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.“Andsheis not one of them.She’llneverbe 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 sänglure, she wasn’t slipping this cell.There was no way.
Baz entered the dark room.Even with his sänglure 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.
