Chapter Five
Nuriela
Screams of agony tore through the silence, pulling me from the dark.
They were likely other prisoners of Belial’s, which meant I was in some kind of dungeon.
My head throbbed, and every muscle in my body ached.
The evil prince’s daemons beat me with claws and hooves.
Even my elevated healing abilities couldn’t work fast enough to take away the pain of their rage.
At some point in their brutality, I passed out.
And now I was locked in a cage inside a dark room.
It was small, barely tall enough for me to stand.
I gripped the bars to pull myself up, hissing in pain.
It burned like frostbite against my skin.
The metal was stellatium, one of the only things in this world that could truly hurt daemons or lumens.
Pain lanced my side, and I lifted my shirt to see an open slash, blood still weeping from the wound.
It must have been a stellatium blade. I closed my eyes and willed my body to heal itself.
The flesh stitched itself over slowly, stealing most of my strength, leaving a tiny white line scar across my abdomen.
A mark I would bear until my passing. These assholes would pay for that.
The room I was caged in was cold and bare.
Small window slits high up on the walls let in early evening light.
No guards stood within the room, but likely a few were posted outside the doors.
This was most definitely a trap. I should be dead, but instead I was Belial’s path to Lailah.
If I wasn’t such a coward, I’d take my own life now and set her free of the burden of rescuing me.
But I just couldn’t. Our life together was supposed to be at the beginning, not the end.
And it was too soon to give up hope. Perhaps if I could find a way out of this cage, my power would return enough for me to escape.
The stupid stellatium pulsed around me like a second heartbeat, keeping me weak.
The door opened with a loud clang, and two guards stepped into the room, followed by the monster who kidnapped me.
“Belial.” I spat his name as if it were an ugly thing, because it was. He was.
The daemon didn’t even flinch, although his jaw ticked subtly. This male didn’t take kindly to those who weren’t whimpering in subservience. Well, too bad for him, I wasn’t the type to bow—unless Lailah was asking.
“Nuriela Ramas,” he purred, the sound something out of nightmares. I resisted the urge to shiver in revulsion. “I had hoped to bring Lailah here, but this is just as well. Better, even. With you here, she is likely to obey my every command more willingly.”
“Doubtful,” I snarled at him.
Belial smirked. “The mate bond is impossibly strong between you already, even without consummation. I am most certain when she sees you in pain, bleeding before me, she will break.”
I slammed into the bars, ignoring the pain. “You know nothing of our bond. Or her strength. She will not be yours, now or ever.”
My words rang out with authority, but inside, my blood sizzled with anxious fear. The shining bond tying me to Lailah pulsed with life, and I knew she would come for me, just as I would for her. Hopefully when she did, I’d be out of this stupid cage and fighting at her side.
“We shall see, lumen trash.” Belial’s eyes burned with rage, but his voice shook with a hint of uncertainty.
I grinned, enjoying his unease at my defiant words. And maybe that was a mistake. The last thing I saw before the darkness claimed me was a large clawed daemon fist coming at my face.
Hours passed, and I was still locked in the stellatium cage.
My power was a meager flicker within my soul, but at least my body no longer throbbed from the beating I received earlier.
When the doors of the room opened, I crouched on the balls of my feet, ready to fight, but instead of daemons, a single human male walked into the room.
“Who are you?” I questioned, curious and more than a little suspicious.
There weren’t many humans on Stella Terra.
Only the witches took them in. To daemons, they were slaves and to lumens, they were nothing.
Lailah and I heard horror stories of the awful things daemons did to humans.
Humans were a weakness, in my opinion, and they didn’t belong in our world.
But this one, he had an aura about him. There was power in his blood. Not like daemons or lumens, but witches.
“I am Ezekiel.” The man spoke softly, weaving his hands in a strange pattern before spreading his fingers wide and sending a pulse of his magic into the air.
The magic cloaked my skin like a film. It didn’t hurt, but I remained vigilant. His softness could be a trick.
“We can speak plainly now,” he continued. “I’ve used a spell to muffle the sound in the room.”
Ezekiel walked closer to the cage as he spoke.
He was tall for a human, several inches above my 5’7” height.
His skin was tanned, and his dark hair was swept away from his face in a “I’m a mess but trying to keep it together” sort of way.
His dark eyes remained locked on my own.
He wore a black cloak with a symbol I didn’t recognize resting over his left breast.
“What do you want?” I asked him, preferring to be direct and get this over and done with. “Are you here to help me?”
He nodded but frowned. “I am, but not in the way you think. You will escape this place, Lailah will be here soon to save you.”
My heart beat ten times faster at his words, and hope blossomed within me. “This doesn’t sound like bad news.”
Ezekiel wrung his hands through his cloak, crinkling it, clearly anxious. “It will take most of Aurora’s power to keep Belial in this world when she flees to mine. Her power cannot be wasted in aiding you now. Listen closely.”
His words were like half-truths and riddles I didn’t fully understand, but I memorized them all. Ezekiel came closer and spoke a few words to open the cage before stepping back.
“Take the hall all the way down and go left. Run as quickly as you can and try not to be loud about it.” Ezekiel’s words were frantic. “Find Lailah and get back to Aurora immediately.”
I nodded, perfectly fine with that plan. “We will.”