That, the elf’s accusation? It was what finally catapulted me down from the Ethers. I slammed back into awareness of the full extent of my actions.
My thighs clamped down around Baz’s, stilling my rocking. Though I squeezed hard, he continued grinding up into me.
With my head kinked beneath his fangs, I ground out, “For the last time, already, I am not casting spells on him!”
After saying it, I couldn’t remember a time when the Bazrians had accused me of doing so, only Baz. But I didn’t recant my anger. If Baz was practically my slave master, then they were his enforcers. They all deserved my wrath, and that was before I doled out the punishment they’d justly earned for destroying our world. The supposed prophet, Isai, with all his terrifying imports from other worlds to this one, had simply made what they’d done worse.
“You have to be working your faithum on him,” Aziza said. “If not…”
For the first time since I’d met the mouthy wench, I wanted her to continue.
If not, what? What, Aziza, what? Because I sure as shit couldn’t make sense of our attraction to each other. I agreed with Baz only on the one thing: it was unnatural. It was perverse and so beyond taboo, even our depraved world made no allowance for what Baz and I might be together.
Both arms clutching me against his chest as if he was incapable of letting me go, with muscles strong and corded, he continued to drink. But my fury had crystallized my thoughts.
I remembered precisely why I’d done what I’d vowed I’d never allow anyone to do to me, much less my most significant mortal enemy. Forbidding the drinking from my vein and refusing to drink from another’s was the only promise I’d ever made to myself that was for me and me alone. Even my promise to punish whoever had abducted me wasn’t solely for me. The deed couldn’t go unpunished, or Alonso and Rafaela would be viewed as weak.
I’d allowed Baz to attach himself to me like a starsucker because my telltale scar had suddenly reappeared, and this ridiculous, make-believe veil was no lasting solution. It would be mere days before the Domdurron elites, all who would have powers of their own, discovered that I still lived. I’d have to kill them all to keep them from spreading the news of my reappearance, and their deaths would be noticed. They’d set off problematic ripples.
Besides that, I had to make sense of the phantom who looked like someone she absolutely should not, and of a dragon book filled with ancient secrets. I also had to save an emperor I’d much rather make dead to win my freedom and Marina’s. And that only got me started on all the rest.
Like tracking down Teo’s murderer.
For it all to work, I needed Baz being Baz and not some dead-eyed diabscure with fine taste in boots. An injection of my blood was the fastest way to snap him out of whatever strange trance had hold of him.
I pressed my hands into his shoulders. He continued to suckle at my neck. But when I shoved down with such force that a normal man would have shrunk beneath me, he finally stilled, with his mouth pressed to me. With tiny, careful swipes of his tongue, he cleaned me. He kissed the spot, went to rest his forehead against it, and rammed into my low-sitting collar. With an annoyed tsk, he pulled back to stare up into my eyes.
“Not so nice, is it?” I snapped. “Really gets in the way, my slave-bitch collar.”
Anger, anger was the safe ground. I rooted myself in it.
“We have more pressing issues than your scratching the itch,” Aziza said, and though I agreed, I side-eyed her.
I could have moved off Baz now, and I really should have wanted to. But he was nuzzling his forehead against my cheek, as if we didn’t have witnesses to this unexpected soft side, as if he weren’t the most fearsome man in the entire Opalese. Zaragans only feared Junot because they feared who was behind him.
“You shouldn’t speak to him like that. He’s our commander,” Ed said to Aziza.
“My point exactly,” she said. “He’s our commander.”
Baz’s entire body stiffened. He pulled his face from mine, his eyes meeting my own for a long second before he looked away, taking in the room. I watched him closely as his focus sharpened, and the blackness finished receding from his eyes.
I tossed my head and nailed Aziza with a glower capable of setting her on fire. “Still think I shouldn’t have given him my blood?”
I heard the words outside of myself. What the dragonfire was I thinking? That I should help my enemy at all was unforgivable. Rafaela would want to stuff me in the cage until another few centuries passed—not that I would let her.
But the Bazrians seemed to miss my disappointment in myself. Begrudgingly, Aziza gave a swift nod.
“What was that?” I said. “I didn’t quite hear your thanks.”
Aziza slapped her hands akimbo. “That’s because I won’t be thanking you, not now, not ever. You tried to kill him. Funny how you keep forgetting.”
I smiled my dangerous smile. “Oh. I don’t forget it for an instant.”
She glared. I glared harder.
Beneath me, Baz cleared his throat, then gently lifted me off his lap, lowering me to the bed beside him. He ran the ropeless hand along his face. “What happened?” He flicked a look to the farthest corner of his large room. The ghost still hunched there, ever watchful, ever listening—ever silent and denying me my answers. “Last thing I remember, I was trying to get out of the sitting room. Was this all … was this Mauldrene?”
Ed’s lips pursed. Night stared at him, unblinking. Félix studied the scene with eyes I was realizing were the most astute of them all.
