My power was inaccessible.So close, and yet tragically beyond my reach.
It hadn’t been Alobaz, however, who’d stalked angrily through the door to my cell.It had been Ramone—or, Moncho, as his friends called him—and okay, yes, I had been disappointed to see his scowling face instead of pretty Alobaz’s with those unfathomably deep, ocean eyes.But that was only because Alobaz—Baz—seemed to hate me less than the rest of the Bazrian Seven, even when he had reason to hate me more.
During our frenzied screwing, I’d definitely noticed too little.Paid attention to far fewer details than I should have—mea culpa, but damn, if I hadn’t been better occupied.Even so, I had noticed the raised, dark scar that marred Baz’s otherwise perfect skin, right at his heart, or as near to it as I could get while still failing to kill him.
While I’d absently raked my nails along his chest and shoulders, a part of me must have remained present, for I’d taken great care with the scar, which should have healed by now but hadn’t.Why, I didn’t know.
Why I hadn’t clawed it open when I had the chance, I understood even less.My goal was still to kill him before he could take me out.That was the end game for all D’Arcos and Rubors.It came down to who dealt the killing blow first, who drained the other’s blood, absorbing their sänglure power to combine with their own, who then sliced the head off at the neck, claiming the head as a trophy, proof that one dynasty was mightier than the other.
But it had been Moncho who stomped into my prison.He flung a fresh set of clothes onto my bed and pinned a look on me that was so seething it was a tangible assault, one that crackled in the air.For the first time I could remember, a man who shouldn’t have been was resistant to my allure.
Moncho took in my bare curves, but only to cast disgust and disapproval at me.
Did he think I was proud of what I’d done?That it was some masterful manipulation?
Like I expected to jump Baz’s very sexy bones like a woman who needed sex with him for her very survival.
If ever a sequence of events had surprised me, that had done it.There was a chasm, as deep and wide as the abyss, between killing Baz—as I should have—and fucking his brains out—as I still wanted to, damn it all.
It wasn’t even Baz who made the first move.It was me.
Perhaps I should have been ashamed.But fuck if I didn’t feel like bothering.
Moncho hated me.
I hated him back.More than he hated me, surely.
I’d so far failed to complete my vendetta.Baz still walked strong and healthy and free while I was locked up, and Teo was … Teo was forever gone.
I asked Moncho for an update on Baz’s meeting with the parvnit and the goblin.His only response had been to spit on the floor and yank the heavy door closed behind him with as much force as he could muster.
Alone once more with my tumultuous thoughts, time trickled by.Kemuel’s spell originally granted me twenty-two days before the telltale scar on my face would expose my identity.If my count was correct, nine days remained before the Fuerin Star eclipse.But with Cosette at the castle, those nine days no longer mattered.That the cunt of a parvtithad tracked me down—when I was no business of hers—then made it across the abyss in one piece with her tiny, delicate wings, was remarkable.
I wanted to bludgeon her dead for it.
She’d dragged Marina along and exposed her to the most dangerous man in all the Opalese.The Bazrian Seven would never let her go if they saw her as my accomplice.
As resourceful as the goblin was, she couldn’t fly, and now she was stuck on an island so terrible no one ever visited it unless they had no choice.Cosette had endangered one of the few fae left in this world I gave a damn about, and I had no way to protect her.
When the door finally opened again, though my frantic pacing and scrambled thoughts hadn’t ceased, I was no closer to a solution.No closer to escape nor to fulfilling my purpose for being here.Certainly, I was no calmer.
This time, it was Baz.
But not the Baz from before.
Though I couldn’t help but smell myself all over his body, which meant every sänglure of the Bazrian Seven could scent me on him too—the fire that burned behind his eyes was different.
Angry.
No, scorching furious.He hadn’t been this enraged even when I stabbed him right then and there in the forest of shadows that surrounded the castle.
With expressions as incensed as his, Levin, Ramone, Night, Félix, Edwidge, and Aziza filed in after him.He didn’t turn to look at them.His eyes blazed a smoldering trail along my body.
“Out,” he said.
Levin opened his mouth as if to protest, but Moncho smacked his arm and he shut it.The six of them slung eye daggers at me over and again, but did eventually leave without a word.
With the door open, they waited in the hall, where they’d be able to hear every word.
