“Alobaz,” Terencia called, her voice losing some more of its roughness just for him. She wiped at the back of her neck with a frown, scratching at the skin, probably itchy as it was closing rapidly. “Why aren’t you here protecting me?”
Why indeed?
“Get away from her. I’m the one who needs you.”
Baz hesitated, but only for a split second. He licked his lips, looked only at her. “I was keeping your attacker from hurting you any more than she already has, Empress Mother. The prisoner is attached to me via an unbreakable Rillis rope.”
My knife had stabbed her through the back to pierce a collarbone. The bone had shattered, fragments poking out of her skin. With a scowl, she pressed the bone pieces into the hole that had already been closing, ripping the skin open anew. The bone fragments visibly reached for each other, stitching themselves back together.
“No Rillis rope is truly unbreakable,” Terencia told Baz, glaring at me. I experienced the heat of her hatred like a brand. “I command you to break the Rillis rope you have bonding you to this, this … treacherous whore rat!”
I arched my brows. Whore rat? That was the best she could come up with?
When Baz hesitated again, still for only a short beat, Terencia’s face sparked with a brewing tantrum.
“Empress Mother, my prisoner is dangerous. It would be unwise?—”
“She’s not your prisoner any longer. She’s not your anything. I’m the one she wronged. I claim my right to vengeance. I will have her blood, her head, and her power. From what Alonso tells me, her power will be exquisite when added to mine.”
While absently scratching at her rapidly sealing wounds, the cunt greedily licked her lips.
I wanted to reach out and carve her tongue from her mouth. I shouldn’t have stopped with a few stabs. Once I started, I shouldn’t have stopped until I sawed off her ugly head.
“As you wish,” Baz said without pause this time, while angling his frame between me and her. “Allow me to assist you first, then I will see to the prisoner.”
Baz took three steps toward her. Before his foot could land for the fourth, shadows materialized from the stone floor to climb his body like vines. They moved faster than a whipping umbrac’s tentacles. With one leg still in the air, the shadows cinched, and finished wrapping Baz’s body. It all happened in moments.
Baz thrashed against his bindings, his muscles bulging in cords along his neck. Ed and Félix ran for him, only to meet the same fate.
The three warriors struggled against them, but the shadows emerged from the floor in a constant stream, as if there were no end to them. They wrapped, wove, and tightened, until only a small circle of their faces were visible in the darkness.
“No,” Terencia gasped when the shadows reached for her next. “No! No, no, no. I am the empress of the Domdurron Empire!”
The servants scrambled backward even as their empress reached for them. The two girls huddled together, pulling their legs in and wrapping their arms around their knees.
The shadows wound up and around Terencia’s body, sipping and licking at her blood with little flicks of pointed shadow that mimicked tongues. The pool beneath her was being drunk—by Mauldrene?—as if the stone floor were as porous as a sandy beach.
“Alobaz, help me,” Terencia cried with a gurgle.
Baz was a tall, hulking mass of impenetrably dark, writhing shadows. Despite our forced proximity, I was untouched by Mauldrene’s shadows.
Swiftly, webs of darkness wrapped Terencia as if she were being mummified. The shadows wrapped her in swath after blurring swath, consuming her extremities all at once.
Panicked eyes sought me out. She opened her mouth. A snaking shadow poked inside. She spat it out and hurriedly said, “I won’t kill you if you help me.”
When the shadows inched along her hairline and up her neck, across her chin, in a rushed squeak, she said, “I’ll pardon you entirely if you save me.”
“No.”
The shadows crept down her forehead. One tickled at an eyeball. “Your brother! He’s not dead.”
My heart thudded. “What?”
“Mateo is alive, I swear it. Save me, and I’ll?—”
The shadows swam into her mouth. She gagged, no longer able to spit them out.
By then I was in motion, lunging for the damn woman.
