Baz ran a hand over one of the small plaits woven from his temple before realizing he was coating it in blood. He dropped the braid—and stilled.
His heart thudded.
Velle.
If the Bazrians—or that annoying parvnit, Cosette, who wouldn’t shut up about being his father’s investigatory soldier—mentioned to the emperor that Baz had his very first prisoner since arriving at the castle … or worse, if Cosette revealed her identity…
Junot will kill her.
No, he’d order Baz to make an example of the D’Arco princess. He’d have to kill her in front of him. He’d want her blood splattered all over the dungeon, her body in pieces.
Baz slid the note into his pocket, patted the shortsword at his side out of habit, and bolted for the stairs. He had to wash off her scent, warn his friends, and threaten Cosette to keep quiet.
Baz was sprinting down the stairs to his quarters when he heard his shädread, Drion, whinny loudly. Moments later, the rest of the Bazrian Seven’s steeds followed with their own warnings.
Apparently, “immediate” meant right the fuck now.
Of course it did. Junot only ever made his life worse.
Baz leaned over the open side of the stairwell and leapt to the landing below. He kept leaning, kept leaping, until he reached his floor. Then he called on every bit of his sänglure speed.
A speed his sire possessed too … only a sire’s power was always supposed to be stronger than his children’s.
It was a good thing Junot loved his pomp and would take his time making a grand entrance, even at a shrew of a castle like Mauldrene.
Chapter 2
Is It Possible to Murder a Castle? What about Someone Not Man Enough for the Size of His Sword?
After taking the fastest shower of his life, possibly in all of Opalesian history, Baz pressed his sword to his side to prevent its bouncing and dashed from his quarters to the dining hall, where he’d last seen his friends.
The Bazrian Seven had been fighting together many decades longer than they’d been stuck with the idiotic moniker. They’d watched each other’s backs since there had been eight of them—before Baz met Shen and fell for her seductive deceptions. Before Cal had paid for Baz’s mistakes with the ultimate sacrifice.
Baz trusted the Bazrians with his life. With practically anyone’s life.
Turned out, just not with hers.
Not Velle’s.
At least, not yet he didn’t.
He didn’t want his friends to find out about his prisoner’s identity, and he especially didn’t want them to learn it from somebody else. He hadn’t told them that Cosette and the goblin, whose name was Marina, knew precisely whom his prisoner was—that the great mystery was resolved. He’d told them only that Cosette wanted to arrest her, and since Baz had used his position to exact her discretion, Cosette hadn’t revealed more. The goblin—Marina—had glared murder at them both, when Baz had never witnessed a goblin being anything but subservient.
Mauldrene, being the spiteful cunt that she was, threw obstacles at him while the music now obnoxiously matched his frantic run across the castle. Loudly, the violin raced, the viola pursued it, and the cello thumped out the menacing footfalls of an enemy on Baz’s tail. Mauldrene narrowed hallways until Baz had to angle his broad shoulders sideways and duck his head to squeeze through to avoid being eaten by her shadows. She did away entirely with the main hall that connected to the dining hall. And in one instance, she snuffed out all the ambient lumoons. When Baz created his own, she dimmed those too—even though she shouldn’t have been able to—but then, when had Mauldrene ever obeyed the laws of nature or logic?
Was it possible to murder a castle? Please let it be possible…
Without his enhanced senses, he was practically human as he rushed along, knocking nose-first into a heavy bronze bust of a D’Arco ancestor he should have gotten rid of but hadn’t—that wasn’t normally in the middle of the pathway. He kicked some object that was hard as stone, but oddly spiky, and bruised a toe through his boot. All the while, Mauldrene’s shadows stalked him, creeping much too close. Baz felt their caresses—cold and gelatinous like the tentacles of the carnivorous umbrac—and their bites—like the stabbing pricks of needles. Hundreds of them.
Mauldrene’s fuckery was a problem he was obviously going to have to address—just as soon as he got an inkling of how to discipline a castle—a castle, for fuck’s sake!
Short of breath, mostly from his mounting frustration, finally Baz slid into the dining hall.
Only to find Junot, Terencia, and their traveling retinue standing beyond its opposite entrance, in the grand hall he should have already crossed to get here—more of Mauldrene’s fuckery, no doubt. Surrounding them were Baz’s six friends and Cosette. The goblin, Marina, was noticeably absent. He was equally relieved not to see the rescued boy, Crute, among them.
Cosette the Pest, as Lev and Moncho had begun calling her, hovered in front of his friends as if angling for Junot’s attention. Her chest was pushed out, her hands clasped beneath buzzing wings. Her tiny face beamed with glossy smarm. Her lips might as well have been puckered to kiss the man’s ass.
Baz cast a quick glare that swore retribution to the dining hall’s ceiling, which was covered in a fresco of a dark-haired and darker-winged beauty, stepping through a tear from another world into this one.
