“The king or queen, you say?”
“I do.”
“Hm.”
“What’s that mean?”Only, I had to understand what it meant by this point, didn’t I?
“No prince.No king.No queen.”
Noprincesseither, presumably, which posed a distinct problem for me.
“Only the emperor, to whom I—and you—owe my allegiance.”
I focused only on breathing.On surviving the next moment.
If Teo wasn’t at the palace, or if he wasn’t elsewhere in “exile,” then I wouldn’t have to worry myself about any of this much longer.
Death would welcome me with open arms, if only to ferry me himself to the Igneuslands.
We stopped alongside a gatehouse.Cosette announced herself to a guard.“Cosette Darling, Investigatory Soldier of the Blue Band, Dominion of Emperor Junot.”And the guard called for the portcullis to be raised.
As it cranked open, Cosette told me tersely: “Donottry to escape when I put you under arrest.I was supposed to do it before, but since we’re friends, I waited.”
I sighed, exhaustion, weariness, and who knew what else catching up to me so that my body felt leaden when I needed to be sharper than ever.“You can’t arrest me.Call for the king or queenof Zaraga, and you’ll understand why.If you cooperate, I’ll make it worth your while.A commendation?A promotion?What do you want?”
A blur of fuchsia, she was shaking her head.“You have no leverage here.”
“You don’t realize the situation you’re in.”
“No, murderess.Youdon’t.”
Lightning-fast, she struck me in the neck with something sharp.
Hissing, I slapped her away from me—but she vanished entirely with a loudpopbefore I could touch her.
I felt my neck and yanked out a slim needle—like a mighty warrior’s spear for the parvnit.Where had she been hidingthis?
With anotherpop, the little bitch materialized—just beyond my reach.
“What the fuck?”I glared at her then the needle.My blood beaded at the needle’s tip.But not just my blood, something else too.A foul-smelling foreign substance.
Its very darkness rushed through my veins.And a vital part of me … shifted … into something new.
Cosette hovered in the air.“Remember I offered you my friendship first.I gave you a chance, which is more than you deserve after what you did to the victims.You didn’t givethema chance.”
Barely hearing what she said at the end, I was busy calling on my power.First in my blood, then in Cosette’s.
Nothing.
That … had never happened before.Never, ever.
The dragort plodded to a halt.
“Prisoner check-in over here,” Cosette called over in a deep voice many times her size to a couple of guards standing outside a hulking structure that didn’t belong on palace grounds.
Its walls were impenetrable stone.Worse than that, the stone appeared worn to my eye.
Anewbuilding.
