“And that’s how I’ll remain,” Baz said.
“That’s real good.We need you, General.”
“Yeah, we do,” Ed said.
“Now,” Baz said, tipping his gaze up at the arched ceiling of this particular hall.He didn’t think he’d ever been in it before.“Mauldrene, when are you going to stop giving us the tour?I need to get to the dungeons already.I have a prisoner to see to.”
Baz worked to keep his thoughts from streaming across his face.Unbidden, images of what kind ofseeing tohe might like to do to—and under, and on top of—his prisoner, assaulted him.
He’d sliced through that strip of flesh that had so enticed his imagination, nearly cleaving her in two.
Mauldrene, for once, deigned to be helpful.The stairway to their immediate left shifted thirty degrees, its rises and treads flattening out into a slide.
“Don’t trust that,” Night said from behind Baz, where he peered suspiciously at the slide over Baz’s shoulder.
“Fuck no we don’t,” Lev said.
“Then stay behind,” Alobaz said, before gripping his sheathed shortsword—the same one he’d used to cut intoher—to his waist and jumping onto the slide with abandon.
He didn’t care how he got there, so long as Mauldrene was taking him toher.
Chapter32
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 prisoneragain.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.
Madeto fight.
And I’d fought my way out of there, believing myself free at last.
What a naïve 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 sänglure 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.
