I was stronger than this. I was stronger than it all.
And somehow, I would save him too.
“I love you,” he whispered. It sounded like a goodbye.
“You’re not doing that, Laran. You’re not leaving me. I’m right—”
A sudden dull ache filled me, like I had been dropped a hundred stories and then dragged through the street. My back was against something solid and sticky. I clenched my fingers but only found the scratch of my nails against stone.
No. No. No. Where was he? I never let go. Where was Laran?
My eyes flew open as I bent up at the waist and an onset of nausea and dizziness filled me.
“Whoa there—”
“Take it easy, Rubes—”
“Where is he?” I whispered. Broken. Splintered. I turned on Moira and her eyes shuttered. “Where is he, Moira?” I growled, louder this time. Stronger. The muscles in my chest were knitting themselves back together the more I spoke. The bones and cartilage were bending and reshaping and reconnecting the longer I was here. But it was him, the loss of him that filled me so deeply, so acutely, that every single ache and pain and slice and break was nothing.
“I’m sorry,” she said. Her pentagram eyes swirled with emotion when she opened them to look at me. “I’m so sorry, Ruby. Laran…he’s…gone.”
Gone.
Gone.
Gone.
It rang in my ears like the last nail in a coffin and I screamed. My head whipped back and forth as I searched for his body on the charred shores of the Garden. Lilith was gone, and so were my other Horsemen.
But Laran, he was dead.
I crawled on all fours, wading through the congealing blood. His beautiful tanned skin was no more. His body pale and void of warmth, his eyes stared, wide open and unflinching even in the face of death. A raw sound erupted from my throat as I started pounding on his chest. “I told you not to leave me,” I screamed. “I told you not to go!”
“Ruby—”
“Let her be,” Jax whispered to her. “She just lost her mate, the others were taken, and Lilith has the beast. Give her a moment to grieve.”
What they were saying didn’t register. They sounded far away and cloudy. A vague feeling swimming through the haze that was consuming me as I beat his chest and screamed and cried. “Please don’t be dead…I’m sorry…please don’t. Please don’t. I’m so sorry…”
My tears ran down my face and onto his body, mixing with his blood. I begged and pleaded with him, and when that didn’t work, I begged and pleaded for someone else. Anyone else. Save him. It was all I wanted.
“If there is anyone out there in this world or the next that can hear me”—I gasped for breath as the hyperventilating began and I choked on my words—“save him,” I sobbed. “It’s all I ask. Bring him…back to…me.” Tears and snot ran down my face as my throat clogged from too much emotion. I don’t know what prompted me to say the words, but in that moment, I would pray to God herself if she would save him.
“You summoned me?” a woman said. Her voice sounded strange here. Too light for the gravity of loss I was experiencing. I wheeled around, covering as much of him as I could with my own body.
The person I saw…
“You’re—”
“Morvaen. You freed me, Daughter of Hell.”
Holy shit. Had I actually called a Seelie into Hell? I tried to see through the tears, but my puffy eyelids blurred my vision. The cavern went silent, as if they just realized the being in our midst was not one that had walked in this world for a very long time.
“Why are you here?” my voice cracked and the features of her face softened.
“You summoned me, my lady. The rune upon your arm was activated. What is it you ask?”
My breath hitched in my throat. Was there really a chance…was this the universe’s way of telling me it wasn’t over? That this wasn’t the end…
“Save him,” I choked out. “I don’t care what you have to do. Just save him.”
A murmur rippled through the room as Morvaen got to her knees beside me. Compassion was there in her silver eyes as she reached for the man I protected even in death. I scrambled to the side, watching her every movement as she began to draw.
Symbols. So many symbols she placed on his chest. His face. His arms.
Magic filled the air, but this time it was not dark or violent.
Like a warm breeze at the end of winter, I felt the first ray of hope.
Morvaen reached for me and I didn’t hesitate to stop her as she started placing the same symbols on my skin. She drew orange runes over every inch of my back, a heaviness building in the space around me. The gravity of it weighing me down.
The very instant her hands lifted from my skin I felt the pressure that had shaped around me snap. The air stood still. My throat constricted each time I tried to take a breath, and as the edges of my vision started to go dark, I heard it.
The beating of a heart.
Part II
Chapter 14
Laran let out a choking rasp and the vice around my throat released. An influx of oxygen flooded me and I collapsed forward onto him. The coppery tang of blood laced with his scent of firewood and smoke filled me with…peace. I had feared it would never return. That he would never return. That this soul-crushing loss would be so deep that I might never overcome it because a piece of me had gone to the veil and beyond.
But that piece came back when his arms tightened around me.
“I told you I wasn’t letting you go,” I breathed.
“I never doubted you,” he whispered.
All wasn’t right in the world. Three of my mates were missing. Lilith was gone, and she took the beast with her.
I came here for my crown and lost my life.
Now…I was coming for it all, and this time…
I looked to my best friend and the enigma that watched over her carefully—to my raccoon and the way he sat at Laran’s feet—to the four horses that now watched over us—to the crowd of demons staying as far away as they possibly could—and finally, to the dark-skinned Fae sitting across from me
“Thank you,” I told her.
“I owed you a debt, Ruby Morningstar. Now it is paid.” Her eyes searched as she took in our surroundings. “But I must ask, where are we?” The brush with death one too many times had left me exhausted to the bone and a weary grimace was all I managed.
“You can’t tell?” She eyed me warily and I took that as a no. “We’re in Hell.”
Her mouth fell open and she said, “You summoned me…to Hell?”
“It appears so.”
She went quiet, then, “How?”
I groaned, pressing my cheek against the steadily heating skin of Laran’s chest. “I’m not entirely sure.” Rough hands clung to my side, his fingernails biting into the skin as he held me, almost as if he feared letting me go.
“I see,” she said eventually. Her dark lips curved downward before she turned and started to assess the demons cowering in the corner. “Should we be worrying about them?” she asked.
“Probably,” I grit my teeth against the soreness in my muscles as I tried to pull myself up. Laran was there helping me even as his own limbs shook with exertion. The clacking of hooves and a wet nose pressed against my face had me pausing to look over at the ridiculously large mare. Her soulful eyes looked deep into mine as she pressed her muzzle against me and then brushed up against Laran.
“Hey girl,” he murmured to Epona. His gentle hands brushed over her side as he muttered sweet things under his breath. It filled me with a sort of bittersweetness. I was so grateful that he was here and alive to soothe his familiar, but as I looked over at the other three horses…my heart broke all over again.
Tears threatened to fall from my eyes, but I couldn’t wallow in my grief. I took a deep breath and scooped up Bandit, letting his claws prick my bare skin as he climbed up to my shoulder. The light flashes of pain grounded me, reminding me of Julian and what I
stood to lose should I fail. Emotion swelled in my throat, making me swallow hard.
A shuffling of feet drew my attention to the crowd as it parted and a hollow-eyed Iona stepped forward. In an instant something shifted inside of me. I growled, waiting for the beast’s snide remarks about skinning her alive while fire danced just beneath the skin of my fingers. But there was no beast and there was no fire. Only glittering ashes and memories.
That pissed me off even more. I strode forward as a snarl ripped from my lips and Iona, she had enough wherewithal to flinch, but made no move to block me as I swung a wild right hook that landed true. Her breath stuttered as her neck whipped around. A crunch echoed across the cavern. She fell to her knees before me and wept.
I grit my teeth against the urge to wrap my hand in her hair and see just how many times I had to smash her face into the stone for her head to crack open. Violence wasn’t my first choice. It had never been, until the beast.
And now it seemed that she had changed me inexplicably. The call for restitution rode me hard, even as she let out the most awful sobs, blood and snot and tears smearing her face. “I’m so sorry,” she cried. I wanted to kill her, but deep down I knew she wasn’t the one at fault. Not truly.
“She stabbed me in the chest six times. She killed me. She killed Laran. Now she has the beast and took my Horsemen for Devil knows what,” I spat harshly. “It’s a bit late for sorry, Iona.”
I turned my back on her. There would be no forgiveness for what she had done. Not now. Not in a hundred years. I may not kill her, but she could live with the guilt.
Feeble fingers grasped for my ankle. I stilled. “Rysten and I were raised together. I love him, not as a mate—as a brother—and he loved me.”
“You have a fine way of showing it,” I replied scathingly. She winced, but didn’t contradict me.
“Your father saw that he cared and threw me into the burning lake of Inferna. I would have died…I did die…but Lilith saved me. She gave me life in return for my soul and that debt was only paid by bringing you here.” She shuddered again, her teeth clanking as the adrenaline in her system crashed. “I didn’t know he would love you,” she whispered. “I-I didn’t know s-s-she would take him t-too.”
“If you’re telling me this because you hope you’ll get sympathy from me, you’re shit out of luck. You didn’t just bring this on yourself. You brought this down on me and mine, and for that…” For the shaking mess that she was, I was the picture of indifference. It was that or fall apart, and I couldn’t do that again. Not here. Not in this moment. “I could have understood your hate for me after what my father did to you, but you sold your fucking soul. What did you think would come of it?”
“I didn’t know,” she sobbed.
I smiled coldly because that was a lie. I no longer had my empath powers, but I didn’t need them to know what she felt. “You knew. You just didn’t care. You thought you’d have Rysten in the end and I’d be the spawn of Satan Lilith told you I would be.” I turned and strode away, not even flinching as her wailing echoed through the cavern. The sound of despair cemented me in that moment. Her pain kept me from coming unhinged. It calmed me. Even though my hands shook with the need to break something. The need to burn something.
I no longer had even a trace of power. I could feel that as steadily as the bond between Laran and I. She’d taken everything, and while I might be immortal…I was useless.
I was weaker than I’d ever been in my life. I’d lost three pieces of my heart. I’d lost a part of my soul in the beast. I’d lost my powers, and the next time I came face-to-face with Lilith I would fucking roar.
But first I needed to find my way out of here.
“We need to leave. It’s not safe here,” I began, pausing when I registered Jax was still here.
After I’d burned every inch of the cavern… he should be ashes right now. But he wasn’t.
“We need to get to Inferna,” Laran said.
“Find the Sins,” Moira agreed. I continued watching Jax while she spoke, analyzing his every move. “Ruby, why do you look like you’re about to stab someone?” Her voice was weary.
“You should have died,” I said to Jax. His eyes narrowed on me, but I couldn’t tell if it was confusion or something darker.
“What do you mean?” Moira asked, looking between us.
“I mean I let it all out. The beast and I used every trace of fire I had in me to try and take Lilith out, but she and her minions didn’t die and the fire kills everything it touches.” Moira’s eyes widened, and she took a step away from him. “How are all of you alive?”
“Brimstone,” he answered as Moira started to circle around him. “The punch they were drinking was laced with brimstone. It’s the only substance that is immune to the flames, but it’s also a poison.” He looked pointedly at Moira. “Unlike the demons down here that I’m sure have been working up a tolerance for centuries, Moira hasn’t.”
“That doesn’t explain anything, enigma,” I replied. “She didn’t need brimstone. She’s immune to my flames and that has nothing to do with you.”
“She’s a legion,” he said, as if that explained it all. “Pain can be delivered unto her, but she will return it sevenfold. Moira woke with a vengeance and when she touched me, the brimstone she consumed passed.” I frowned as understanding flashed on Moira’s expression.
“What do you mean it passed?” I asked.
“The mark of Cain,” she said slowly. “I didn’t know if it was true. That it could return pain sevenfold. All I had to do was touch him, though…” She gnawed on her lip, looking between us. “I don’t know what to say when I barely understand it myself. The brimstone moved from me to him, and then you went supernova.”
“It saved me,” Jax replied. “If you hadn’t woken when you did, I would have died from the flames.” He didn’t have any tell-tale signs of a liar, but after what I’d just gone through, I wasn’t taking any chances.
“When we leave, you’re going back in the bottle until we get to Inferna.” It wasn’t a question or a request, and I could tell he knew it by the set of his jaw.
“I’m not your enemy here.” His eyes strayed to Moira with concern.
“You’re not my friend, either. And right now I can’t afford that.” I crossed my arms over my chest and stared blankly at the underground lake that was no longer glowing or clear. Dark blue waters stained the shore where blood covered the rocks.
“And if you’re attacked getting to Inferna?” the enigma asked.
My tone was flat when I replied, “Well, you’ll be about as much help as you were this time.”
“That’s completely—”
“It won’t be an issue,” Laran cut in. He settled one arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. “Lilith took the beast and bonded to Hell in the waters of the Garden. That means the landscape will no longer be shifting and the fires should be out.” I blinked, looking up at him.
“Are you saying we can pyroport straight there now?” I asked in a breath.
“I am.”
We could get to Inferna in minutes. I could be seeing the Sins in mere minutes. The thought no longer terrified me, but in my current state it was difficult to feel much of anything. Instead of taking out my rage on Iona, I’d given in to the apathy so I could function. The pain was still there, the grief and the anger and the twisted feelings that I didn’t even understand were still with me.
Later, I promised myself. I’d deal with it later.
I turned away from those thoughts and focused on the people. On the pricks of Bandit’s claws as he protectively wrapped around me, purring softly under his breath. Laran’s warm arm around me that held fast. On Moira’s blue pentagram eyes, watching me with such open sadness that I flinched away. Laran looked at me with that same worry and I just said, “Open the portal. There’s nothing left for us here.”
He watched me for a heavy moment. I was torn between wishing I knew how he felt and embracing the solitude that may
very well be the rest of my existence—if I couldn’t get my powers back—however short it may be if Lilith learned I was alive. “As you wish,” he nodded, holding out his hand to conjure forth a ring of flame.
It burned bright from the crimson tendrils to the sunburst heart. I looked at the colors and felt heat, but for once the warmth didn’t soothe me.
Morvaen crouched on the floor, looking very unsure of all this.
“You can’t just portal home, can you?” I couldn’t bring myself to feel bad for calling her when she saved Laran, but I could understand how she was out of her element. I knew that feeling all too well.
“I don’t think so,” she answered. “It is not my magic that brought me into this world, but yours.” Her fingers traced a rune in the air, but no matter how much magic she summoned, a portal would not form. Her hands contorted as she fisted them in frustration, her head hung low. “The door won’t open,” she whispered. Anxiety colored her tone as her dark grey skin blanched.
I held out my hand and she looked up at me. Her lips parted as she followed the tilt of my head to the flaming ring. For a brief second, indecision warred with the sorrow of being trapped before she reached out and her fingers grasped mine.
“Hell does not like my kind,” she said as we faced the portal.
“It seems it doesn’t like mine either,” I spoke without turning. “Maybe together we can manage to stay alive.”
Laran stepped up to my other side and gripped my hand tightly. The four horses walked in first. Then Moira and Jax, and finally it was our turn.
The first time I walked through a portal of flame I thought I was a girl on fire.
While I was no longer that girl and there was no fire in me, I found that I still burned. Even in the depths of grief. The deepest parts of my soul still held embers, but this time when I ignited, it would be pyres of reprisal that I lit.
A reckoning was coming after what Lilith did here tonight, and when I was done Hell would never be the same again.
Chapter 15
Brimstone Nightmares (Queen of the Damned Book 4) Page 14