57
Excited, lyrical voices drew me from the dark corner of my cage and into what little light was offered to us prisoners. Hands wrapped around the bars, I peered through them, trying to see what the Angels were so worked up about. Beside me, Banand did the same.
Two males dragged an unconscious female between them, head lolling forward and body limp. They’d clearly drugged her with something, but that wasn’t what caught my attention. No, it was the leather armor she wore, so similar to how the grunts in the army dressed. Nearly a year had passed since my capture, and before the plague females hadn’t been allowed in the army. Even the prisoners the Angels had dragged in here over the last few weeks were male.
But then, understanding slammed into me and stole my breath.
This female wasn’t a soldier. She was the Halálhívó’s fallen.
We knew this was coming, and yet seeing her, so vulnerable in her unconscious state, settled a stone deep in my gut. The Halálhívó wasn’t the type of male who became attached to anyone, yet what the crimson-eyed males said when they succumbed to the torture made me think she’d shattered through his hardened exterior.
Banand and I knew the consequences of breaking, of the Angels exploiting any tidbit they were offered. That was, after all, how Banand and his magic had been discovered, and why the Angels sacrificed themselves in droves to get him. We’d encouraged and threatened the Demon soldiers, trying to help the war effort in any way we could from behind these bars. Especially Banand, who carried guilt large enough to rival the Skala Mountains.
The plague they forced him to create achieved what the Angels could not on their own—kill Demons by the tens of thousands.
I was merely a bystander in the first wave of it, left behind by my brothers, both blood and chosen. As I lay on the forest ground, garnet pouring from my orifices, I tried and failed to use my own blood magic to stem the flow and save my life. The Angels had already overwhelmed our camp, and they spotted my maroon eyes immediately. I was too weak to fight back when they dragged me before Banand and had him reverse his magic on me.
I wished he hadn’t, but they didn’t give him a choice. During our imprisonment, that wasn’t a luxury we had been afforded for anything. We fought for everything we could anyway.
Stealing a sideways glance at the burgundy-eyed Demon caged beside me, I found him already offering me a similar expression, one that told me he guessed who this female was too.
“We should have killed them before they had a chance to talk to Zaph,”
he hissed, low enough that the Angels entering the room wouldn’t hear.
The males tossed the Halálhívó’s fallen onto the table like she was a sack of grain. Blood caked her arms and most of her torso, though it was dried and flaking. None of it appeared to emanate from her, though.
“I know,”
I sighed. With my magic, I could have easily done it. Just a whisper of power and I could have frozen the blood in their veins or caused the vessels in their brains to explode, killing them instantly. It would have been a merciful death. Between Banand and I, we could have circumvented the silver shackles touch long enough for me to do it. But I stupidly had wanted them to resist the Angel’s methods so we could escape together and rejoin the Demon army to crush the Angels beneath the heels of our boots.
They’d died anyway.
Now, it was just Banand, me, and a handful of other Demons with eye color ranging from garnet to cherry. Not nearly enough bodies to make an attempt to flee. Not nearly enough power outside of Banand and me to make a difference against the tide of Angels.
During our captivity, we’d managed to learn a few words of Angelic, and I held a finger to my lips and pointed at the group. Closing my eyes so I could focus on the voices alone, I tried to discern what they were saying.
Zaph burst into the room a moment later, ordering the others to start cleaning her. Two female voices joined the mix as they argued about some type of clothing. Or was that washing? Regardless, the tone was a mix of excitement and tension, and there was a lot of back and forth amongst the group.
When footsteps retreated, I opened my eyes again and found the two females stripping the Halálhívó’s fallen of her clothes. They volleyed back and forth with one another, though I couldn’t understand what they were saying. One went to the end of the table and yanked her dark hair back. Had she been conscious, it would have hurt. The second dipped a cloth in a bucket of water and swiped it over her arms, repeating the process until they were tan once again.
By the time the second had finished washing, the first had untangled the fallen’s hair and was raking a comb through the ends. They exchanged a few more words, then shuffled positions until they were on either side of her. With more roughness than necessary, they flipped the fallen over. The one that had been working on her hair swept it across her back and turned her head to the side.
Both females shrieked simultaneously, causing Banand and I to jump back. They curled over the fallen, pointing and pressing on her back. Cackles escaped them as they straightened and exchanged a few more excitable words. When they clapped their hands and shouted for the others, we pressed forward again, risking rising to our feet to see what had caused such a stir.
They had no attention to spare for us as the others returned. The hair one pointed at the fallen’s back, and Zaph stalked forward, his evil turquoise eyes gleaming.
There, between her shoulder blades, was a perfect circle.
She’s his mate.
I whipped my head to the side. Banand’s eyes were wide, horror-struck even, and his hands trembled as he gripped the bars.
Because we both knew what this meant.
The Angels had the ultimate leverage over the Halálhívó—the type upon which wars were decided, along with the fate of millions of lives. Millions of Demon lives, including our own.