“So we do what I suggested in the first place, then?”
“Don’t remind me. I’m busy wishing I never met you.”
“I beat you to it. Everything bad that ever happened to me is ’cause of you.”
He glowered at me for several beats, but whatever he saw in my face, however he identified the lie, his features softened. “Everything that’s bothering me now is because of you too.” The way he said it though, it didn’t sound like a bad thing.
My thoughts and emotions were as indecipherable as the writing in my pilfered book. I faced away from him and marched toward the closest tunnel, knowing he’d have no choice but to follow.
Chapter 14
It Is More than Something, It’s Huge, and Only a Little Bit Possibly a Lie
On my hands and knees, I scrabbled up a narrow, dark, bumpy tunnel similar to all the other narrow, dark, bumpy tunnels we’d already traversed. Baz was on my heels, encroaching on my air. I could practically feel his hands on me, when actually they gripped the smooth ridges that made for decent, if a bit slick, handholds. He was too close, always too close, making it difficult to think.
The collar around my neck felt tighter than before, and certainly heavier. The rope stretched taut between us and made climbing the slippery surfaces unreasonably challenging. Alobaz, however, had very colorfully, and repeatedly, refused to release me from the spell that kept us tethered. Granted, it was a wise decision on his part given that my desire to murder him had been infused with new fervor. I needed to kill him as soon as possible so I wouldn’t desire my enemy with such desperation.
I should want to slice his stupidly plump lips from his equally stupid face, not want to smoosh mine against them until we went numb from the ferocity of our kisses. I should dream of gouging out his eyeballs, not be haunted by the stormy, ocean-blue-green of them that saw too much every time they burrowed into mine, piercing me as if with a harpoon.
When Marina and I had called on the demigods, Love had been the one to answer. I had to love to hate Baz, no matter what. It was my only option. I’d vowed to hate him with every fiber of my being.
I hate Alobaz Hawxley. I hate him. I do, I really hate him. I absolutely do.
The dragon-scaled book dug uncomfortably into the back of my waistband. Its placement wasn’t ideal, but my only other option was to accept Baz’s offer for him to carry it, and absolutely not. Whatever mysteries the book held, it was the first potential advantage I’d gained since landing in this castle as a prisoner.
I hooked my fingers like claws around grooves in the tunnel’s floor and peered ahead. Even with the aid of a lumoon—one ahead and the other always close by—and my sharp sänglure sight, it was too dark to discern how much farther we had to go before reaching an exit. The tunnels crisscrossed in a labyrinthine weave that reminded me of a rat’s nest—in which I was the helpless rat, nudged along by some eager master, large and imposing, who observed from far above.
The current tunnel narrowed so that I had to slide across it like a worm, and though I detested how the ridged, flesh-like floor glided beneath me—slick, soft, and moist—at least I drew pleasure in knowing the fit would be twice as tight for the empire’s favorite general.
When I emerged from the tunnel into a small cave, which also broke off into more tunnels, I sank to my butt and waited. Thanks to the rope, Baz only had, at most, a body’s length to go, but it took him long minutes to squeeze through, which I gleefully counted in rhythm with his expletives. When he finally popped out, he was panting.
In the glow of our joint lumoonlight, I grinned. “Having fun yet?”
He plopped onto the floor beside me and flung out his legs, leaning back into his hands. The rope had stretched out as we tested its limits, and now sagged to the damp surface between us.
“If dreaming of the many ways I can make you pay for sticking us down here counts as ‘having fun,’ then yes, I’m having a blast.”
I slid the book from my waistband and rested it on my outstretched thigh instead of the gooey floor. “I’m curious. How would you like to make me pay?”
He flopped his boots out to the sides, in, then out again. “Well, I can’t say I can choose one favorite. There are so many good ones.”
“Oh? Like what?”
He grunted. “I’m not going to tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Because what if I end up punishing you? Then you’ll know what I’m going to do before I do it, and I can’t have that.”
“Would it motivate you to know I dream of all the ways I want to kill you, every day and every night?”
His head swiveled toward me. “Still?” He huffed, facing forward again. “I see that you’ve decided not to believe me, then.”
“No, I believe you.”
When his eyes widened enough to be noticeable in the gloom, mine did too.
“You believe me? That I didn’t kill Mateo?”