21. Leah #3
He nods, a small smile on his lips. “I can hardly let us return empty handed.”
We walk, rather than fly, back to the shop, which gives me a chance to ask him about what I just saw.
“Does that happen a lot?” I ask. “Battles spilling over into Infernum?”
He gives me a calculating look I don’t understand, but at least he answers.
“That was really the aftermath of a battle,” he points out. “But no, they generally manage to drive the ephilium back before the pale-bloods get a foothold in our realm.”
“My father says that fifty years ago, there were hardly any battles on the plains,” I say. “Now they happen every few weeks.”
“We had a good few decades for a while there. It felt like the pale-bloods were getting as tired of the war as some of us demons. But lately they’ve become more aggressive again, and Infernum has had to respond in kind.”
“Aggressive” like messing with the Morphos, I guess. Or finding a loophole so they can smite demons in Pax.
“Do you know why?” I ask, and again he gives me that look, like he wants to know why I’m so interested.
“The pale-bloods love war,” he answers. “It’s baked into their culture.
Everything is about glory and honor to them, and killing the enemy is a surefire way for them to prove themselves to their ancestors.
” There’s a bitterness in his voice I recognize from the time he talked about the ephilium in Strata.
“Did they start the war then?” I ask. “No one in Strata really seems to know how it began.”
“I don’t know if they do here, either,” he says dismissively.
I gape at him. “Really? Surely people have some idea.”
He sighs. “There’s a story. A legend, from millennia ago.”
I cross my arms. “You’re going to dangle that and then not even tell me what the legend is?”
“All right,” he says, sounding unenthused as he looks ahead toward the end of the street. “If you ask most demons, they’ll tell you the first of our kind came from the Abiding Dark.”
“Tenebrous,” I say, using the Stratan name for the god of the dead.
“That’s the human interpretation of it, yes. But for demons, it’s more of a force than a god. We were born from it and return to it when we die. Whereas the ephilium have the Everlight—the force they believe is made up of the spirits of their ancestors.”
I nod. In Strata, the Everlight is a goddess who gives life to the earth.
“So the story?” I prompt.
“I’m getting to it,” he chides lightly. “The Abiding Dark supposedly had a daughter. Hekate. The Everlight had a son. Aphelion. The legend says they fell in love, even though the Abiding Dark and the Everlight were completely opposing forces. Eventually, Aphelion asked Hekate to leave the darkness behind, but she refused. She loved the Abiding Dark too much to abandon it. The son of the light grew jealous and angry, and he killed her. Since then, all the descendants of the two forces have been sworn enemies.” He shrugs. “That’s the demon version, anyway.”
“That’s it?” I ask, bewildered. “But it’s just a fable.”
“That’s easy for someone like you to say.” His tone isn’t argumentative, but my brow furrows anyway.
“What do you mean?”
His red-brown eyes trail over me, and I suddenly feel exposed. “Someone who’s spent her life focused on harsh realities. I’m not surprised you don’t have much patience for vague existential symbols. But there’s probably some truth in it somewhere,” he says.
He looks like he’s going to say more, but we’ve arrived at the store, and I’m glad. I don’t like it when he drops unexpected observations about me like that. They’re always too astute.
As we’re leaving the shop, a pair of wardens pass carrying a bloodied soldier on a stretcher. One of the minor casualties from the rift, I assume, now the more urgent cases have been tended to. Of course, there must be some who never made it back at all.
My stomach twists when I picture them lying on the plains, as scavengers—my friends and acquaintances—descend upon them.
Is Hodges there? Will he make a nice profit from Infernum’s mistakes today?
It’s much harder to feel unmoved by the deaths on the battlefield when you see it from the other side. When you see the ones who survived.
“Are Infernum’s soldiers conscripted into the army?” I ask, wondering if there’s any escape from that horrible fate.
“No. They sign up,” Syrus says. “The majority of them come from Rancor—that’s Kaliban’s influence, but no one’s actually ordered to join.”
“Why do they do it then?” I ask.
“It pays. Not as good as snare work, but well enough. And they want to keep their realm safe. They love Infernum. They love the people who live in it. Does wanting to protect it seem so strange?”
It doesn’t. Not anymore. I know now that this realm isn’t the pit of torture and misery I once imagined. But I wonder where Syrus fits into that mindset. I’ve seen him working to protect his domain—watching over the lakes, negotiating with the other lords, coming with me to Strata.
But why does he do it, when I often get the sense that he doesn’t love Malice, or Infernum, at all?