Page 91 of Mistress of Bones
“But it can’t be,” she said in a small voice, her gaze fluttering everywhere. “There are still bones nearby.”
Enjul gripped her arms, turned her to face him. “Where? Take me to them.”
“Why?” Azul asked, shaken by the ill-concealed eagerness in his voice, the excitement cracking what was usually a stoic or mocking expression.
Comprehension dawned, a horrific kind of understanding. A sense of betrayal so deep if her heart wasn’t already breaking, it would have cleaved in half. “You knew. You knew Isadora… You knew about the bones.”
Arrogance claimed what she could see of his features outside the mask. “You keep forgetting I am the Emissary of the Lord Death, no matter how many times I tell you. I know all there is to know about death. You would, too, if only you listened, if only you bothered to ask. How many times have you been told that the living return to the gods? It is only you who is at fault for not knowing, not I. Now take me to the bones.”
Azul wrenched her arms out of his grasp. “Why?” she yelled. Then another scream, inside her mind, for Isadora. Then a third, when she answered herself, “The bones… The other necromancer?”
“Necromancer?” Esparza asked, suddenly wary.
“You think the other necromancer is here,” Azul accused.
“What better place for one who deals with death than among the remains of the dead?”
“But I hate bodies.”
“Yet you are attracted to bones, aren’t you?” Enjul advanced on her. “You are attracted to death. You are curious to figure out what you are, although you won’t admit it. It corrodes your insides, that need to know. That’s why you were so eager to visit the land of the Lord Death when the opportunity arose.”
“Why wait until now? Why…” The answer presented itself once again: because he couldn’t gain entrance to the ossuary either. Not without making his presence as the emissary known. So, he had waited for her to find access for him.
Azul laughed, a short, rough sound. “How disappointed you must have been! Leaving me alone so much, allowing me so much freedom.” She laughed again. This back-and-forth she thought they had been playing as equals hadn’t been a duel at all. It had been a children’s game where he moved the toys, and she made for a pretty doll. “How frustrating it must have been for you to see me fumble over and over, getting no closer to the ossuary.”
“Until now.”
Her fist came up, but Esparza caught her arm.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” Esparza said, letting Azul’s arm go, “but rather than brawl, we should leave if we’re done.”
Enjul took her wrist. He wore gloves tonight.How smart, Azul thought viciously. How well planned it all had been. “We are not done,” he said. “Where are the bones?”
Azul fought to free her wrist, saw Esparza reach for his rapier. “I’m done,” she told Enjul. “The Void take you.”
The emissary pulled her closer, and Azul was tempted to spit in his face. What a contrast to the last time they had been this close! “But what if she’s there, with those other bones? Your Isadora.”
Her heart sank, then jumped with a furious beat. “You godsdamned asshole. Why do you hate me so much?”
“I do not hate you,” he snarled.
“Liar. It reeks out of you!” she shouted. “We’re the same—”
“We arenotthe same. I am dying. We are all dying, except for you.Youare not dying.”
“I don’t understand!”
He took a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter. Go to the bones,” he added, pushing her.
And Azul went, because he was right. It was grasping at unraveling threads, but it was a chance: Isadora, simply forgotten in one of these rooms instead of resting somewhere in the bottomless hole. Isadora, not lost at all.Isadora—a litany in Azul’s head stopping her from punching the walls, from screaming until her words were madeof blood, from tearing her ribs apart so air could get into her lungs. From wrenching her heart out so it stopped hurting so much.
Esparza stepped up to her side, still skimming the sheath of his rapier. He did not like the situation—that much was obvious—but he had no stake in it. Maybe he would help her kill Enjul. Maybe he would stand aside and watch.
But he would not stop her.
And she had Nereida’s dagger, with its beautiful bone hilt.
Virel Enjul deserved to die. For his games. For Zenjiel’s death and the deaths he meant to cause when he caught the other necromancer’s victims.
