“Don’t call me your mate,” I said, but even the Bazrians ignored me this time.
“But the brother will come second, after Junot and Terencia, won’t he?” Moncho said. “With Rishaq coming…”
“Mateo is a priority to my mate,” Baz said. “That makes him a priority to me.”
“And therefore to us as well,” Zi said, earning a surprised squeak from me.
“As far as I know, my brother is dead.” Those words hurt more than a knife to the gut. “I don’t feel him anymore. I haven’t since I woke up from my abduction.” That was as much detail as I was going to offer. That he and I were bonded twins was a secret not even Rafaela, Alonso, or Marina knew, unless they’d inferred it, a secret I would need to ask Baz to keep.
“My mate and her brother are bonded twins,” Baz said.
Fuck a dragon.
“We must discover the truth of the matter. If there is any chance that he still lives, my mate needs him.”
“Terencia is prone to exaggerating, if not outright distorting the truth,” Félix said. “But I believed her when she said Mateo lives.”
“I did too.”
My heart squeezed painfully hard. “But she was motivated to say it. She wanted me to save her. She knew that would do it.”
“Without doubt,” Félix said. “I still believed her. There is hope.”
My heart fluttered with it. If Hope and Heartbreak were looking down on me right then, I knew I wouldn’t survive their fuckery a second time. Waking in my underwater tomb as I had to feel Teo gone was the most agonizing moment of my entire life. Not even finding Isi’s mangled body in the streets of Montressón, discarded like trash, had felt half as devastating.
“If he’s alive in Orania, or anywhere else in the Opalese, we will find him,” Baz said.
Right then, I considered for the first time that such a man might actually be my mate. He sounded formidable, fierce, and ferocious, as if he would demolish any obstacle that stood in his path, as if he would take out anyone and anything that interfered with me.
Never before in all my life had I been able to count on someone to protect me. Always, I had been the protector. Could this man, this enemy … could I actually trust him? Or was this a ploy of the Rubors to finally crush me in a way from which I would never, ever recover?
I was no longer certain of much of anything.
“Rafaela and Alonso were sure he’s dead. They were totally devastated by his death.” But Rafaela had murdered her own family, her own bonded twin, and then lied about it. And if the conniving empress Terencia was to be believed, Alonso had screwed the worst of our enemies. Perhaps it had been to gain advantage?
“We will verify it for ourselves,” Baz said.
We. Ourselves. As if Baz and I were partners.
“We won’t take any chances,” he added. “Not with something so important.”
“Someone so important,” I said softly, without need. He already seemed to understand. How … unexpected.
“We have a great deal to accomplish, all of it urgent. First, however, we must rest. What’s to come will pose even greater challenge than what has already passed.”
“That sounds like one of your feelings about things,” Ed said.
“It is.”
“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Lev muttered. “I can scarcely wait.” He and Moncho, who rubbed at his nape, exchanged a laden look.
“Ed,” Baz said. “Assign a room to Marina.” My head and Marina’s jerked up. “I won’t have my mate’s loyal friend staying with the servants.”
“Consider it done.”
“Everyone, rest up. We’ll meet tomorrow at dusk. Then we’ll feed and organize ourselves.”
“You’re going to sleep with her?” Moncho said, his eyes narrowed on the Rillis rope. “She’s at full power now.”
