“What?” Terencia said on a chortle. “Dragon feasted on your tongue?”
Baz could practically feel Velle taking Terencia’s measure as an opponent.
“What do you mean, Empress?” she eventually said, Empress tight as a bowstring. “Who do you think I am?”
Terencia laughed, tossing a backward glance over a shoulder. “You’re the princess everyone was all too eager to pronounce dead. The princess no one missed. They were all too busy enjoying living, free of all the problems you created. And now, no one will miss your brother either. The newly dead prince. Except for you, of course. You will miss him most dreadfully, I fear.”
Terencia tsked and shook her head in feigned lament. “And just as you revive yourself from the dead to finally share time with him too. It’s a terrible coincidence, really.”
Click-clack, click-clack, click-clack rang her heels on the floor, while shadows whisked out of their way, clearing a path to the sitting room. Pam-pum-pom, went the cello. The violin and viola echoed the chords. More screams escaped the sitting room, still several rooms and turns away.
Tension clawed at Baz’s shoulders like a perched dragon. He wanted to drop Terencia’s arm like it was on fire, grab Velle, gather his friends, and put the damnable castle and the more damnable island and the even more damnable abyss at their backs—forever.
Terencia click-clacked down another hall, heedless of the shadows that snaked finger-like tendrils toward them from the walls and floor, and dropped them from the ceiling like vines. “Alonso tells me that your bond as twins is unparalleled, that you can actually sense each other as if you were physically connected. You can touch each other without touching. Is that so?”
Velle, of course, didn’t answer.
“Tell me, what does it feel like to lose someone you love like that? Is it as heartbreaking as my worry for my Junot?”
A dagger Velle had somehow swiped without Baz’s knowledge—in what moment, and from where?—arced in a blur toward the empress’ nape, bare thanks to her updo. Before any of the sänglures accompanying them could stop her, Velle rammed the blade into the back of the empress’ neck, straight into her spine.
Chapter 26
He Is My Ultimate Weakness, the Ultimate Lure, My Ultimate Enemy, and I Am Who I Am, a Part of Me Will Always Be a Feral Alley Sneakle
It happened so quickly that I barely registered what I was doing before I was sliding my freshly pilfered blade into the bitch’s spine, wishing she were as easy to end as a human.
When I yanked out the dagger, blood spurted onto my face. I scarcely felt it. I was back in my underwater tomb, reliving those agonizing moments after I’d woken, when I’d first understood what had stirred me from that slumber so akin to death. I was being torn asunder all over again.
Terencia gurgled. Her legs were buckling. Before she could fall, I stabbed her in the nape a second time, slicing deeper, cranking the knife to both sides in an attempt to obliterate her spinal cord.
I heard screams and belatedly realized I was the one screaming loudest—if mine could be called a scream. I sounded like a beast—a monster, actually—bellowing, roaring … gnashing.
In my sarcophagus, the worst of it had been my shattering heart. The pain of it had overpowered everything else. Now, it was my rage. It thumped against my dampening collar like a drum.
My power wanted out.
With my magic, I could have Terencia—and every other person in this hall—too weak to fight back within seconds. I wasn’t called the Power Princess of the D’Arcos for nothing. I could have sucked every drop of the empress’ blood from her body before she accepted that she was looking death in the face. I was the deliverer of her end.
The cunt thought she knew a damn thing about what it felt like to lose Teo? She thought her supposed love for a husband she cuckolded meant she understood my loss?
The bitch understood nothing.
“Nothing!” I roared and stabbed her again.
And then again.
She was falling. Only when I saw the gashes in her bare shoulders did I realize I was stabbing in a blind frenzy.
When Baz’s hands covered my own, I discovered mine slick with Terencia’s blood. I jerked the blade out from her shoulder. When I went to slash again, Baz held me back. His hands were strong—uncommonly strong, even for a sänglure. He gripped me and didn’t let go, shaking the blade from my grip until, with a grunt, I let it drop. It must have clattered to the floor, yet I didn’t hear it. There were voices shouting too. I didn’t register what any of them were saying.
Baz was leading me away from Terencia, who’d dropped. I noticed only her dress. A perfect match to her own blood.
Baz clutched me by the shoulders, turned me to face him, and started talking. As if I were kicking to free myself from my eternal sarcophagus, rising from the seabed all over again, with effort I lifted my eyes to where his hands, now also bloodied, clutched mine. He squeezed hard. I dragged my gaze up his body, rested it on his lips. They were definitely moving.
I blinked some more. All I made out was the thumping of my rage as it matched the tempo of my heart, beating unusually fast—and I recalled at once that this was what it had felt like to fight in the pits.
In truth, I’d been a monster long before Rafaela found Teo and me and rebirthed us. I’d just allowed myself to forget it. But now I remembered. I’d always been a monster. I always would be.
