Shadows stretched from the walls, latched on to her ankles, and tugged.
I leapt to catch her.
The shadows gave one huge heave, and Terencia’s lower body slipped into a wall.
With both hands extended toward her, I slid along the floor. My fingers touched where she had just been, when the Rillis rope, attached to a heavy man who was currently cemented to the floor, tugged me backward.
His weight yanked me back onto my ass.
I was already scrambling to my feet again, stretching the rope to its maximum, when Terencia choked on a scream—and vanished into the wall.
I reached the place she’d only just occupied a second too late.
Chapter 27
We Never Would, Never Could, So Watch and Enjoy the Show
It didn’t take long of my banging, tearing, and clawing to accept that I’d rip my fingers off before Mauldrene allowed me through that wall after her most recent catch. Whatever Mauldrene was made of, it was tougher than mere stone.
“The empress,” exclaimed the servant girl who’d earlier licked said empress’ blood from her finger, rising to her knees. “She’s…”
“Gone,” I murmured in a gap of silence between crashes against the portcullis. My fingertips dripped blood; they were healing rapidly enough.
At my back, the rhythmic pounding ceased abruptly. First there were surprised inhales, clear and loud, immediately followed by the rapid footfalls of running soldiers. The portcullis had vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.
“Where is the empress?” demanded the same man from earlier. “Where has she gone?”
“The wall swallowed her,” I mumbled, truly stunned that such vital information pertaining to my brother had been within my grasp and I’d lost it.
“The wall swallowed her?” Demander said, his deep voice going high.
“Swallowed … sucked her into it … disappeared her inside,” I said. “Whatever.” I probably sounded numb to him, but I could hear my frustration, disappointment, and fury that I’d missed my chance. How could I have failed Teo yet again, for dragon’s sake?
“Commander,” a woman said at my back, presumably to Baz. “Are you in need of our assistance?”
“No,” Baz said. “Nothing you can do. We have to wait. The castle will let us go soon.”
Maybe Mauldrene would, maybe she wouldn’t. I couldn’t quite figure out her motivations. If holding Baz, Ed, and Félix was solely to keep them from interfering with her taking Terencia, then that need was complete.
“The shadows are receding,” Ed said with a relieved sigh.
I turned. Indeed they were, though at a tenth the speed that they’d initially woven their cages.
The shadows withdrew not just from Baz, Ed, and Félix, but also from where they’d come to cover much of the hall’s surfaces. With an eerie silence, shadows slunk in all directions at once in perfect synchronicity. Though they grew up from the floor and dipped down from the ceiling, and though they clung to walls and furniture, constructing a multi-layered film of darkness like dozens of spiderwebs, they did not tangle. They had purpose … and perhaps their own united intelligence.
The castle was unnerving as fuck. Mauldrene was attacking the supposedly invulnerable and unreachable, plucking them off one by one. How many people and creatures out there wanted to punish the empress and emperor for the wrongs they’d done to our world? Hundreds, surely. Probably thousands: most of those who remembered what the world had been like before the birth of the Domdurron Empire.
“Which wall claimed the empress?” Demander asked.
I pointed with my chin. I stood a mere foot away, hoping to conjure some clue as to how to recover the woman I’d only so recently wanted to murder. Oh, the irony, chasing after an empress and an emperor to rescue them when I really wanted to kill them both.
Demander and several guards began beating on the same wall I’d bloodied myself on, so I positioned myself to the side. If they got through, I was going in first. I was taking Terencia up on her deal. I would save her, and she would tell me where my brother was.
Was it truly possible? Could Teo really be alive?
I knew Baz was behind me without turning to look. It wasn’t because of the slack that suddenly loosened the Rillis rope. It wasn’t even his scent, so distinctive, or the fragrance of his blood, a delight I now craved, damn him. It was the heat of him, the way my body tingled in anticipation at his proximity, and the anticipation of his touch. I felt it coming a second before his hand clutched my wrist.
I looked at where he grabbed me, wondering if there was a point to shaking him off.
