Chapter X
X.
Dominus connects to Lapis by a long bridge not far from the demon dorms.
I shake my head to purge the images of Ferus leering at me as I trek over the cloudy water, then stop in front of the gate. I should be nervous, but whatever nerves I had when I snuck out of my bedroom have been replaced by determination.
I don’t know what awaits me on Earth, but it’s gotta be better than anything down here.
Tapping my foot, I stare down the two souldiers standing guard and wait for them to part. When they don’t step aside, I lower my hood and purse my lips. “Let me by.”
“Your Highness.” The souldier on the left bows his head, and the other follows suit. “Shouldn’t you be in your chambers?”
I cross my arms over my chest and lift my chin, keeping my tone steady. “I’m here to question a shadeling, Nathan Reynolds. Remember him? Your division allowed him to wander out of his lot, and he broke into my room and attacked me. I’m going to be scarred for life, thanks to your incompetence.”
The first souldier’s eyes widen. “Apologies, Your Highness. That should never have happened. I personally tossed the guards on duty at the time into the Ignis River for putting you at risk. There’s no need for you to see the prisoner again.”
My face falls when he mentions demons dying because of me, but I snap my expression back before they notice and arch my eyebrows.
“That’s nice. But I’m going to be in charge soon, and I’d like to speak to Nathan Reynolds.
Either you let me in or I can tell Father you refused orders from your future queen. Which would you prefer?”
He stutters and looks to his coworker, who bobs his head. “Of course you may enter, Your Highness.”
Well, that was easy.
I give them a curt nod. “I thought so.”
They part, but as I step between them, the first souldier grabs my wrist. My heart snaps in my chest. “What is it now?”
“I’d prefer to escort you, Your Highness.” He releases my arm and raises his head. “I’d feel better if one of us were by your side.”
I repress the urge to groan. I’m not a child. It would be nice if everyone would stop treating me like one.
Lifting my cape to expose the sword at my side, I shoot him a pointed look. “I can take care of myself. Just do your actual job of keeping them inside these doors.”
He backs away before bowing again. “Yes, Your Highness. Apologies again.”
I will my body to remain steady as they open the doors and watch me walk into the lot. It takes everything I have not to look back at them.
When the doors leading into Lot Thirteen slam behind me, my blood turns cold.
No wonder they scream.
I thought I’d prepared myself for this. Hell has been home my entire life. But dark and miserable as my city is, it doesn’t come close to the horrors that surround me.
Lot Thirteen is massive. Not only in width and length, but in depth. Even though I didn’t noticeably descend on my journey here, I’m standing in a gaping pit. Above, the sky is the same black as Dominus—an unending void of despair.
I’m surrounded by cliffs of stone, their walls painted in the blood of shadelings. Pools of red collect in divots around my feet, and I swallow hard. Blood stains every rock, every bit of sand, the rusty, acidic scent permeating my nose. Screams burst through the air around me like fireworks.
All of my senses are flooded to the point I can’t discern one from the other. I wrap my arms around myself to quiet the shivers rippling through my bones.
I’m lonely all the time in Dominus, but I’m never alone.
Even if they don’t speak to me, Father’s souldiers keep a close watch.
But standing in the middle of this darkness and gore, I realize I’m on my own for the first time in my life.
And I’ve chosen the lot that houses the worst of humanity to seek that independence.
Smart, Devica.
I survey my surroundings, wondering how I’ll find one shadeling among the masses of flesh and bones and teeth snarling at me. I pull the cloak back over my face as a shadeling chained to a rock lets out an inhuman sound that sends shivers down my spine.
My hand finds the hilt of my sword, and I tighten my fingers around it as I weave further into the lot, forcing myself to look beyond the agony on the faces around me and focus only on their features. I can’t study them for long without sensing their fear, their guilt, and their pain.
I’m not sure why it makes my insides ache. It never affects Father or the other demons—at least, not as far as they let on. Maybe it’s the human side of me. No wonder Father wanted to bury it.
Awful as their cries are, they don’t warrant sympathy. These were the worst of the worst on Earth. Murderers, rapists, pedophiles. If any humans deserve to be down here, it’s them. I block out their cries and continue through the lot.
The soles of my boots stain red with their blood, and I bite back a sigh. These shadelings may deserve all of this, but my new boots do not.
After what feels like hours of searching and hiding from souldiers patrolling the lot, I find Nathan Reynolds shackled to a wall. Despite everything I’ve already seen in here, my chest aches at the sight of him, and I cover my mouth to contain a cry.
He’s shirtless, bleeding from multiple openings in his torso and wrists. The wounds will close on their own soon, so that the demons can come back and open them again. This is his punishment: to be brought as close to death as possible, without the peace that comes with a final ending.
His head hangs over his chest, his eyes closed, but his moans indicate he’s still conscious. Of course he is. Father wouldn’t grant anyone the reprieve of sleep in here.
I’ve stared at his photo so often that I’d forgotten Hell would find every way possible to erase that lopsided grin of his.
I’ve walked past shadelings with limbs removed and their insides sprawled on their outsides, but none of that shocks me like finding the boy who smiled at me on his first day here sliced open.
“Nathan Reynolds,” I say, my voice wavering.
He lifts his head and squints through blood pooling from a gash over his eye. “Devica?”
I frown and turn away from him so he can’t see his pain mirrored in my eyes.
Get it together, Dev. There’s nothing special about this one. He’s as bad as the rest of them.
Tightening my jaw, I place my finger over his cracked lips. “I’m getting you out of here, but you need to keep quiet. Can you do that?”
He nods, his mouth whispering against my finger like a kiss.
He’s taller than me, so I have to stand on my toes and press my body into his as I reach for his shackles.
Every part of me that touches him buzzes, like he’s charged with electricity, and I struggle to maintain my focus on the locks instead of on how we fit together like those puzzles Father once brought back from Earth.
He rests his head on my shoulder and breathes, “Thank you,” into my ear.
Tingles shoot up my spine, and I drop the pin I’d loosened back into the lock. No wonder I’ve been warned to stay away from humans. Being this close to them is confusing. Even my own body won’t listen to me.
“Don’t thank me yet,” I say through clenched teeth, wrapping my fingers around the pin again. “And for the love of demons, stop talking.”
Father gave up on having locks on shackles when souldiers kept losing the keys.
Most shadelings in this lot are too weak to release themselves anyway.
All it takes is wiggling the heavy pins out of their latches and Nathan Reynolds drops forward, both of us collapsing under his sudden weight against my body.
We slam to the ground, and the air blasts out of my lungs.
He stares down at me in surprise, and my mind flashes to the moment we were in this very position in my bedroom. How does this human keep ending up on top of me?
“Move.” I shove him off, and he rolls onto his back. When I’ve caught my breath, I stand and brush off my dress. He’s still panting on the ground, but his wounds are already starting to close. “Do you think you can walk?”
He nods and holds out his palm. I frown at it before understanding what he’s asking of me. Taking his hand, I pull him up with a grunt. He wavers on his feet, so I sling his arm over my shoulder.
Guess I’m doing the walking for both of us.
Although I don’t know this lot well, I do know that the exit we need is in the opposite direction from where I entered. We stagger together, Nathan Reynolds heavy as a bag of coal at my side.
We make it to the edge of Lot Thirteen without anyone stopping us. It helps that the demons here are preoccupied with so many shadelings. This is, sadly, one of our busier lots, but at least it works to our advantage now.
The exit mirrors the entrance—a massive floor-to-ceiling steel door so heavy no human could open it on their own. Demons can open them, though, which means I can get us through, save for the two souldiers guarding the door.
Dammit. We have this many guards, yet this random human managed to make it all the way to my room?
I bite my lip and shove Nathan Reynolds behind a boulder with a shadeling chained across the front and crouch beside him. “How did you get out of here before?”
He’s still half conscious, but he smirks a bloody grin.
“I’m charming as hell. Ha ha. Get it?” The daggers I shoot at him with my eyes kill the giggle in his throat.
He swallows, and his face grows serious.
“But also, the guards liked me. They thought my jokes were funny, and they’d unchain me sometimes to give me a break.
That day, I noticed the door wasn’t fully closed.
So first I made them laugh, then I got them bickering over a riddle.
They were so distracted arguing about the answer they didn’t notice me leaving. ”
I blink. If that’s all it took to escape, maybe those souldiers did deserve their punishment.
Just laughing at Nathan Reynolds’s cheesy jokes may have been enough for me to toss them into the river myself.
“I think we’ll have to distract them again.
But you can’t pull that same stunt. I’m sure they’re watching you extra carefully. ”
What else can I use as a distraction?
My gaze lands on the shackles that tether the man in front of us to the boulder. Like Nathan Reynolds’s restraints, they’re held together with a metal pin behind the stone. I scrunch my face in thought.
I’m not sure my idea will work. And if it doesn’t, I’m calling attention to us and sealing my fate. But I didn’t come all this way to give up now.
I reach for the pin.
“What are you doing?” Nathan Reynolds whispers.
Shushing him, I pull the pin from the latch. “Watch.”
I hold my breath and wait, sweat building on my neck.
The moment the man’s chains fall, he staggers toward the souldiers—the same demons who torture him daily. He lets out a guttural yell and charges. They draw their batons and rush at him, hopping on his back and pinning him to the ground.
“Now,” I say.
Adrenaline surges through me as we dash for the doors, me half dragging him by the waist. I pull the handle with ease and push him through the gap, following close behind. The door slams at my back before the guards even look up.
Nathan Reynolds stops to catch his breath, but I yank him forward. “We have to keep going.”
I don’t stop to think about what I’ve done as we cross the bridge that leads to the outer banks and start up the staircase to the cliffs of Lapis.
It’s too late now, anyway. I’ve broken Father’s biggest rule by freeing a shadeling. I’m done for.
At the top of the staircase, we enter the mouth of a cave that curves around the wall. We’re almost at the end when a voice from the other side stops me in my tracks. I place a hand on Nathan Reynolds’s chest.
“What is it?” he asks between panting breaths.
“Shhh.” My hand shifts from his chest to cover his mouth, my heart racing. “Souldiers.”
“Copy that,” a gravelly feminine voice says around the corner.
There’s the crackle of a walkie-talkie as another voice replies. I can’t make out the words, but I know the voice as well as my own. It’s commanded my entire life.
My stomach drops deeper than the pit in Lot Thirteen.
That was fast.
There’s a pause and the click of a button. “We’ll keep an eye out for your daughter, Your Majesty. And the escaped shadeling. They can’t have gone far. Over.”
“What’s going on?” Nathan Reynolds mumbles against my hand. I tighten it to quiet him.
“Father knows,” I whisper. I meet his eyes, my hands cold as ice. “We’re officially fugitives.”