Mauldrene’s grand crystalline chandelier shook, its hundreds of crystals tinkling—as if the cunt were laughing at him. Shadows sprinkled down on him like drifting snowflakes, settling lightly onto his head and shoulders.
His anger spiked sharply as he brushed them off. If Mauldrene’s antics had endangered his prisoner…
Baz forced himself to calm. Junot was worse than a shadowray when scenting weakness.
Baz inhaled, steadying his heartrate.
“There you are!”
Baz sighed inwardly at Junot’s pinched greeting, and began walking toward him.
Junot Ninian, emperor of the entire Opalese World save for the two outlying Wonderwater nations, looked smaller than he had the last time Baz saw him more than six months before, when Junot had stationed Baz here at Castle Hawxfure for no apparent good reason.
Junot’s physique had never been as mighty as Baz’s—few men were as tall as Baz—but he’d appeared strong enough, definitely capable of pointing Baz at any enemy he wanted eradicated. Now the man looked … slightly shriveled. If he were a plant, Baz would think he needed watering. He wore a variation of his usual attire: a tunic and doublet woven through with gold threads, matching britches, wompa leather boots so shiny they gleamed, and a cape much more resplendent than he was, made purely of golden fibers. The clothes were bigger than the man, and his crown, a gem-studded, golden monstrosity, was slipping down his brow.
Maybe the man really was shrinking. Wouldn’t that be something?
Even the sword that hung from the weapons belt circling his hips drooped, as if he weren’t man enough for the size of his sword.
“I expected you to receive me. I sent notice of my arrival.”
Junot extended his hand into the thirty feet that still separated them, waiting.
“I only received your missive minutes ago.” Bitter on his tongue, Baz forced out the word, “Father.”
Baz refused to call him Your Dominance. Junot would have to kill him first.
Junot hiked disbelieving brows. They met his crown.
“Just minutes ago? That isn’t like Poriel.”
“Well, it’s what happened.”
When Junot’s brows slammed downward, Baz cleared his throat.
In a less defensive tone, he added, “Poriel pierced me with his talons. I didn’t wish to receive you with blood dripping down my arm.”
Junot tipped his nose into the air and sniffed. “Hm.”
At his side but a step behind, Terencia smelled too. Then again. “It seems you didn’t do a thorough job of scrubbing yourself everywhere.”
Already reaching for Junot’s hand, Baz flicked his eyes to hers. They glittered for an instant before her face resumed its mask of practiced innocence.
Baz kissed the air above Junot’s signet ring—two dragons, back-to-back, spewing fire beneath a crown—then smiled at her as genuinely as he could, which wasn’t much.
He sensed his friends’ appraising gazes studying him and his stepmother. Even Cosette’s eyes were narrowed as she sized them up.
Only Junot was oblivious to the way Terencia’s voice grew husky and suggestive at the mention of Baz “scrubbing himself everywhere.”
“Terencia,” Baz said, and had no choice but to kiss the back of her hand when she held it out toward him. At the press of his lips to her skin, she shuddered and inhaled deeply.
Baz released her hand as quickly as he could without smacking it away. “The blood you scent isn’t from Poriel, but from the castle.”
“Smells…”
Guessing she’d say “delicious,” Baz froze. The damnable woman didn’t risk just herself with her nonsense, but him too! And if she risked his wellbeing, she risked that of those he had to protect.
“Strong,” she settled on, openly trailing her appreciative stare up and down his body.
