’s feeder as well, so Teo wouldn’t be capable of intervening.
Like an apparition of my unwilling intoxication, Rafaela had appeared from nowhere with a sword in her hand. When my senses returned, she was gone, and Emeríl was spread across the room in so many pieces that the goblins needed shovels to clean up his remains.
When his count father came asking about him, Alonso had handed over a box dripping blood, filled with some of Emeríl’s pieces. I’d never seen Alonso look so murderous. The count must have agreed; he never showed his face at the palace again.
I watched men, women, children, and creatures amble up and down the dirt road in front of Slake.
For a humble village, the streets were uncommonly clean.
Its residents walked with purpose, though they would stop to exchange pleasantries—or the latest on Alobaz.
Most were fae. Very few were human, their scents woodier, earthier than their fae counterparts.
“I only need to capture his full attention for a short while,” I said, both to Marina and to encourage myself. By all accounts, Alobaz was a fierce, skilled warrior. By some, he was unbeatable—fast, astute, and inescapably lethal.
But, as men always did when ignorant of my reputation, Alobaz would underestimate me. It had been nearly three weeks since I emerged from my underwater tomb, enough to heal and strengthen my body, to refresh my skills with my blades, and for my dampened fae power to renew.
For everyone else, I’d been gone centuries. For me, no great time had passed.
I was sharp enough to take down a man ruled by his dick.
He was commander of all the emperor’s armed forces, sure. But he was also at the castle on furlough, focused, quite obviously, on indulging his pleasure.
He wouldn’t expect a threat. He especially wouldn’t expect me.
And the six soldiers rumored to accompany him everywhere, all of them together referred to by the absurd moniker the Bazrian Seven? They’d have no reason to anticipate me either.
I was a viper about to slither into their sandbox.
“Want to say a prayer to the demigods?” Marina asked. “You never know, they might help.”
Surprise had me whipping my head in her direction. “I thought they were gone.”
She snorted. “Gone where, exactly?”
“I don’t know. Alonso said no one prays to them anymore. That they don’t answer.”
“Maybe the demigods are punishing them for lack of faith.”
“Even my books say they’re gone.”
Both The History and Conquest of the Domdurron Empire and The Opalese World in the Modern Era were explicit about the “banishment of the bloodthirsty demigods” in the former, and the “expulsion of antiquated, perilous superstitions” in the latter.
“I haven’t seen a single shrine since I’ve been back,” I said.
“That’s because they’re forbidden, by order of the emperor.”
She rolled blandly over the word. Meanwhile, I had yet to be able to say emperor without fury pinching my face and body.
“So? Want to?” she said. “As you know, they don’t often do what we ask. But it only takes the once.”
After we were reunited, Marina had updated me on what transpired for her in the three-plus centuries we were apart. Though my story was a great deal shorter, so had I. However, I did leave out how I had sensed what felt like several of the demigods—especially callous Heartbreak—since my return.
“Sure, let’s try,” I finally said, a bit warily. At least Marina would be doing the incantation instead of me.
For as long as I’d known her, Marina had worn frocks with a single apron-style pocket in the front. When she stuffed her hands into both sides of it, her fingers touched in the middle, yet in feats of goblin magic, she was able to pull all manner of tools from that pocket.
Today—after linking our arms so her ability to cloak herself in her surroundings would encompass me to a mild but still helpful degree—she emerged with a shrine, exactly like the shrines that used to dot practically every corner of Zaraga’s streets—only many times smaller.
It was a box with an arch for an opening, this one constructed of light wompa wood.
Within the box were six votive candles—one for each cardinal direction, plus up for the Etherlands and down for the Igneuslands—a small bowl of ocean water, two additional bowls of unsalted water, within which floated a glittering black lotus—a rare flower—and within the second, the pale-violet flower of the olandry plant, from which olvidian was extracted.
Both were highly sought-after for their consciousness-altering effects.
Lastly, tucked within a slot along the shrine’s roofline, was a clear vial.
From behind the thin glass shone a light so bright and pure it reminded me of the Fuerin Star.
“What is that?” I said, hearing the awe in my voice.
“That is a secret.”
“Understood. It’s … beautiful.”
“It is.”
“You didn’t have that B.A.”
“A lot changed while you were gone. Little of it good.”
“Cricket is good.”
A dreamy smile blossomed across her face, exposing her crooked front teeth.
I laughed. “I guess Cricket is very, very good.”
Her cheeks flushed a bright green, and I laughed more, waggling my brows.
“I want to hear all about Cricket,” I said.
“No.” But Marina still smiled.
“He’s not a secret. So I can ask you about him all I want.”
“Fine. But when you next have a lover”—she lowered her voice even more—“one you don’t plan on killing, you’ll owe me all the details.”
My mirth dropped, heavy like an anvil. “There’ll be no more lovers for me. Not now. Not anymore.”
She’d been fiddling with the candles, lighting them one by one with a brief burst of flame from a fingertip. Now she stilled.
“What, no more sex? You?”