Chapter 33
Crusher of Dreams, Destroyer of Hope, Deliverer of Nightmares
Alobaz had lied to his prisoner.
Careful of the sneaky shadows that stretched their tendrils toward him from the walls, he traversed the castle for the dungeon.
It wasn’t the lie that bothered him. He demanded honesty of those closest to him, those he trusted with his life. It was only fair that he give them the same in return—at least whenever it was possible, when he wasn’t obligated to keep the emperor’s confidences or carry out his deceptions.
Lying to an enemy, however, was almost always necessary. And that’s what the woman was.
An enemy.
His prisoner, as he’d taken to calling her in his thoughts when he needed the reminder of who she was to him. Of all she would ever be to him.
Shortly after, he usually called himself names he would never allow another to direct his way.
He had, in fact, once killed a man for calling him a small-dicked, ball-less coward.
He probably would have dispatched the man anyway for being a soldier in the defense of former Lingdon, but where Alobaz usually killed by inflicting as little pain as possible, he dealt the insult-happy soldier a gut wound that would deliver a slow death.
It wasn’t the affront to his equipment that Alobaz took issue with, though he would have had to kill the man for saying it anyway as others had overheard.
It was a matter of principle, a reputation Alobaz had to uphold.
The more Opalesians feared him, the fewer he had to slaughter to carry out his father’s orders.
Alobaz had never lacked confidence in the cock-and-balls department. He’d lived in close quarters with other soldiers for most of his life. He was better endowed than most, and he knew how to best use the sizable gifts he’d been given.
It was the accusation of cowardice that Alobaz had a problem with.
He was a great many things, some of them good, some not so good, others the very reason for the name delivered as a curse or mentioned in hushed secrecy, its utterers casting worried glances over their shoulders, as if Alobaz would emerge from the shadows to gobble them up.
Ghalubu.
A word that endured from ancient times, when dragons were yet known only as fuerin. Ghalubu had no current equivalent, but meant something along the lines of crusher of dreams, destroyer of hope, deliverer of nightmares.
Along with the fabled Igneosaur, a monster of indeterminate features that presumably had its origins in the Igneuslands, and that parents used as a threat to keep their children in line, the mere utterance of Ghalubu was often sufficient to rattle even those old enough to have learned that monsters weren’t relegated solely to folktales.
Monsters were all too real.
And they were everywhere, often disguised.
Monstrous visages rarely concealed the worst kind of monsters.
There were those—many, actually—who idolized Junot.
Not because he demanded submission of all his subjects, which he did, but because they believed he’d brought unity and security to their lands—after he’d had Alobaz kill anyone who stood in his way, of course.
As they always did, Opalesians saw what they wanted to see, and how they wanted to see it. What they perceived as reality was often leagues apart from the truth.
After all the villages he’d razed and the Opalesians he’d terrified, lies were the absolute least of Alobaz’s sins.
Today, Mauldrene was at last allowing him to cut a straight path—as straight as was possible in the winding, sprawling, labyrinthine castle. After days of analyzing his every move, his friends, too, had finally backed off.
Visiting her alone for the first time, his paces shortened as he descended the stairs to the lowest level. Only a few turns now separated him from her.
Even after days since her assassination attempt, and a visit to her each day, he still didn’t know what to make of her.
When he’d told her he didn’t recognize her, he’d lied.
Oh, he didn’t know who she was, that much was very true.
The question of her identity kept him up last night—and the night before, and the night before that as well.
But despite the mystery of her origins, there was something undeniably familiar about her.
Inexplicably, he felt as if he’d known her forever, since even before his rebirth, when he’d been a man capable of redemption, deserving of it maybe, before he’d become this version of himself he wouldn’t have recognized—when he’d been content to lead a simple life with Arabella and Carina at his side.
All he’d needed then was his little family.
Now, that was the one thing he could never have again.
Beyond reason, Alobaz had recognized his prisoner the very moment he first laid eyes on her, when she’d been looking at him from that alley.
He’d known her then while also not knowing her at all, while excitement thrummed through his body at the prospect of meeting her.
Of more than that, really, much more than that.
When she’d been by logical accounts a total stranger crossing the street, he’d longed to trail his fingers and his lips along her skin, to hold her against him and never let go.
“You’re a right dumb fuck,” he muttered to himself under his breath while rounding the last corner.
Under a swath of lumoonlight, Moncho stood guard outside her door. When he saw Alobaz, he pushed off the wall he’d been leaning against and approached.
“Who’s the dumb fuck?”
“Lev,” Alobaz said. His friends were already fretting over him too much without becoming aware that he was practically mooning over the very woman who’d done her damnedest to stab him through the heart.
“Ah. No need to say more.”
Alobaz forced a smile. “There never is with that one.”
“I keep thinking he’ll run out of dragonshit to spew. But then it never happens. The shit he says just keeps getting crazier.”
Alobaz palmed Moncho across his broad back. “I think we’re better off accepting that Lev’ll never change.”
Moncho shrugged. “Lev will be Lev, huh?”
“Yep.”
“You here to see the s?ngmortarán?”
Alobaz was on his way to frowning but caught himself. His friends insisted on calling his prisoner by the name of the most venomous spider in all the Opalese—when they weren’t calling her a cunt or another name like it.
“I am.”
“I’ll come in with you, then. I haven’t checked on her since this morning.”
“No, not today. I want to go in alone, change things up. See if I get different answers. Or any useful answers, for that matter.”
Moncho looked back at him with slightly arched brows.
“I’m your general, you know,” Alobaz said. “Not that any of you act like it. You guys need to stop giving me all the looks.”
“What looks?”
“You’re giving me one right now and you damn well know it. Like I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. Like I’m some soft, fluffy bunny who’s gonna go in, lie down, and offer up my belly to her.”
Moncho snorted. “Now that’s an image. She wouldn’t be able to focus on your ‘belly’ with that beast you got hanging between your legs. That woman looks like she knows exactly what to do with a dick like yours.”
Alobaz rolled his eyes.
Moncho tipped his head. “Just ’cause she wants you dead doesn’t make her blind, you know. I’m man enough to admit you’re a right pretty fucker.”
“Pretty,” Alobaz scoffed. “Well, you can rest easy knowing I’m not going to be showing her my dick.” Contrary to his assertion, Alobaz’s dick stirred at the notion. “Today or any day.”
When Alobaz found himself hoping that too was a lie, he gritted his teeth. If he thought he could shake out these idiotic thoughts about her, he’d saw open his own damn skull, upend himself, and rattle every last one out.
“You sure about that?” Moncho asked.
“Of course I am,” Alobaz snapped. “Who the fuck do you take me for?”
A moronic fool who was secretly getting turned on by the very woman who gave her all to hacking his heart out of his chest?
No, certainly not him. Surely the legendary General Alobaz Hawxley damn well knew better.
“Hm,” Moncho said.
“You guys better watch yourselves or I’m gonna start taking offense. You’ve never doubted me like this before.”
“You’ve never looked at a woman like you do her before.”
“That’s nonsense, and you fucking know it.” The lies were coming so easily today.
“I hope it is,” Moncho said.
“Well, it is. You fuck off with all this suspecting everything I do, and pass the word on. Next one who calls me out or gives me one of those looks like you’ve all been doing recently, I’m gonna take it personally.”
Moncho frowned, sighed. “We’re just worried about you, is all. After Shen … you know…”
“I learned my lesson from Shen. I won’t make that mistake ever again, I promise you that. I know exactly where my loyalty belongs, and who deserves my trust.” He jabbed a finger toward the sealed door. “And she is not one of them. She’ll never be one of them.
“No woman will ever dupe me again. After Cal…” Alobaz shook his head. “Well, I’d never dishonor Cal by not learning from my mistake. I owe him so much more, but at the very least I owe him that.”
“I fucking miss him.”
“Me too. Every day.”
Calen had loved to dish shit, but he’d also been good about taking it. His laugh was deep and booming, one of the best Alobaz had ever heard. He’d been a great fighter and a better friend.
“Man, he and Lev wouldn’t shut up about Mauldrene if they were able to go at it together,” Moncho said.
“By the Ethers, we’d never get a break from it. They wouldn’t stop, and then Mauldrene would retaliate. It would get ugly, fast.”
Maybe more so than Lev, Cal hadn’t been one to watch his mouth, regardless of the consequences.
“It’d be scaly, no doubt.” But Moncho was smiling. He shook out his shoulders. “Really glad to hear you sounding like your usual self, Baz. I feel better already.”
Alobaz harrumphed.
“Alright,” Moncho said. “Need me to stick around while you’re in there? Or can I go grab a snack? Lydia tastes really good, and she’s nice too.”
“Go have fun with Lydia. Take a couple of hours.”
“You sure? You don’t mind?”
“I don’t. It’ll give me time for the prisoner to warm up to me.”
Moncho snorted again. “I think it’d take more time than you and I both have combined in our entire long lives for that cold bitch to thaw to you.”
“Probably.”
Moncho walked a few paces, then turned to look at him. “You sure you’re cool?”
Alobaz raised his brows. “Really, Moncho?”
“Okay, okay, never mind. Forget I said anything. Pretend I just said … may the Fuerin light your path.”
There was a time, before Junot rose to power, when Moncho would have wished Fortune light his path instead.
But one of the first actions Junot had taken was to banish the demigods and forbid all mention of them.
Baz, like Moncho, had done his best to excise all the sayings based around the demigods.
Even now, they almost slipped out on occasion.
Moncho strode down the hall, turned the corner, and vanished.
Alobaz sighed, rubbed both hands along his face. His friends knew him almost as well as he knew himself. They weren’t concerned for no reason.
It didn’t matter. Baz was only going to ask his prisoner the same questions he did every day: Who are you? Who is your brother? Why do you want to kill me?
It wasn’t likely his prisoner would offer any useful answers. Creative insults, however, those he was practically guaranteed. No one had ever suggested he rearrange the positioning of his ass and his head in so many astonishing ways.
He steadied himself for the sight and scent of her, and unlocked the door with a press of his palm to the spot above the lock—inscribed with bespelled sigils attuned to him, his friends, the emperor and his wife only.
On the day after she tried to murder him, Alobaz unbound her from the table and chained her by the ankle to a bed he had brought in instead. The bed was comfortable enough, and the ankle shackle and chain were imbued with shadole faithum. She wasn’t going anywhere.
Even if she were more powerful than Baz suspected, no one could slip a dampening collar. And without her power, even as a s?nglure, she wasn’t slipping this cell. There was no way.
Baz entered the dark room. Even with his s?nglure eyes, he couldn’t discern any outlines, any suggestion of where she was. But he could feel her. He could smell her. She was on the bed in a corner, where he expected her to be. But … was she panting? Why was she panting?
He urged a lumoon to spring to life in each of his palms.
His eyes immediately found her.
Hers zeroed in on him while she blinked against the sudden light, soft as it was.
Looking out from the darkness around her, her eyes seemed impossibly bright.
A toasted-golden sun. They were shot wide.
Her hair was free of its plaits, loose in waves as wild as she was.
The points of her fangs dragged along her plump bottom lip, slowly, drawing his gaze.
Then again. Sharp, white tips scraping against soft, cherry skin, her breaths still coming in rough pants.
She looked and smelled like hunger. A woman as beautiful and provocative as this one had probably never suffered hunger a day in her life.
She also smelled like … his eyes jumped to where she sat at the edge of the bed, just as her thighs spread wide for him.
Though her long skirt covered most of her legs, he could scent her. Her arousal smelled like … like coming home.
The thought arrived before he could stop it. It was stupid enough to shake him from the influence she too easily wielded over him. He steeled himself against her. Pretended not to smell her wetness in the air. It was a flower’s nectar.
And he wanted to feast.
He growled at his rogue thoughts. At himself.
“Are you finally ready to feed?”
His eyes followed the movement of her throat as she swallowed. Her neck was a long, smooth, soft column of tanned skin, perfect for him to sink his fangs into.
His dick stirred again. Careful not to reveal that he was doing it because he needed to carve out distance between them, he took half a casual step back.
“Feed from you, you mean?” she said.
Her voice was raspy with need. No, it was husky, for fuck’s sake.
His eyes bored into hers. “Yes.” He willed her to say the same.
When she only licked her lips, he asked, “Well? Do you want to keep going hungry, or do you want to give in to the inevitable?” Fuck, what all did he mean by that? He refused to examine it. “It’s only a matter of time till you cave.”
She swallowed again. Licked her lips another time, a fang catching on her tongue.
“I don’t cave,” she said.
“Neither do I.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“I guess we’ll see about all of it.”
When she glowered at him, he glared right back. When her nostrils flared, so did his.
And when her arousal further scented the cold air, he feared his did too.