Lucy
The glass bridge is impossibly far above me. It stretches deep into the sky and high above the mists separating the underworld from the heavens.
I don’t know what I’m doing.
This is ridiculous.
What am I hoping for? To wait here forever? What if Midnight is already in the Celestial City happy and safe?
My butterfly flutters higher and higher then darts down to race towards my head. She crashes into me not once, but twice.
“Oi!” I waft a hand in the air to stop her poking at my forehead.
“Okay, okay, I’ll try climbing.”
I head for one of the cliff walls and test the rock. It’s much like any cliff made of rock. Smooth in places, jagged and crumbling in others.
I swallow hard and glance up at the mists again. The butterfly lands on a piece of rock that juts in a few feet above.
It’s the perfect hand hold. I realise she’s helping, so I pay attention, keep my eyes on her and pull my weight up, up, up.
When I’ve been climbing for half an hour, I make the mistake of looking down and my stomach nearly drops out of my arse. I grip the cliff harder, sweat instantly pooling on the back of my neck.
“I can’t do this,” I say, like the butterfly can answer me. As if I have any choice but to keep going or fall to my death.
I suppose if I die in the underworld I’ll have to win an award for the most ironic death ever.
I glance up and frown. There’s a faint spot marking the mist. I tilt my head to squint at it as I swear it grows bigger.
The butterfly jerks off the cliffside and darts out a few feet and slams into my cheek. She leaps off and darts out again.
“What are you trying to tell me?”
Her wings sag as if I’m the dumbest shit ever.
I glance up, the dot is much bigger now. Almost the size of a fist. I strain to see and realise it’s a figure.
I gasp. “Someone jumped.”
The butterfly goes wild, darting this way and that. “Is it Midnight?” I ask, as if she would know. She can’t. Can she?
But she dips up and down as if nodding. I crane my neck up and examine the ever-growing shape, the familiar lines of waist and shoulders slowly coming into view.
“Oh my gods, it’s Midnight. And I’m now halfway up the fucking cliff instead of waiting for her safely on the ground.”
And to top it all off, I’m hallucinating a sentient butterfly and imagining she understands me. I’m officially losing my mind.
But the butterfly lands on my nose and jabs its antenna at my eyes and then at Midnight.
“Yes, it’s Midnight.” Okay, maybe she really is sentient. What is it with all the animals in my life having an attitude problem?
Her entire body, thorax and all her legs sink on my nose.
She jabs her antenna in the direction of Midnight and then leaps off. She circles back to land on the tip of my nose and repeats this motion three times.
“You want me to leap?”
She does that dipping thing that I think means yes.
“But I’ll die?”
She flits from side to side, no.
Okaaay, we’re communicating with a butterfly now. I file that away for processing when Midnight isn’t falling to her death.
I look up, Midnight is enormous now, and I swear she’s gaining speed. “Oh gods. It’s now or never.”
“If I die, I will come back and haunt you.” She flits to the side, as though tilting its head in a ‘sure you will,’ motion.
Fucking snarky little shit.
Midnight must be unconscious because her body hangs limp in the air. She grows bigger and bigger, and I realise I only have one chance to time this right.
I hold my breath and desperately try not to look down. I reposition myself with my arms behind me, my feet ready to kick off as if I’m leaping from a pool edge and I inhale.
Three.
Two.
One.
I stupidly close my eyes as I push off the edge. And then realise my mistake as I crash mid-air into Midnight’s body.
I scream, fling my arms around her and we twist around and around. My stomach flip-flops and bile licks my throat as I struggle to right us and stop spinning.
We plummet faster and faster. I scan around looking for the butterfly but can’t see her anywhere. Little traitor.
As soon as I have the thought, there’s a pinching on my back, a stabbing pain and then we’re hurled upwards.
I strain to look behind me without dropping Midnight to find my butterfly attached to my back, only instead of being tiny, she’s fucking enormous, her wings expanded to angel size, her legs dug into my skin in several places.
She flaps her elegant wings hard and fast, dropping us down to earth slowly instead of the rapid plunge to our death I was certain we were doing.
We spiral around as we descend. Prima Tower looms, fungus fields stretching as far as the eye can see.
My feet scramble across the barren land and finally we come to a stop. My butterfly detaches from me and flits around shrinking back to her normal self. Midnight is still unconscious. I brush a hand over her brow, pushing her hair back and freeze. There are two little bumps under her skin.
“Horns? Are you growing your very own demonic horns?”
Her eyes flicker, her hand rubs her face, and she stretches in my arms. “Am I dead?”
“Doesn’t look like it, seems your body rather liked my demon magic…”
She sits bolt upright. “It worked? The Architect moth actually fucking did it?”
I grin. “Yes, Daddy, y—”
But I’m cut off by Midnight plunging her lips over mine and shoving me backwards. Her hands are everywhere, my jaw, the back of my head, my waist and breasts and between my thighs.
I pull away and moan, desperate for her touch. “Not here. Let’s go home,” I mumble into her neck, nipping and kissing her skin.
“Such a pussy tease. There will be consequences for making me wait.”
I hum a sweet note of delight against her. “I think I can cope.”