31. Gotta Roll with that Big Dick Show of Force
Gotta Roll with that Big Dick Show of Force
Since Alobaz announced he was going to see her—she who needed no descriptors since she seemed to be all anybody wanted to talk about—he had far too many busybodies on his tail.
Only Crute, with those concerned eyes of his, had obeyed when he’d asked all of them to remain behind.
Ed, Zi, Lev, Moncho, Félix, Night, and Skeet hadn’t bothered to listen.
The seven of them followed as he wound his way through the castle to the dungeons below.
Traversing the castle was no straightforward task when Mauldrene wasn’t considerate enough to keep passageways and stairways where they belonged.
Alobaz had already been winding through hallways for a quarter of an hour.
He couldn’t even tell if he’d made significant progress.
When shadows crept and flickered along walls, floors, and ceilings, one room resembled the next.
“We should just give up,” Lev said from behind him as Alobaz stepped onto a stair, only to have the entire stairway swing far to the right with an ominous creak. “Obviously Mauldrene doesn’t want us to go see her yet.”
Whirling around so fast that the still-healing wound in his chest tugged painfully, Alobaz hid his wince behind a scowl. “We don’t have to go anywhere. As I’ve made very plain, I’d prefer to go alone.”
“Like dragonfire we’re gonna let you go see that traitorous wench alone,” Lev said.
Alobaz’s scowl deepened. “I wasn’t asking.”
Lev crossed his arms in front of his chest, his face arranged in stubborn lines.
The rest of them, save Skeet, adopted a similarly determined pose.
Skeet’s eyes skittered to and fro across the castle’s constantly roving shadows.
It was what happened whenever any of the soldiers who slept in the staff quarters had to spend time inside these walls.
Alobaz narrowed his eyes at his friends. “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m the commander here. You’re supposed to do what I order.”
Zi hiked a single dark brow an impressively high amount. “Are you ordering us, then?”
Alobaz stared hard at the six of them for long seconds. Not one of them flinched or appeared repentant for being such stubborn, annoying sonsofbitches.
Eventually, Alobaz sighed and stalked after the staircase, forcing his steps not to stomp. Already, his friends thought he was being unreasonable when it came to the enchantress. He wouldn’t provide kindling for their fire.
“So, not an order,” Zi said as she—and the rest of them, for fuck’s sake—followed.
“Don’t tempt me,” Alobaz muttered.
He latched on to the handrail, and when the stairway began to move on him, he held on, grinning.
All he needed was a minute on his own and he’d lose the others.
In the castle, it could take ages for them to find him.
They wouldn’t have tagged along in the first place if he had realized how they’d react.
He should have kept quiet, gone to see her on his own.
The stairway swung wide before Zi, in the lead, could grab on to it. It arced. A wall shrank backward to get out of its way. Annnnnd the stairwell completed a full circle, returning to its starting point.
Now his friends were the ones grinning as they easily stepped onto the first tread, which swirled with shadows.
“Thatta girl,” Lev said.
What a mean cunt, Alobaz thought.
Annoyed at their triumphant smiles, Alobaz stomped up the stairs.
“Never mind,” Lev said. “I guess Mauldrene does want us to go see her.”
“We’ve got no idea where she’s leading us,” Moncho said.
“Fair.” Lev sounded way too chipper.
Alobaz grunted. “Doesn’t matter what Mauldrene wants. Doesn’t matter what any of you want. I’m going to see her. Alone. You’re wasting your time following me around. You’re not going in with me.”
He took a left off the landing, having no idea if it would lead him where he wanted to go. None of this looked familiar. Or rather, the problem was that it all looked familiar. Too much of the same.
There was no escaping Mauldrene’s shadows, was there? Not until Junot let him go.
“Bad idea,” said Night.
“That’s right,” Lev said. “It’s a really bad idea.”
Alobaz spun on them. Zi and Lev piled into him. Moncho and Ed ran into them.
Alobaz threw his hands in the air. Even that tugged on his wound. “By the scorching Ethers! You will back off and you will respect my wishes. Now, that’s an order.” He used his command voice, the one every soldier in his father’s armies obeyed immediately—save the Bazrian pains-in-his-ass.
Only Skeet blinked owlishly at him, glancing skittishly at the shadows engulfing them.
“Uh … are you sure you don’t want me there to incapacitate her?”
“No. I don’t need you.” Alobaz had already said this. His friends had convinced him otherwise.
Skeet only nodded, turned on his heel, and retreated in the opposite direction. Where it would deliver him, Alobaz had no idea, and made a mental note to dispatch someone later to confirm he’d arrived safely at his quarters.
Night carved a path through the others to reach Alobaz.
“We protect. Each other.” He placed a big hand on his shoulder. That, too, hurt. “You.”
When the armies under his command were witness, Alobaz didn’t allow himself to show favor to his friends, though there was no preventing rumors of the tightly bonded Bazrian Seven. Skeet was different. He’d seen Alobaz at his most vulnerable, and the man was better than most at keeping confidences.
But now that even Skeet was gone, Alobaz relaxed, and didn’t shrug off Night’s touch.
“I know, bud, I know. But you guys’ve gotta stop treating me any differently than normal. Nothing’s changed.”
For several beats, none of them answered. Their disbelieving expressions were saying plenty though.
“You were in the middle of dying,” Ed said. “And you were more worried about saving her than yourself.”
“That’s not true,” Alobaz said. “I didn’t want to die.”
A remarkable feat, really, that it was true. After how he failed Arabella, and worse, Carina, it had taken most of a century for Alobaz to even consider living for himself again.
“Not wanting to die and getting in the way of those trying to save you aren’t the same thing.”
Alobaz tsked. “I wasn’t going to die, you all know that. That’s not how it works for us.”
“Sure. But what would we have done without you if you’d gone so far that it’d take you years, shit, maybe even a decade, to recover enough to fight with us again?”
“Coulda been more,” Lev added. “Coulda been lots more. You were almost past the point of sucky return for real, bro.”
Alobaz frowned at him. Why did he keep Lev around again? In that moment, he was struggling to remember.
“You almost left us at Junot’s mercy,” Ed said. “And even knowing what was going to happen to us if you were out of commission for years, you put her first.”
“Aw, it wasn’t like that, Ed,” Alobaz said. “As you all keep insisting on pointing out, I was dying. Or as close to dying as we get, anyway.”
“Figure of speech,” Lev said. “You’re trying to split Ether.”
Alobaz glared at Lev but continued on: “I wasn’t thinking things through. Death throes aren’t exactly the ideal time for it.”
And that had to be what happened to him. Just because s?nglures didn’t easily die for good didn’t mean that every other time they almost died didn’t feel just the same and just as awful as their first mortal deaths. Almost dying still felt like dying.
That was why Alobaz had put her first. Why he’d cared so much about saving someone whom he should have been condemning to her own death.
And what about now, huh? He should be ordering her execution, not searching her out to … what? Confront her? Accuse her? Get answers?
He wasn’t going to see her because he felt a pressing need to lay eyes on her. To make sure that she—after attempting to assassinate him—was safe. That couldn’t be the reason.
It simply couldn’t be. He wouldn’t allow it. That would be … absurd.
It would be weak.
“What are we going to do once we get to her?” Félix asked.
Alobaz growled. He would not be weak. He would not allow himself to be used, manipulated, or betrayed again. Never again.
“I’m going to interrogate her. Find out who she is and why the fuck she tried to kill me.”
“Right on,” Night said.
“And after that?” Félix asked.
“That depends on who she is and why she tried to kill me,” Alobaz said. As soon as the answer was free of his lips, he knew it was the wrong one.
“She’ll be punished for what she did,” Alobaz amended.
“The punishment for a s?nglure who committed the offense of an assassination attempt on a royal of the empire is permanent death, draining of all their body’s blood and chopping off their head.
Along with, of course, the usual punishment: public disembowelment, total dismemberment, then slow roasting of all the individual parts over the punisher’s spit. ”
“Yes, Lev, I know. Thanks for quoting my own father’s laws to me, though,” Alobaz said.
“Not a problem.” Lev was still too damn fucking chipper! “So you’ll do it? After fighting to save her, you’ll see her put to death?”
“Of course,” Alobaz said even though it made his insides roil.
“Glad to see you back to your usual self, General,” Zi said. “You had us scared for a bit there. No good ever comes from showing weakness or mercy.”
“Truth,” Lev said. “Gotta roll with that big dick show of force.”
“Sage advice as always, Lev,” Alobaz said.
He beamed.
“I was being sarcastic.”
He smiled wider. “Oh, I know.”
Alobaz sighed. “You fuckers are gonna be the end of me.”
Moncho palmed him on the back hard enough to send stars shooting through his vision.
He cringed. “Aw, shit, Baz, sorry! I forgot about your stab wound.”
“How the fuck could you, Monch?” Lev said. “That’s the whole point of all this.”
“Not used to seeing the big guy anything less than indestructible.”
“And that’s how I’ll remain,” Baz said.
“That’s real good. We need you, General.”
“Yeah, we do,” Ed said.
“Now,” Baz said, tipping his gaze up at the arched ceiling of this particular hall. He didn’t think he’d ever been in it before. “Mauldrene, when are you going to stop giving us the tour? I need to get to the dungeons already. I have a prisoner to see to.”
Baz worked to keep his thoughts from streaming across his face. Unbidden, images of what kind of seeing to he might like to do to—and under, and on top of—his prisoner, assaulted him.
He’d sliced through that strip of flesh that had so enticed his imagination, nearly cleaving her in two.
Mauldrene, for once, deigned to be helpful. The stairway to their immediate left shifted thirty degrees, its rises and treads flattening out into a slide.
“Don’t trust that,” Night said from behind Baz, where he peered suspiciously at the slide over Baz’s shoulder.
“Fuck no we don’t,” Lev said.
“Then stay behind,” Alobaz said, before gripping his sheathed shortsword—the same one he’d used to cut into her—to his waist and jumping onto the slide with abandon.
He didn’t care how he got there, so long as Mauldrene was taking him to her.