Rafaela and Alonso were too.
All of Zaraga.
I exchanged a look with Marina that said,Keep an eye on her for me.
My goblin friend, who hadn’t been able to let down her guard since we had company, nodded ever so slightly.
Then I stalked off … and stumbled.I kept forgetting I was wearing a skirt instead of my usual wompa leather pants that moved with me.Hitching up my stupid skirt, I growled.
Apparently Alobaz had quite the appetite for round, curvy, sumptuous flesh.
I’d deliver what he wanted—oh, how I’d deliver.
I’d deliver so much more than he counted on.
Chapter19
The Bazrian Seven
Alobaz rubbed the scruff on his chin and glowered across the abyss at Castle Hawxfure.Dark and gloomy—always so dark and fucking gloomy—it loomed forebodingly on Ombrash Island.
Fog encased it, and lightning that had no logical reason crackled continuously within the mist, which at times thinned but never fully evaporated no matter how much sunshine shone on the other side.Though wide enough that no creature of any sort could leap across it, not even with a grappling hook, the chasm wasn’t nearly wide enough for the land on either side of it to exhibit different weather patterns.
As Alobaz had learned very early on, the castle had its own personality—way too much fucking attitude.He’d taken to calling the castleMauldrene, purely because it was the first name that came to him that he didn’t particularly like.
Beyond the castle and its many outbuildings, the island allowed no other structures.Most of the staff was forced to live in a small, meager settlement between here and Galmeen.Mauldrene admitted the workers—or didn’t, depending on her mood, which was more fickle than a sänglure being denied blood—by stretching a drawbridge across the chasm.It was a feat of faithum that occurred in seconds.
With his boot, Alobaz nudged one of the magical posts that supported one end of said drawbridge.It held.
“Don’t trust it,” Night said from his right.
Lev pointed down into the chasm with a stabby finger.“No way am I walking on that flimsy thing across the abyss of all things.”
The abyss radiated a darkness so profound that it swirled like a shadow, a kind of mist of its own.
“Mauldrene’s never put out the bridge for us before,” Ed said.
As one, the entire crew, save Félix, who still hadn’t caught up to them, turned to look behind them.
The eighteen women and children Alobaz had rescued from the brothel had huddled together, casting worried glances between the abyss, the castle, and the shädreads.
“We’ve been at the castle for almost half a year,” Aziza said.“Half ayear.But she’ll do it for them?”
“She must like them,” Moncho said.
“She doesn’t like anybody,” Alobaz said.
“But she apparently likes them better than us.Maybe that’s all that matters.”
“Why does she hate us so much?”Lev asked in a bit of a whine that seemed to come out more and more the longer they were stuck at the castle.
“She has no reason to hate the rest of us,” Aziza said.“But you?You’ve probably given her reason.”
With a hand to his heart, Lev spun toward her.“Me?Why me?”
“Your astonishingly consistent ability to irritate doesn’t end with the living.”
Lev staggered back as if shot with a quarrel.“You wound me.”
