Page 9 of Mistress of Bones
He recognized her fear but didn’t gloat. Instead, he looked relieved that he could go back to his real self.
He glanced at the sunlight dimming through the window. “We will be traveling to the emissaries’ quarters in the morning.” He turned toward the door. “Gather your belongings. I will allow you one trunk.”
“No!” Azul cried, jumping out of the chair. “Allow me to go back to Monteverde.”
A laugh escaped him, short, rough, and full of disbelief. “You think I’d allow someone like you to roam the continents? You’re an affront to the gods. You meddled with Death. You refused his right and your sister’s right to find peace in his bones—and who knows how many others’—and imposed your will over nature and godhood. You are unrepentant. You cannot be trusted with the power you own. No, you shall be studied, so we can stop your kind from causing harm in the future. After that, you will be confined so your rot doesn’t spread.”
His words shocked her numb. “I won’t go.”
The massive shoulder plates lifted in a shrug. “You’ll come. Dead, alive, it makes no difference.” The savagery of his smile returned. “I would take you dead, so you cannot repeat your affronts, but I have been told it’d serve Valanje better if you remain whole. For the time being, at least.”
“You cannot prove it,” she cried, desperate. “I’m normal!”
“And yet everything is dying except for you.”
Azul stared, uncomprehending. “What do you mean?”
He paid her no heed and walked toward the door.
“Wait,” she pleaded. His steps halted; his hand stilled on the door’s handle. “You are wrong. I am no malady. You are from Valanje; you have no idea of how we mourn our dead.” Then it wrenched out of her—all the broken hope, all the bleakness, all the hollow in her heart: “Please.”
He opened the door and gave her a last glance, the mask and the violet and golden eyes peeking over his shoulder plate. “This eagerness, this desperation—this is why you cannot be allowed freedom.”
The door closed behind him.
IVAZUL
Azul fell back on the chair, hands gripped tight against her mouth. Politics, she had thought when Nereida came to talk to her, games of words and manners that she would win before returning to her land, her sister.
The emissary played no games. The emissary did not care. The emissary knew what she was. He had known from that first widening of his eyes that she had mistaken for surprise at her appearance. The tone of his words, the contempt in those golden irises when he had labeled her an affront to the world. He would take her with him, either moving or as bones.
But she had until morning.
She grabbed the brazier’s iron poker and waited by the door, perched on the chair for a better angle than her short frame would allow.
But no servant came. No guard. The door remained closed; the poker too thick to do any lock-picking. She abandoned her position to get some rest and, after a few hours of fitful dozing, was back at the door with the first light of dawn, pressing her ear against the thick wood. When she finally heard footsteps, she hurried back onto the chair, her limbs shaking with the intense rush of blood through her veins.
Azul had doled out violence before—you couldn’t be one-half of a sisterhood prone to duels and brawls without meting out some—butthere was something so unexpectedly raw and heartbreaking about doing it alone that made her feel like it was the first time. It made her want to cry and rage and shrink with fear.
The door opened, and sweat covered her palms as she tightened her hold on the poker and lifted it over her shoulder.
Nereida de Guzmán entered, black hat low over her head and raven braid falling over her dark blue waistcoat. Her rapier hung low against her hip, and a satchel crossed her chest, resting on her other side.
Azul’s mouth opened in shock.
Unfazed, Nereida took ahold of Azul’s belt and wrenched her off the chair.
“If you want to leave, tell me the truth,” Nereida said, pulling Azul close to study her face. “Is it true you can bring someone back from death?”
Azul recovered and returned Nereida’s stare. “Why would you ask?”
“Answer, or stay in this room until the deathling takes you away.”
“You stopped me from getting back on the boat and left me to rot in this room. Why should I trust you now?”
Nereida narrowed her eyes in annoyance. “You can’t best Death’s man in a fight, and that poker won’t help you with the guards. What other option do you have?”
The empty hallway behind Nereida beckoned, growing lighter by the second. The building was silent now, but soon it would fill with the everyday noises of a household going about its morning business.
