Dragon down, I tried to say, but was only able to think it.
The dragons had long ago abandoned the Opalese. The mightier Fuerin had vanished before them. Dragons no longer tumbled from the sky when they died. But reference to them had never ceased. They had forever shaped the world with a lasting reverence.
A long, undulating moan, that conjured memories of sex, rang out from nearby.
“Baz,” I mumbled, though the garble I actually got out sounded more like “Aaaaaathhhhhh,” with my face smushed against my hair and the floor. But there was no raising my head yet.
He grunted.
“Are ya…?” I tried for more, but it was all I had.
Another groan: one that starkly reminded me of the first time he was inside me, when we’d gone at each other like beasts and all we’d been able to make were animal sounds. There had been no words for madness that drew two enemies together.
Muffled voices were growing closer, but my hearing, usually as sharp as the foxlike feethle’s, was buzzing dully.
“…came from over here somewhere.”
That was either Edwidge or Aziza, or maybe Levin or Félix. The buzzing had only grown louder, making the voices indistinguishable.
Footsteps padded quietly closer. My lumoons hadn’t yet caught up with the speed of my ascent, if they ever would. Baz’s hadn’t reached him either.
Foreign lumoonlight bobbed around a corner, revealing that Baz and I had landed in the very same parlor where we’d been in before setting out to search for Junot. I lay wedged between a wall and the couch where I’d once sat. Baz sprawled, face up, with his boots all but touching mine. His neck was craned to keep his head from pressing into an adjacent wall.
Just the effort of glancing at him made the room swirl and my guts heave—in opposite directions. I glued my cheek to the floor and vowed not to move until the spinning and buzzing stopped.
“…you been?” someone cried out, way too loudly, and I realized I hadn’t been hearing a thing beyond what was in my own head.
Baz released a deep, prolonged moan that, even through my current discomfort, made my core clench. My body’s reaction to the man was not fucking normal!
“What in the Ethers happened to you?”
This time, the demand came through clearly—it was Aziza. The static in my ears was receding.
Aziza crouched beside Baz, and Félix knelt alongside the rope between him and me. From my vantage point, I could make out more boots, but that was it. I wasn’t risking moving my head.
“We’ve been looking for you everywhere,” Aziza said.
Baz grunted.
“You have to give us more than that, Baz. It’s been days!”
Days?
How? But I already had my answer: Mauldrene.
If the castle weren’t so competent at making me her bitch time and again, I would have probably been impressed. To survive in this shithole required such concerted effort, it was fucking exhausting.
Baz mumbled a string of nonsense. Aziza threw back her head in exasperation.
“You’d better not have been off somewhere screwing each other’s brains out,” she said.
“If only,” I muttered, sounding like I’d drunk olvidian and smoked olandule in the same day: a consciousness-rocking combination that lasted for days.
I sensed eyes on me, but not whose.
“Where were you, then?” Edwidge asked. With the buzzing nearly gone, I was certain it was her.
Baz attempted to push up onto his elbows but collapsed back down to the floor, banging his head. Edwidge ducked to prop him up so he could rest against the wall. His legs flopped out to the sides so that his feet dipped toward the floor.
