32. My Mortal Enemy, My Sworn Adversary, A Villain in My Personal Saga
My Mortal Enemy, My Sworn Adversary, A Villain in My Personal Saga
From somewhere still far away in the indecipherable darkness—finally—a door swung open. By the sluggish scraping along the floor, the door was heavily fortified—meant to keep prisoners from escaping.
Aside from the vendettas I’d sworn to avenge my brother and then myself, long before then I’d vowed to never again allow myself to be imprisoned.
Teo neither. I’d grown too powerful for Rafaela to cage me ever again.
I’d never said it, but she had to know. If she tried to stuff me or Teo in those cages another time, it was she who would end locked up and miserable; I would be as deaf to her pleas for release as she’d always been to mine and Teo’s.
I would rather be dead than imprisoned.
Yet, not long afterward, I’d been shoved into my sarcophagus and dumped into the sea—for so incredibly long.
Then, I’d become Cosette’s prisoner, when I could have squashed the irksome parvnit in the palm of my hand without bothering with my powers.
Now, I found myself a prisoner again. How could that be?
How could I have failed so horribly? How could I have still ended up here when I started in the fighting pits?
I’d been a prisoner then too, of course, but at least then I’d been allowed to fight.
Made to fight.
And I’d fought my way out of there, believing myself free at last.
What a na?ve fool I’d been. The world was as much a cruel, unforgiving place now as it had been then.
Many sets of footsteps—five, maybe six?—were making their way to me.
Another door opened with a scrape of hinges, this one closer.
Anything but cool, calm, calculated control would be used as a weakness against me.
Now that I was clearly going to live, I was going to stay that way until I made sure Alobaz wouldn’t survive.
The temptation I’d suffered while lying on the forest floor believing I was dying, that I could join Teo and leave behind all this pain, was gone. It had to be.
Breaking a vow to myself—praying for Death to take me already—was shameful enough. Not to honor Teo’s memory by completing my vendetta against him? Unthinkable.
After Alobaz sliced me practically in half, I’d tried to review my actions.
Had I managed to stab Alobaz through his cold, wicked heart?
Would that be enough to incapacitate him, at least for several years?
A knife through the heart wouldn’t permanently kill a s?nglure as strong as he was, but it would incapacitate him for a long time—decades probably.
During those years he would be weak, vulnerable, exposed.
His Bazrian acolytes wouldn’t be able to protect him from me forever.
Eventually, they’d let their guard down.
As the years passed, they wouldn’t guess I was only biding my time, seeking my perfect chance—when I wouldn’t fail.
I’d drink every drop of his blood and slice off his head.
After, maybe I’d deliver it to Alonso as a gift—and to Rafaela as a constant reminder of the threat I now posed to her, veiled as the same.
The footfalls padded on the other side of the wall now. Though it would be useless, I thrashed against my bindings. None budged.
Death, you can take me after I end him. Just let me last that long. That’s all I ask. Let me do right by my brother. If only the demigods weren’t such total shits at answering prayers, doing what they wanted, how they wanted, whenever they wanted. Please, I added.
And to whoever answered my prayer earlier…
How much time had passed since I’d shared the alleyway across from Slake with Marina?
Well, you probably know what I’m talking about, since you’re demigods and all.
I would have called out Love specifically, but Marina was wrong.
There was no way Love had been the one to register my prayer—hmm, unless it was to relay the information to her sister, Hate.
That might make sense. Allow me to fulfill my promise to my brother.
Even if I can’t complete my personal vendetta, just let me do his.
A final door opened, and with it arrived a breeze of air that wasn’t fresh, but it was fresher than the stale air I’d been mired in. I shivered as the new air whisked along the bare skin of my arms, chest, and shoulders. Along the skin of my waist, so tender and sore.
Please don’t let it be Alobaz. Please don’t let it be him. Let him be a useless puddle of flesh, out of commission for long enough for me to find my way out of here and finish the job.
Fuck me…
When the first person entered the room, I knew just from the way his feet touched the floor that it was him.
I shouldn’t know that about him, and yet I did.
For a man so brutally strong, toweringly tall, and deliciously muscled, he should have clomped around, graceless.
That he walked like a fucking elf suggested he was even more dangerous than Rafaela had warned.
His scent enveloped me. Even as the Bazrian Seven filed into the darkness with me, I could pick him out from among all the rest.
He smelled like too many things at once to name, the combination strangely familiar, as if we’d known each other for ages when I’d never met him before.
I would never forget anything about an enemy—and Alobaz had been my enemy long before he murdered my brother. Before he conquered my kingdom, my home, and my subjects.
Alobaz had become my enemy when I’d been trapped under the ocean, leagues away from him. The very moment he’d been rebirthed into the Rubor Dynasty, he’d become my mortal enemy. My sworn adversary. A villain in my personal saga.
The D’Arcos and Rubors had hated each other for thousands of years. Since the royal families had first alighted on their respective shores, when the Rubors had immediately envied what the D’Arcos had already claimed and tried to take it by force.
Rafaela had dispatched me to kill Rubors—whenever it was possible to pick them off without obvious culpability—and those who supported them more than any other group.
If Alobaz hadn’t killed Teo, I still would have found myself hunting him eventually—after careful planning and surveillance, after my edge had receded enough to quell my temper.
When I wouldn’t have made the mistakes I made this time—rushing to claim my chance, risking everything without a backup plan…
Alobaz stopped beside the table that bore me. My body, which had scarcely stopped trembling since I first approached the abyss, settled into the occasional quake, my teeth finally ceasing their endless chattering.
My entire body responded to him. My skin pricked in sudden awareness, flushing with a welcome heat.
A lumoon surged to life in the palm of his hand, illuminating his face and those of the six soldiers at his back. The soldiers wore hard eyes, projecting accusation.
Alobaz, however, merely gazed down at me, his face a practiced mask I couldn’t penetrate. He’d asked his companions to save me. That, I remembered before the memories became hazy, dreamlike.
He wanted me spared so he could later enjoy my punishment. I had, after all, tried—and failed—to kill the commanding general of Junot’s far-reaching empire.
According to my books, Rafaela, and Marina, Alobaz was merciless. I had no doubt he intended to torture me. The slices across my waist that had done their best to split me in two were just the beginning.
The Bazrian Bitches stood like a wall behind him, filling the air with a combustible tension. Their muscles were clenched.
Alobaz only continued to gaze down at me, his eyes raking my body over and over, slowing to study my face and the wounds he’d inflicted. Without being able to look down, I guessed the cuts along my abdomen were long, pink, angry welts, a full day away from healing to completion.
“I guess I’ll have to do a better job of killing you next time,” I said, urging my hatred to dance across my face.
His eyes narrowed on me. His irises flashed, like the sun beaming the ocean swells they so reminded me of, then clouded over, a roiling storm threatening to thrash the sea.
Good. That was much better than the faraway look from earlier that I couldn’t interpret. Anger and loathing, those I knew exactly what to do with.
Aziza slid to Alobaz’s right and lunged for me, clutching a pair of curved blades the length of her hands.
Mordaris. Blades rumored not to be of this world but to have been born in the Igneuslands, forged in its ever-burning fires, fueled by the long-suffering torment of its residents.
Weapons not easily wielded. Deadly when used to their full capacity.
Rumored to claim a piece of a person’s essence when they bonded with their owner.
One of the leaner males—Levin or Félix—caught her around the waist, careful not to get in the path of the mordaris. She growled like a jagune, as if she were as large as the fearsome jungle cat, and sliced at the open air in front of them over and over again.
“Whoa,” the male said. In the glow of the lumoon, his hair was a shoulder-length dark, rich blue. When it slid, it revealed ears that pointed into crests—but not as sharply as for the elves. This was Levin, then.
“Easy there, Zi,” he said. “We don’t wanna kill her fast. We wanna take our time. Make her pay for what she did to Baz.”
Baz.
I detested the nickname. It was too familiar, too friendly, for a mass murderer who’d ravaged all of the Opalese.
Aziza growled again, then screamed as she murdered the air instead of me.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, babe,” Levin said with a grunt as Aziza attacked her invisible opponent with full force and he fought to hold on to her. “Keep some of that for later, when you can really rip into the cunt.”
Levin pointed a mean smile at me, showing the tipped points of his fangs. “Enjoy the show. It’ll help you envision just a tiny taste of what’ll be coming for you later.”
“No,” Alobaz said.