by Cate Corvin
There was an ebonite collar around his throat as well, the blackness of the metal stark against his golden skin. I didn’t need two guesses to know it prevented him from directly harming the Queen.
Ereshkigal settled in her throne, smirking at us. “You’re not the only bird I possess, little one. Let’s pair the children of Heaven and see which of you walks away.”
Michael stuck his pinky in his ear and twisted it around. He flicked whatever he found in the Queen’s general direction. “The ugly broad really likes to hear herself talk.”
Dear God. He was going to get himself slaughtered on the spot.
Ereshkigal’s sharp nails tightened on the arms of her throne. “Give him a sword.”
As though the Irkallans knew that she was furious and liable to take it out on them, one of them selected a rusty sword with a bent blade from a weapon rack and threw it into the arena below.
Michael picked it up and waved it around. “The fuck is this?”
“Michael, you should try to get out of here,” I said under my breath, putting my back to the Queen. “What about Raphael?”
The ebonite collar shouldn’t prevent him from making an escape, but there was always a small chance it’d hold him as tightly as mine held me. She had all of us under her thumb as pets.
“I came here to look for him.” The archangel gave the bent sword a skeptical look, then threw it over the side of the arena. “He’s not here.”
There was a long silence before the sword hit the river with a splash. Michael dusted off his hands.
“Let’s give the bitch her show, Mel.”
God, he was insane. Maybe the century in a coffin had scrambled his brains.
I raised my sword and slid into a defensive crouch, circling Michael as he danced around on the pillar. Despite myself, a soft laugh burst out of my mouth.
If there was one person who legitimately had no fucks left to give about anything, it was Michael.
I lunged in with the sword, but he stepped aside easily. He spun around and pointed at the Queen with an exaggerated wink.
“She’ll torture you,” I hissed, but Michael just laughed.
“I’ve been tortured before,” he said. “If you’ve done it once, you’ve done it a thousand times.”
“Easy for you to say.” My grumble went unheeded as I spun into another slash, which Michael easily avoided.
I circled on the pillar and caught sight of the balcony.
Belial was there, flanked by Lucifer. The two of them stared at Michael with narrowed eyes, making it very clear how they would react if he laid so much as a single finger on me.
I attacked Michael with zeal after that, but even my clearest strikes missed him by inches.
Sweat was dripping down my back when I finally pulled back.
“Not bad, sister, but I’ve been doing this for thousands of years.” Michael tossed his gold hair out of his face. “Same old song and dance.”
He flapped his wings and did a little two-step dance, grinning at Ereshkigal.
The Queen snarled from the balcony above us. “Do you find this amusing?”
Michael stopped, staring dead into her eyes. “Yeah, I do.”
I swallowed a sudden surge of fear in my throat. He was one of the seven archangels. He would heal from any pain Ereshkigal inflicted on him.
And maybe he just didn’t care. He didn’t seem like he cared about much of anything at all.
Michael leaned in close to me and said out of the corner of his mouth, “You take her dignity, you take her power over you. They’re all the same. Don’t be afraid.”
I was about to reply when a tendril of darkness smacked the bone-handled sword out of my hands.
There was no time to struggle before Ereshkigal wrapped that darkness around me and lifted me in the air, carrying me back to the balcony. My arms were pinned at my sides, my wings to my back.
She stood at the edge, dangling me in the air over the drop to the river below. “Let’s have some real entertainment, then.”
I struggled against the bonds, to no avail.
Michael yawned. “Do whatever you want. I’m having a grand time.”
Ereshkigal just smiled.
My toes touched solid ground as she deposited me on the ebonite shelf of the balcony, and then strong arms wrapped around me, replacing the tendrils of darkness.
I breathed in herbs and sea salt. Azazel had me. I almost relaxed until I felt his hand move.
Something cold and sharp pressed against my throat.
“Beast of flames, take up a sword.”
Belial and Lucifer glared at Azazel with identical expressions of fury, but Belial reached out automatically for the sword one of the guards offered him.
Azazel ran his fingers through my hair, a soft, sensuous motion, but the knife didn’t move from my neck.
Ereshkigal strode away, her back hunching as she became a crone. “For every cheap shot you take, the Prince will cut her.” She gave Belial a thin smile. “Make your blows count.”
Without a backwards glance, he plunged into the arena below, slashing at Michael like his life—well, mine, really—depended on it.
The first blow opened a long slice down Michael’s arm. The second cut a white feather in half like it was butter.
But Michael was still grinning, ducking and dodging Belial’s furious onslaught. Every time Belial landed a hit, the last wound had healed, leaving him streaked with blood but unharmed.
Even if Azazel cut me, I would now heal the same way as he did. I started to lean to the side, intending to snake my way out of his grasp, but Ereshkigal caught the slight movement and laughed, her hand rising to cover her mouth.
“Show her the blade, Prince.”
Moving like an automaton, he lifted his hand from my neck.
It was no ordinary dagger, but one crafted from ebonite. The matte black metal had a poisonous green sheen that slid across the blade.
“It was made for your kind, little bird.” Ereshkigal tapped her nails on her throne, her attention only half-focused on the fight below. “I’ve seen how you heal now, but remember, you’re not infallible. One slice of that blade will have you in agony for hours.” She sucked on her lower lip in anticipation. “And if your skin heals over and traps the poison inside you, maybe even days. Oh, what fun that would be.”
Azazel returned the blade to my throat.
I glared at her, not daring to move. Azazel was a solid pillar of stone at my back, his left arm draped around my waist to hold me in place.
I felt his face against my hair. He took a deep breath and sighed.
No matter what she’d done to him, I knew that deep down he remembered me and knew what I was to him.
The clang of a sword hitting stone echoed through Kur from the arena floor. Michael had pinned Belial to the floor and was trying to strangle him.
Belial shifted into his lion form, roaring at the archangel and knocking him aside. Several white feathers flew into the air.
Azazel ducked his head and breathed into my ear, “Remember what you learned.”
I stiffened in his grasp. That sounded exactly like the Azazel I knew, his tones clipped instead of lazy.
He squeezed me gently, despite the knife at my throat. “Look to your right.”
I glanced over the Queen’s head at the wall of the throne room. Inanna’s near-corpse hung there, her blonde hair swaying in a faint breeze.
I dropped my gaze, not wanting to be caught staring at the woman whose mere mention sent Ereshkigal into a rage.
But Ereshkigal was frowning down at the spectacle. I wondered how soon it would be until she found an excuse to force Azazel’s hand.
It wasn’t the bloodshed that was fun for her, but ripping apart people’s bonds and setting them at each other’s throats.
And whatever Inanna had been before, she was the key for me. I just had no idea how her desiccated remains factored into it.
Belial swung for Michael and missed when the
archangel twisted backwards.
Ereshkigal sat up straight in her seat, a wide smile stretching across her lips. “Oh, you didn’t try hard enough. What a shame.”
She waved a hand at Azazel, her fingers glittering with rings. “Cut her.”
I tensed in his grip. Was Azazel really in there… or was he just Ereshkigal’s puppet, his blood bound to her will?
The knife grazed the vulnerable skin of my throat and settled there.
I felt a tremor run through him, and the knife trembled in his hand. It didn’t come any closer to slicing my skin, as though he were making a monumental effort to hold himself back.
Ereshkigal stood, her claws flexing. “Cut her, blood of my blood.” A wave of sickening power emanated from her, washing over us and settling on Azazel.
She would force him if she had to.
Azazel let out a low hiss of a breath and jerked his hand away. The knife flew over the edge of the balcony.
He released me and disappeared in a whirl of shadows.
The Queen’s lips drew back over her teeth as I wavered in place, suddenly off-balance without Azazel holding me up.
She held up a hand and snapped her fingers. Guards lowered gangways and descended to the arena, driving the lion and archangel apart with spears.
Ereshkigal’s gaze dropped to my stomach. “I suppose you will get a reprieve from pain, although you do not deserve it.”
Lucifer took a step towards me, anger still contorting his face. Several guards dropped the spears in front of him, blocking his path.
“No, Lucifer,” I said quietly. We were already on treacherous ground. There was only so far we could push until the Queen’s patience snapped.
“Attend me.” Ereshkigal swept away.
I glanced at the arena, where Michael’s cage was being lowered so he could be shoved back into it.
Belial’s burning gaze caught mine. I mouthed, I’ll come to you soon.
He roared, the sound echoing after me as I followed the Queen.
14
Melisande
I followed her through darkened halls I’d never walked before, the perfect image of a submissive, faithful handmaiden.
But inside the handmaiden was nothing but seething hatred.
I had no doubt Azazel was not soul-bound, like Lucifer; he was bound in a different sort of way.
He’d lived here for thousands of years prior to becoming the Watcher he was today. Humanity had made blood sacrifices to him on altars in the desert above us. They’d fed his power bit by bit, each sacrifice another drop in the already vast pool of it he’d been born with.
We’d all seen what he’d been in the Between, a god of death, shadows, and endless hunger.
He might have left it, but this place, Kur, was his natural habitat. His birthplace.
I stared daggers at Ereshkigal’s back. Since he was her direct blood descendant, she would have a certain amount of sway over him as a Prime power. If God were alive and appeared in front of me right now, I had no doubt I could no more disobey him than Azazel could disobey Ereshkigal.
But he was in there, and he wanted me to remember.
I jerked out of my reverie when gossamer curtains brushed my face. Ereshkigal had led me down a hall guttering with torches, the glittering curtains swaying in a faint breeze. The onyx droplets dangling from the hems tinkled like music as she passed beneath them.
The hall opened on a large room, with another balcony overlooking a drop-off. Ereshkigal’s bed was enormous, strewn with silk sheets and sheer canopies.
She sat at a dressing table piled with literal mounds of gold and silver jewelry and gestured to a hairbrush. “Let us speak while you tend to me. I realize I was harsh in my dealings with you; we don’t want to harm the infant.”
Of course not. Bitch.
I silently walked behind her and reached to pick up the brush. Ereshkigal’s dark eyes focused on my reflection in the mirror as I began smoothing it through her hair.
“You wonder why I call you little sister.” It was a question, but she said it flatly.
I wound a length of black silk over my palm, and it turned white. “I do. There’s no blood relation between us, my Queen.”
The brush caught in the pale wires of the crone’s hair and I carefully pulled it away.
Fortunately, my use of her title seemed to mollify her enough not to snap. Michael was right; all these power-hungry Primes were weak where their egos counted.
“It’s strange,” she mused. “There is no blood relation, hardly a physical resemblance, and yet when you approached my throne… it was like standing in the desert eons ago, the sun on my skin, the wind in my hair…”
She stroked her claws down her arms as the wrinkled flesh smoothed out.
“It was like watching her all over again. She gave up everything at the Seven Gates of Kur, but strode towards me like she was still a queen.”
Ereshkigal’s eyes glittered and her red mouth thinned.
“She was not a queen. She was weakened and diminished. For all that she was the representation of love, she was full of nothing but greed.”
I resumed brushing the glossy black hair in my hands, looking away from Ereshkigal’s furious gaze. “What did she do, my Queen?”
I hadn’t felt anything like greed from Inanna’s remaining power, only her sorrow.
“She was a whore,” Ereshkigal hissed. Her clawed feet scratched the floor as she shifted, a dry, rasping sound that made my teeth ache. “She couldn’t just stay in the realms above and be happy with the god who’d won her.”
Won her? I felt a deep sympathy for Inanna. Perhaps Belial and I would have played out the same way, if we hadn’t opened up to each other and discovered that we were mirrors of both deep rage and love, reflecting each other.
I would never have loved someone who won me like the spoils of war and thought that gave them the right to keep me.
“The god Tammuz defeated her in battle and took her for his wife, but my sister… she had no gratitude that he’d allowed her to live. She loathed him for giving her jewels and riches.”
Sounded like Inanna and I would’ve gotten along just fine.
“She followed Tammuz into another war, where she was badly injured.” I heard a creaking sound, and realized it was Ereshkigal’s teeth grinding together. “Nergal and I were there. He vanished.”
“Tammuz thought Inanna was dead, but he didn’t stop to mourn her death. We celebrated our victory, and years later… I found my bitch of a sister. She was alive, and Nergal had left me to nurse her back to health.”
The words started spilling out of her, like a dam breaking.
“They were living together,” she spat. “Nergal told me that he loathed me and the chains tying him to the Underworld, and that he wished to live under the sun with her.”
My breath caught in my throat. Nergal had always been a slave to Ereshkigal’s will.
“I brought my consort home. He was given to me by my father, and here in Kur he would stay. I told Tammuz where his wife had gone, and he brought her back with him in chains.”
“But my idiot sister… instead of enjoying her second chance at life, to live as a king’s consort, she slit his throat in his sleep. The bitch summoned what small army she had left and rode for Kur, where she traded everything she had to be granted entrance.”
“I realized the moment she looked at me who she had really come for. She had come to steal my consort from me again.”
I realized I had stopped brushing her hair, and met Ereshkigal’s eyes in the mirror.
“You are the same way,” she told me. “You have that same look, someone who believes they can walk in and take what they want and suffer no consequences for it. Nergal was given to me. He was mine.”
I dared to speak to my mind. “But why keep him, if he never loved you or wanted to be here? Why not find someone else?”
Ereshkigal tilted her head, pulling her silky hair out of my hands. “And just like her, this
is where you fail to understand. I told you, little sister: if you let another take your power, you allow them to undermine you.”
“I know Nergal has always despised me, but what do I care? I own him. His body and soul are mine. When my sister tried to steal him, she tried to undermine my authority as the Queen of Kur. There is only one punishment for that.”
“Death,” I murmured, holding the hairbrush loosely at my side.
She was completely remorseless. She’d rather condemn Nergal to a lifetime of servitude to her than allow him the tiny bit of happiness he’d clung to.
I supposed I shouldn’t be surprised. Ereshkigal was the Queen of the Dead, the Eater of Souls… she was the goddess of despair.
What could cause more despair than breaking people apart into tiny pieces and taking everything they loved?
Nergal had had to spend eons looking at his dead love’s body hung on the wall like a decoration.
Ereshkigal might be a Prime power, but she reminded me of those gods whose memories were encased in the Between, like insects in amber: ruthless, bloodthirsty, living to satisfy her own ego and nothing else.
In some ways she was almost juvenile, like a child ripping the wings off a butterfly. There was little sophistication to her arts as long as she caused pain.
It was something she and Satan had in common. Maybe they’d both lived long enough to slowly atrophy, until they were no longer gods, but ravenous black holes that fed on suffering.
“Yes,” she said, with a genuine smile this time. “Death. When you are released from my service, you will leave with the gift of knowledge. It’s the only gift I can give you, besides your own life.”
“But you will be taking my child from me.” I somehow managed to say it without my voice trembling.
Ereshkigal twisted in her seat to face me. She was painfully lovely when she looked like nothing more than a maiden, as pale as death, her lips so scarlet they looked like they’d been painted with blood.
“There is deep power in a blood sacrifice. It is one of the most ancient arts we possess. When your child, your own bloodline, is given to me, we will be bound forever.” She ran a clawed nail through her hair, tossing it over her shoulder. “Much like my grandson and I. His father had the audacity to run off with an angel, but one of the little bird’s own kind betrayed her and left the infant at the gates of Kur, along with her severed wings. Heaven had no room for a child of my darkness, so I raised him myself.”
