The trembling skaxen woman shrieked in rage, her open mouth lined with fangs contorting her already rat-like face. Then she lunged toward the drow in the passageway.
L’zar danced away from her and cast a spell with a quick, one-handed gesture. Raesh careened into an invisible wall before she could set foot out of the chamber and shrieked again, ignoring the dark blood spraying from her broken nose as she clawed at the shield he’d cast around her. “I’ll kill you! I swear it. I’ll kill you myself! Do you hear me?”
“In a fortnight, my dear, you can do whatever you want.” L’zar headed down the corridor again with an extra spring in his step. “Until then, I’d be careful about making promises you aren’t sure you can keep.”
The skaxen shrieked again, fighting both the shield and her fellow conspirators, who were trying to draw her back into the chamber as someone inside activated the doors to slide shut again. L’zar looked over his shoulder at Cheyenne and widened his eyes. “And everyone thinks I have anger issues.”
The halfling slowly shook her head and shot a final brief glance into the chamber before the doors fully shut. Some of the magicals stared at her, their faces lined with a mix of disgust and fear. Then the doors clanged shut, muffling Raesh’s furious screams on the other side.
Ember floated beside her as they continued after the drow thief, intent who was on stirring up trouble. “That was intense.”
Cheyenne snorted. “Yeah. That is why everyone wants to kill him.”
“Not everyone, Cheyenne.” Ten feet ahead of them, L’zar thrust a slender finger in the air but didn’t turn around. “Just those who think they’re better than the rest of us.”
“Like you?”
He laughed. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic. I have a special set of skills, and it takes a rare mind to fully appreciate their scope. I most certainly don’t fall into the category of O’gúleesh who want to kill me.”
Chuckling softly as they came upon another branching set of corridors, L’zar pointed at various places in the walls, illuminating bright flashes of yellow and blue in the grooved metal before doors and walls in places Cheyenne couldn’t see opened and closed and responded in whatever way he commanded. Frustrated shouts rose from one branching corridor on their right, followed by bursts of raucous laughter from a passage coming up on their left.
“Get back here and face me, Weaver!”
“The Crown should have killed you when she turned the Cycle!”
“Rot in the abyss!”
Cheyenne looked straight ahead as the shouted curses of enraged magicals echoed after them down the hall. The laughter on their left came from a group of yellow-skinned gremlins streaked with black grease and soot. They raised tankards of a thick drink that looked like blackened oil in a toast as L’zar danced past them.
“About time someone closed off that bridge.”
“Honor, Cu’ón!”
“Where you goin’, L’zar? You missed two other lounges back down that way.”
L’zar stopped in front of the snickering gremlins and pointed behind him. “The doors to the safes are wide open. It would be a shame to leave them unattended for so long.”
The gremlins started cackling, spilling their oozing black-sludge drinks all over themselves as they fell into each other and tried to raise more toasts at the same time.
Ember laughed with them, and the gremlins raised an indecipherable shout with something about a fae at the end. She elbowed Cheyenne in the side and stuck her thumb over her shoulder as they followed L’zar away from the gremlin celebration. “That sounded a lot like he was telling those yellow guys to go rob the magicals who hate him.”
Cheyenne glared at her father’s back as he pointed randomly at different areas in the wall and hummed a careless tune. “He can play drow Robin Hood all he wants. I’m not buying it.”
L’zar laughed. “Such a warm welcome home, don’t you think?”
“Not really. Do you have to screw with everybody like this?”
He whirled around and pointed at her. “Yes. Yes, I do. You have no idea what I’ve done and how long I’ve waited for this day, Cheyenne. Stop trying to ruin it for me.”
She peered behind her at the still-echoing shouts of the angry magicals behind them. “This isn’t how you get people excited about you being back and your daughter challenging the Crown.”
L’zar blinked slowly and stopped before a final turn in the hallway. When he turned, his smile was gone. “Stop talking about any of this like you understand a fraction of it. This is my city, Cheyenne. It’ll be yours soon if you want it enough, but I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t. I certainly don’t, but I suggest you embrace what’s happening. You don’t want to make them think you’re ungrateful, do you?”
“What?”
Holding her gaze, L’zar cast another spell on the wall in front of him. It shimmered with green and orange light that converged into the four-pointed star symbol. The illusion covered by the wards fell away, and two massive metal doors studded with two-inch bolts down either side stood at the end of the corridor. “They’re waiting. I did all this for you, Aranél. Don’t forget.”
Leaping backward, L’zar threw his full weight onto the metal doors, and they burst open into the main room of his secret bunker below the capital city of Ambar’ogúl. Without another word, he turned and strolled through the open doors like he owned the place.
Technically, I guess he does.
Ember peered through the doors at the short staircase leading into the room beyond. The dozens of voices inside faded into an eerie, expectant silence. “That last part sounded pretty genuine.”
“He’s had thousands of years to practice sounding genuine, Em. Come on.” Cheyenne headed through the doors down the staircase. “We better be done with surprises today.”
Chapter Four
When Cheyenne and Ember descended the short, wide staircase into the room beyond, the entire crowd of L’zar’s rebels stared up at them in silence. The doors
