No, they were already dead, Baz. Don’t be daft.
He searched for his friends. But it had grown dark everywhere but around her: his prisoner. Could it be Mauldrene angling her shadows around him? Taking advantage of his weakness to strike a brutal blow?
“No witnesses,” he managed to grit out.
Velle nodded, her veil cool as it fluttered along his burning flesh. She spun toward Zi, who was still nursing her throat. Zi growled like a beast about to attack.
“What manners,” Drake Milliand said, his horror loud.
Zi growled again; it sounded directed at him. When he yelped, Baz knew he’d been right.
“Enough, Zi,” Velle snapped. No consideration for the beast. “We need you.”
We? Even through the burn, Baz felt that we plenty—too much.
We the enemies, it had to be.
Baz’s vision shrank until all he could make out were flashes of Velle’s hands, of her skin, still touching his.
“We can’t leave this room, and they can’t either,” Velle told Zi in barked whispers. “And Baz needs his privacy right now. You get me?”
Silence stretched for several seconds, during which Baz figured it didn’t matter anyway. It was too late; he was immolating. Zi was probably glaring daggers at Velle while he combusted.
“Yeah,” Zi finally said. Her voice was actual venom. “I get you.”
“Good. Get to it, then.”
Another beat, another glare.
“Fast, Zi. Come on! He doesn’t have time to mess around. I can feel it.”
Zi sighed loudly, but then stalked away—to weave an illusion that would confound the nobles well enough to afford Baz the privacy he needed to melt down.
And melt down he would.
He shuddered so violently that his fingers slipped from the handles and into the comfort of Velle’s. She wrapped her arm around his shoulders and drew him close.
It’s the rope, he told himself. Or it was a manipulation. Like Shen, she was just using him. More than Shen, she had reason to. Shen had never been his prisoner. He’d treated her like his queen, and she’d still betrayed him. What was Velle capable of when he’d nearly sliced her in half, then collared her, and held her captive? Shen had believed herself to be cunning and capable, but Soravelle actually was those things.
Voices spoke around him, but they were muffled and growing more indistinct with each awful, passing moment. More hands landed on him besides Velle’s, but he couldn’t properly feel their touch, only the heat—only the burn. He sank to the floor, falling back instead of sitting, sinking into the arms of his friends, who’d reached out to catch him.
The phantom bore down his arm, straining to burst free from his hand—its darkness, which should have been cold, burned like the Fuerin Star. With all his might, Baz worked to keep the ghost inside. Once he took the darkness, he couldn’t ever let it go. That was his penance. Not redemption, no, that was pointless. But punishment … his punishment was far from complete. All he could sense anymore was the burning specter … and the sea, and iron, and the olandry flower. Whatever was about to happen, there was no holding it back anymore, not this time. Not with this. He couldn’t.
He should have been saving Lev and Moncho. Soravelle Davana—somehow she was still there. His princess.
“Oh fuck,” Baz said, sounding like he’d combined olandule and olvidian and overdone both, like he was about to puke and needed a pail or a bare patch of forest, right the scorch now.
He opened his mouth again, to warn his friends, maybe? To scream against the pain? Unlikely. Not only was he a warrior, he was a leader of warriors. Not even here, not even with Zi’s illusion in place, could he expose too much weakness. His friends relied on him. He needed to be strong.
His teeth snapped closed against a final burst of pain—as the ghost that was never intended to rejoin the world of the living emerged … from the palm of his hand.
Chapter 22
His Vicious Viper, the Very Definition of an Irresistible Temptation
Baz rarely slept well, and practically never slept deeply. Over the centuries that he’d been Junot’s enforcer, he’d amassed so many enemies it was hardly worth keeping track of them all. He always had to be on his guard. No matter where he was, there was sure to be someone out to get him. At times, they disguised their distaste for him; others, they didn’t bother.
Certainly, there were those, like the young Crute, who’d bought into the stories of the Bazrians’ legendary prowess, and even some who understood that Baz and his friends could have done so much worse and purposefully hadn’t. They could have raped, pillaged, and razed entire villages to their smoldering foundations, and Junot would have applauded their brutality.
