by Rhyll Biest
Valeda gave a wet scream as her bones shifted and knitted together. A bad time to learn that healing could be just as painful as the original injury. It twisted her and made her body jolt and dance in taut agony.
Wild-eyed, she searched for her brother but he’d left. As the pain from her healing subsided, she gasped, wet and limp. ‘He’s so strong, how is he that strong?’
‘Shhh.’ Lore brushed the hair matted with blood from Valeda’s aching face. ‘You’re lucky. He could have killed you but didn’t. I wouldn’t have been able to bring you back.’
Lucky? She didn’t feel lucky. Plus, she knew why he hadn’t killed her—because he had far worse plans for her. He’d just been playing with her, teaching her a lesson. ‘Where’s he getting all that power? Has he stolen it from others?’
Lore stared into the distance. ‘No, this comes from another archdemon; I recognise her stench. Cadere.’
The archdemon of Decay and Pestilence. That would fit in with her brother’s awful state, the resurrected armies, and what Adriel had said about the theft of dead pools. An awful suspicion grabbed hold of her. ‘You used me, didn’t you? You used me to lure my brother into a maleficence battle so you could work out who was helping him. Why? Why would you do that to me?’
‘Be sensible, it was a good strategy.’ Lore’s gaze searched hers. ‘Can’t you see that I’m helping you? Cadere is your real enemy here because your brother won’t last much longer. He’s absorbing and expending energy at a rate his physical body can’t sustain, a fact that Cadere doesn’t appear to care about. All you need to do is keep away until Paimon weakens and falls; then his army will flee.’
‘Keep away from him? How? We’re at war. And do you think he’s just going to keep away from me?’ Plus, Adriel’s curse threatened to claim him forever in a matter of days.
Lore’s eyes—soft, glowing white—met Valeda’s. ‘Be clever and hide. Save yourself and become great one day. You have what it takes to become an archdemon. Take the maleficence in your little pink Tupperware container and find out what it means to be truly free of the influence of others. Tell me, do you hear them?’
Who?
Us, the sibilant hiss of her maleficent guests whispered. The former hosts of your new power. ‘Yes, I hear them.’
Lore nodded. ‘They’ll grow quieter eventually. Though some are pushier than others. But don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.’
Yes, I’m sure once I lose my mind I won’t notice them at all.
‘Just think of them as imaginary friends.’ Lore’s smile was humourless.
Valeda frowned. ‘Why are you involving yourself in things here? Why now and not before?’
Lore smiled. ‘Because your brother’s new ally is my old enemy. And that makes your brother my enemy—and you my ally. Plus, I have a feeling that if you were to juice up just a little bit more, and I taught you some more tricks, we could take on Cadere together.’
As she took in Lore’s words, her jaw almost dropped. ‘You want me to help you kill an archdemon? I’m not crazy, you know.’
With a smile, Lore turned away, mist rising from the ground to caress the hem of her gown as she looked back over her shoulder. ‘You’ve learned all kinds of new things lately; I can smell them on you. Why not learn how to kill an archdemon?’
‘Perhaps you’d like me to arm-wrestle Lilith, as well?’
‘I hear roller derby is more her style.’ She winked. ‘Don’t be afraid to take the rest of that maleficence. You’ll never overcome your brother or Cadere without it, and what use is life without freedom?’ She wrapped herself in a cloak of mist and disappeared.
Slippery bitch. Valeda stared at the swirling fog in Lore’s wake. If she took the rest of the maleficence and became an archdemon, she could never take her heart back. In fact, Lore would probably insist on destroying it as archdemons with hearts were too unstable. Combining a heart with the traumatic memories of multiple former maleficence hosts was a recipe for deep-fried disaster.
So, keep her heart or destroy her brother? She could protect Adriel or love him, but she couldn’t do both. As she stared at the frozen wasteland surrounding her, her midsection tightened at the memory of her body tangling with Adriel’s, and the heat and sweat of long hours of intense sex. And there were … feelings.
A tide of protectiveness taller than a two-storey tsunami reared up in her. She would not lose him, not to the curse, not to her brother’s sword, not to anything. The whole of Hell could freeze over at her hands before she would allow that to happen. She paused. Where were all these protective feelings coming from? Her or her guests?
We loved too … and lost, the voices inside her whispered, tones black and heavy, and as thick as tar.
No. I’m not in love. That word stole all the air from her lungs and filled her mouth with dirt.
She shook her head. That had never happened to her; she’d never been buried alive. Why, then, could she smell dirt, feel it in her hair, mouth, nose and ears? She heard muffled sounds in the distance, far from her as she lay insulated by layers of dirt.
Us, a small voice whispered. We were entombed once.
Sweet Lilith. Her skin crawled, shivered, and tried to creep away from the horror. She had to take the rest of the maleficence. She had to. You can do this. Do it for your family, Adriel, the derby team. Do it because you’re a princess of Hell and you’re proud that your family name is a synonym for terror. She took a shuddering breath before she used the stars to work out the way back to camp.
Chapter 14
Back at camp, the sight of Fira and Missy high-fiving brought a faint smile to Valeda’s lips, as did the sound of Bad Karma’s cackling as she threatened Arvalis with a tit punch. Fanny Tastic, her head bandaged, lolled against a boulder watching, a grin on her lips and ale in her hand.
Valeda frowned. Why hadn’t Fanny Tastic’s wound been healed? Were all their healers lost? Adriel included? She’d searched for him without success, and he’d been gone for hours now.
Crashing emptiness, a mirror of the vast, frozen desolation she’d created on the battlefield, hammered at her. Sharp numbness crept up in its wake, sliding under her skin, seeping over hope and optimism, encapsulating them in dark melancholy.
A most unpleasant onslaught of feelings.
Were the feelings hers? Or were they from the former hosts of her borrowed maleficence? If so, no wonder Lore had elected not to consume it. She felt in her pocket for the plastic container. What would she feel after consuming the maleficence from Mnemnos, her brother’s lover?
A vile, bristly tongue lapped her nape at the grotesque thought.
She shuddered.
Forget about that. Where was Adriel and in what form? Did he need her help or was he lying dead somewhere already? The latter possibility settled over her like a wet shroud, thick and suffocating.
She sought escape by busying herself with issuing her legion commanders new instructions. When Lymenia returned, her armour so bespattered by different hues of blood she resembled a Jackson Pollock painting, Valeda smiled for the first time that day. Comforted by her sister’s return, she tried to sleep.
Only to fall into dark dreams laden with unimaginable despair.
At the bottom of a black chasm she was forced to look upon herself—a version she almost didn’t recognise—at just a century old, before she’d needed a wall to protect her against memories.
She had fought her brother’s soldiers, sweat trickling down her back beneath her armour. Her body swayed with the movements of her froth-lipped dread mare as her mount trampled fallen enemies and bit and kicked at foot soldiers. Valeda swung two lethally sharp swords of ice, discarding each as it found flesh before producing new ones. Around her the battle swirled, swords, spells and wills clashing. And by her side fought her beloved Marasat, tall and stern, his features too severe to be called anything as frivolous as handsome.
All around them death painted both earth and sky black, midnight arrows buried as thick as br
istles in dead and living bodies. Her gaze shied away from a soldier with his legs cleft off at the knees, only to settle upon a skull smashed in with a heavy rock.
Knee-deep in horror, brains and despair, Valeda longed to flee but couldn’t. Love for Marasat held her in place as effectively as nails hammered through her feet. As did the seething hate for her brother. Both emotions buzzed within her, feeding the death she rained on his army.
Bodies lay trampled, a slippery carpet underfoot, but there was no time to raise the injured, not with the hundreds of soldiers stalking the battlefield to mash helmets with maces, crushing the heads inside them.
Lilith curse her brother. Why had he attacked Marasat? Where would his jealousy end?
A fiery ball whizzed by, singeing her hair, and she turned her mare sharply, striking down the attacker with an ice blade through his neck. An arrow found her arm, sharp and eager for her blood. She pried it free with a grimace, her heart turning a lazy somersault at the sight of Marasat and Paimon hacking away at each other with battleaxes, their dread mares pirouetting, eyes rolling, as each manoeuvred for a better position.
Why did she feel despair looming as heavy as the yellow fog that had rolled in to stifle screams and shroud the carnage?
Her brother wanted blood but there wasn’t enough blood in Hell to fill his empty heart.
Paimon’s axe severed the neck of Marasat’s mount, the dread mare lurching to her knees with a scream. Valeda’s gut flipped as Marasat struggled to free his pinned leg from under his dead mount while Paimon dismounted, an awful grin splitting his lean face as he approached.
Paimon paused, his axe raised. ‘Kiss Hell and my sister goodbye. Neither will miss you.’
Valeda turned her mare sharply and hurled a ball of ice at her brother’s head. She had the satisfaction of seeing him knocked flat to the ground.
She slid off her mare and ran to Marasat. How was she going to move half a ton of dread mare off him? Ice was her forte, not lifting dead horses.
‘Valeda.’ Marasat raised his head at her approach, pale face set in a grimace.
His voice, threaded with pain, spurred her on. ‘Help me,’ she called to the closest soldiers.
Two broke off from fighting to run to her side. With them she hauled at the dead weight of the mare until sweat trickled down the side of her face and stung her eyes. By the time the carcass budged, her chest heaved with exertion.
Freed, Marasat staggered to his feet, one leg bent at an odd angle, and embraced her. He rested his chin on her head. ‘You did it. Killed him.’
She looked over to where Paimon lay facedown in the mud and filth. ‘Looks like it.’ The shock of it buzzed bright through her veins as she struggled for breath and tried to shake the lactic acid from her arms. She’d actually killed him, her brother.
What did that make her?
Marasat startled her by grabbing her hands. ‘Princess, will you marry me?’
She laughed before she could stop herself. Of course she would marry him but it was so ridiculous proposing to her in the middle of a battle.
Marasat’s smile faded. ‘Are you laughing at me?’
‘No, never, it’s just that—’
Marasat’s eyes widened in horror and she frowned just before a hot blade sliced through her side, the force of the blow tipping her sideways. She fell, hands extended, to land on the carpet of filth and carnage below, Marasat’s horrified face disappearing from view.
For far too long she lay stunned, gasping and choking on the stench of death. Blood and other hot, sticky things seeped between her fingers as she struggled to sit up, a hand pressed to her side to keep everything in, to keep herself together. Navy blood spilled through her fingers and she stared at it for several shallow, gasping breaths before raising her gaze.
Marasat fought Paimon. They’d discarded swords for daggers and she followed the furious but silent wrestling match between the two, her heart filled with spikes until Marasat held the struggling Paimon firmly pinned down.
This was it, her brother was really finished this time.
Paimon turned his head to meet her gaze, his helmet warped by the ice she’d hurled at him, his ash-coloured eyes an ocean of conflict. He held out a hand to her. ‘Sister.’
She grimaced. ‘Don’t call me that.’
A shadow crossed his face and she hated herself for the pity she felt. Yes, he had grown up unloved and lonely, the son of a queen who wanted no sons, but it didn’t excuse what he’d done.
If only she hadn’t once loved him, if only she didn’t feel trapped in the sticky web of his devotion to her, and didn’t remember his sweet, gentle nature. He was sweet right up to the moment he decided to kill her lover.
He blew her a kiss. For a second she thought it an ironic gesture, until his breath slammed into her. Under his gaze her lungs turned buttery in her chest. She cried out, cringing as she vomited a great gout of diseased blood—oily and overripe, black and thick as molasses. The pain from the wound in her side shrank to nothing in the face of her disintegration from the inside.
Choking.
Drowning.
Where had all the air gone? Pressure built in her head, threatening to expel her eyes and her tongue as she gasped through a gelatinous mass. Grotesque red dots danced before her eyes.
Marasat threw her an anguished glance but was too clever to drop his dagger and run to her aid. Killing her brother was the quickest way to save her.
He hacked and pried at Paimon with renewed vigour but even as she sank to her side, becoming part of the carpet of dead and dying, her lungs unable to catch any air, she saw a mace-bearing soldier rush him from behind.
No. She jackknifed into a sitting position, eyes wide, dry-mouthed and breathless, nausea circling her.
She was alone, a wall of skin encircling her. The tent. Recognition calmed her, as did the warm bulk of the skins covering her. A nightmare, she’d had a nightmare, nothing more. Although even as she told herself the lie, she knew the truth. The wall had come down, and long-dammed memories were flooding her brain, hard truths nesting in the flood debris.
They were not dreams; they were memories, very bad memories but not the worst of them.
A cold blast of air rushed her. A dagger of ice slid from her palm before her conscious mind even absorbed what it was doing.
Adriel paused at the sight of her, his hand resting on the open tent flap.
Beneath the blanket she quietly dropped her lethal blade. ‘Where have you been?’
The glance he flicked her was half despair, half defiance. ‘I’d tell you if I knew.’
Oh.
He stood silently, his hands planted on his hips as he stared at her. Why didn’t he say anything? Had he worked out that she’d summoned Mnemnos? Had Paimon told him? He kept staring at her.
She frowned. ‘What is it?’
‘I’m trying to decide whether to tan your backside before I kill Justice or after.’
Ah, someone had talked. ‘It wasn’t as dangerous as it sounds.’ What a lie. Her mother would be proud of her.
‘Really? So those twenty thousand reanimated enemy demons just wanted to rub your feet and read you poetry?’
She smiled. ‘You were afraid for me?’
His eyes met hers. ‘Wouldn’t you have been for me?’ Without warning he dropped to her bed and hooked an arm around her to clasp her to him. She sighed and allowed her eyes to close as he stroked her face and buried his nose in her hair.
Why, just as she’d found him, did she have to give him up? Pressed so tightly against him, she could feel his heart’s wild dance inside his chest. ‘I had to do it; your soldiers were surrounded.’
An odd rumble vibrated against her. A growl? The sound reminded her that she possibly only had a day or two to save him from a life spent on four legs.
He pushed her hair away from her face, giving her his most domineering frown. ‘I don’t care if they’re under attack from an army of horny koalas, don’t put yourself at risk
like that again.’
She snorted. ‘I just destroyed nearly a whole legion with ice, so I’m not exactly helpless.’ A tiny lie by omission since she’d also almost been reduced to paste by her brother.
His eyes narrowed. ‘So I heard.’ He stroked her throat with a fingertip as he studied her face. What was he looking for? Her thoughts drifted back to the battle even as his touch ignited her senses. ‘Your army needs to strike while you have the advantage, before Paimon can reanimate more dead. I’ve instructed your legions on where to take up position.’ The absence of pain caused by thinking about her brother almost spooked her.
‘Can’t I just take a moment to appreciate the fact that my wife is still alive after facing an army of undead?’ He stroked her collarbone and for a moment she allowed herself to pretend that nothing existed but Adriel’s hands on her, his signature energy suffusing her with calm.
He was right, they should enjoy this moment. And yet guilt nibbled at her, starching her body. What would he say if he knew her role in his brother’s injury? That she’d done many treacherous things in the long span of her life, but that this was the first time one of those things had buried itself under her skin like a tick, bloating itself on her guilt?
She caught his hand in hers and kissed it. ‘I’m not just alive but healed. Ask me whatever you want about my brother.’
‘Healed? Completely?’ Hope warmed his silver eyes.
‘I’m not sure, but I remember everything now.’ Hate, she especially remembered hate, the kind that rode you with razor-sharp spurs. There could be no rest for her until she’d destroyed Paimon for what he’d done to her, for what he’d done to those she loved. For poisoning love itself.
***
Adriel caught his breath. It felt like someone had taken all the pieces of his chest and rearranged them. That was probably the closest Valeda had ever got to expressing her feelings for him. No mushy words for his princess, or flowers, just the offer of information, the thing she valued most. He hugged her tighter, burying his nose in the cascade of hair falling down her back and savouring the scent of freshly fallen snow.
