Chapter Twenty-Four
Pillar. Glass. Light. Plush. Perfume. Luxury. Palatial. Feelings. Thoughts. My brain tossed a word salad of nouns and adjectives between its tongs as my eyes struggled to land on anything. I knew now was not the time to be myself. I tried my best to conjure Maribelle, to keep my mouth closed, to keep my chin high, to act like nothing was too incredible or unbelievable.
I wondered how the royal families of the mortal realms would have felt about taking decorating pointers from Hell. I visualized the images I’d seen of Buckingham Palace and juxtaposed them against the incredible structure before us.
I hadn’t breathed from the moment we’d entered.
The palace was an architectural marvel. While its bones were older than time, elements of magic, of fresh originality, of clean lines, of beauty beyond comprehension kept the air from my lungs.
I counted on my legs to work on autopilot, following the others in our small group as I gaped, and remained grateful that I was not alone on this mission. Quickly upon our entering, Ianna checked another box in my ever-growing list of reasons I admired her.
I understood Fauna’s and Ianna’s clashing personalities.
Half of Fauna’s charm was her devil-may-care disregard for convention. Yet nothing about her irreverence had a snowball’s chance of garnering the respect of the posh lillith. Ianna’s sweet tooth for power and deference was as forceful as Fauna’s was for candy. The two were never meant to be friends.
I, on the other hand, found Ianna spectacular.
I’d never want to be pals with the demonic stylist—god, no—but I watched her as if glued to the television, like marveling at a panther sinking its teeth into a gazelle as she led us into the palace and directly to the receptionist. The polished man with small spikes on each of his temples recognized Ianna immediately. He reacted with wordless respect and led us to what, in the mortal realm, would have surely been elevators.
Except, these were no elevators.
My pulse quickened as I looked to the others, struggling to keep my calm.
We approached four large squares of sparkling, black space, as if we were meant to step into the stars themselves. Everything inside me told me to turn on my heels, but the others had remained utterly calm.
To my gratitude, Fauna didn’t roll her eyes when I extended my hand for comfort. Instead, she looped a reassuring hand around my waist with her free arm while holding my hand with the other, effectively wrapping herself around me. The assistant stepped into the swirling void, followed closely by Ianna.
I took a half-step forward, wincing against the knowledge that I had to follow the others into oblivion. I was right on Azrames’s heel when he caught me off guard by stopping.
My mouth dropped open as he dropped to a knee and reached for my hand. Fauna released me as I blinked, dumbfounded, at Azrames.
I didn’t breathe as I looked between his serious eyes and the milky fingers caught in his steel-dark palms.
“Marlow,” he said with quiet urgency, “I know Fauna teases you, so please hear my worry that you might not be taking her seriously. Listen to me when I tell you that you are not to give anyone, not even the King, your name. Don’t make any deals. Don’t make any promises. Don’t even say thank you. Semantics are incredibly important. Even if you reigned Hell as our princess, you’d be bound to your name and your agreements in a way I’m not sure you understand.”
“Az—” I stammered.
His stormy eyes burned with intensity. He squeezed my hand for emphasis as he said, “Clearly you’re special enough that our Prince has risked lifetimes to be with you. Fauna loves you. I don’t need more convincing than that. You have my loyalty, Mar. But you have to promise me.”
“But, I—”
“Tell me you understand.” The anchor of his voice weighed me to the bottom of the sea. I wanted to look away but couldn’t.
“I understand” was all I could say.
“Promise.”
I swallowed. “I…” I looked between him and Fauna, equal parts surprised and perplexed to see the matching mask of hope and worry on her face. I looked back at Azrames before asking, “Is this the first test? I’m not meant to promise?”
The side of his mouth twitched slightly. He squeezed my hand again before getting to his feet. He dusted his gem-blue suit, brushed a kiss to Fauna, and disappeared into the void without another word.
“What the fuck,” I mouthed, throat constricting around the words, rendering me unable to vocalize my shock.
My intestines climbed into my chest cavity, wrapping around my heart, making me nauseous and dizzy at the same time. My pulse thundered in my ears. I couldn’t believe I’d been so swept up in the fashion, the glamor, the beauty, that I’d forgotten I was in another realm. I’d been utterly na?ve to let my guard down as I’d confidently trotted to meet the King as if I were stepping into a five-star restaurant for a hired evening with a politician.
I’d been wrong to try to summon Maribelle. This was not her territory.
“Am I going to be okay?” I asked, feeling ever the part of the child as I looked desperately at Fauna.
She offered me the ghost of a reassuring smile as she said, “You have no other choice.”
Without waiting for any signal of readiness, she wrapped her arm around me once more and urged us into the glittering, celestial galaxy of diamonds and darkness. I flinched, holding my breath as if plunging underwater. I regretted it one second later when we stepped into an upscale room stitched of the same dazzling, obsidian marble that had sparkled in the vortex. The high, palatial ceilings were vaulted by perfectly smooth onyx pillars.
I wasn’t lost in space. I was somewhere so, so much worse.
From behind a glass desk, a new assistant smiled.
I looked into the unfamiliar face and dug my fingernails into Fauna’s bicep.
The hair on the back of my neck prickled as I stared in unblinking alertness at the receptionist. The new woman had white-blond locks that tumbled far below the lip of the desk. Her pink mouth, blue eyes, and porcelain skin hummed with an eerie, doll-like beauty. Everything about her, from her perfect white teeth to the slow tilt of her head screamed of death. I couldn’t explain the dread that swarmed within me as I finally saw something worthy of the terrors I’d spent my life affiliating with Hell.
This creature was the nightmare that lurked in the closet.
The first receptionist—the polite, horned man from the atrium—introduced us. Ianna dropped her brusque demeanor as she was announced. She offered a slow, closed-eye nod to the receptionist. Azrames did the same when the receptionist gestured to him, announcing him to the doll-like woman. When the pair of receptionists focused their attention on me and Fauna, I nearly clawed my way back into the rectangle of the space-time continuum. I was confident I’d be better off risking my chances on the streets of Hell than locking eyes with evil personified.
Fauna seemed to sense my need to bolt. Her grip tightened, anchoring me in place.
The young man introduced Fauna of the Nordes, then hesitated at me. He frowned, turning to Ianna for an explanation.
“This is a very important human to the royal family,” Ianna supplied. “One in possession of Nordic fae blood, thus the mandated escort from her realm.”
Ianna turned to me and met my doe-wide eyes. Her cold gaze turned to something else entirely. Her face tightened in a way I hadn’t seen. For a single moment, I understood the look of true fear on her face as she asked, “Would you care to introduce yourself?”
I held Ianna’s controlled terror for a fraction of a second before looking into the porcelain woman’s uncanny face, the chilling tilt of her head, the curious widening of her too-large eyes as I grasped at straws.
“Maribelle,” I breathed, Fauna’s fingers flexing against me reflexively. “You can call me Maribelle, and I am…” I struggled with the right words. I didn’t know how to say what I needed to say in order to convey my worthiness, my right to stand before the most threatening being I’d ever seen. “I’m the Prince’s human,” I said finally.
Fauna’s squeeze was one of unmistakable approval.
The room relaxed with the barest signs of relief, save for the doll.
“Can I get you anything, Maribelle?” the woman asked, voice airy and beautiful. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
Yes. I was thirstier than I’d ever been in my life, though I suspected most of that was a result of nerves. I wanted to crawl into a hole, if she happened to have one available. I would have liked her to excuse herself from the room and leave us all alone. But instead, I just said, “No, I’m all right. How kind of you to ask.”
In front of us, Azrames wrapped his hands behind his back. To everyone else in the room, he would have been clasping his wrists with formal grace. For us and us alone, he flashed a single, very human thumbs-up.
“One moment,” said the blond, rising from her chair. She wore the loose, flowing gown I’d imagined on the banshees of Celtic lore. Her pale, ethereal curls hung to the middle of her back in perfect, glossy waves.
The moment she disappeared through two tall, thin doors, Fauna whispered into my ear, “She’s a Soul Eater.”
I swallowed against the title but didn’t ask her to elaborate. I didn’t need to know anything further. We were already in Hell. Anything that struck terror into demons was truly an entity I never wanted to see again.
No one moved a muscle as we waited.
The Soul Eater breezed back into the room a minute later with the same perfect smile. “The King will take an audience with Maribelle and her escort. Allow me to accompany the rest of you to our luxury room for refreshments while you wait.”
Her loose, icy curls disappeared through the swirl that may as well have been the Milky Way Galaxy, followed by the receptionist, then by Ianna.
“Good luck,” Azrames whispered before following them into the stars.
We turned to the doors that had been left ajar for only Fauna and me.
I’d expected to feel relief after the Soul Eater departed. Anxiety glued me to the floor instead at I stared at the sliver of white light that separated the atrium from whatever rested behind the heavy palace doors. If she had been the precursor, I wasn’t ready for the main event.
“I don’t want to go,” I said, allowing fear to speak for me. I was a child again, a leather belt, a Bible, a pastor, a crying mother punishing me with threats of Hell, of Satan, of souls. If the pretty phantom assistant had filled me with the worst fear of my life, I wasn’t ready to meet the King of Hell. I didn’t want to enter the room. I wanted to go home, to write the third Pantheon novel, to drink myself sick, to see a new psychiatrist, and to check myself into the sort of ward that could convince me through enough therapy and medication that I’d hallucinated this entire trip.
“You’re not going alone,” Fauna said.
I looked from where my fingernails had unintentionally been chewing into her skin and then up into her eyes. They so often gleamed with mockery, with taunts, with laughter and obscenities and chaos, that the soft, kind seriousness melted me.
“You’re going to have to lead the way,” I whispered, “because I don’t think I remember how to move my legs.”
Fauna took half a step, then stopped. She whispered an abbreviated form of my name, getting my attention as she asked, “Hey, Mar?”
As if I weren’t panicked enough, the concern on her face sent sickly fear through me. I recalled a film from my youth where a superhero had a painful, liquid metal injected into his veins. I didn’t recall the point of the film, but I remembered how he’d screamed. I felt the metal now as it hardened in each of my limbs, settling in my thumping, leaden heart. I was afraid enough that I was on the brink of tears as I asked, “What?”
“Az was right. Everything he said was right, but there’s more,” she said, each word scarcely above a whisper.
My eyes shot to the cracked door awaiting us, then back to Fauna.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said. “We can leave now. Or, we can go in there, hear what he has to say, and reject it. You’re a Norde,” she emphasized. “Az is right about a few things. I tease you, so I’m not sure that you take me seriously. Before we go into that meeting, I want you to know that I wasn’t kidding. You don’t have to choose this. If you don’t want Hell, if you don’t want any of this, I’ll do it. I would bond myself to you if it’s what you wanted. My philosophy has always been to ask for forgiveness rather than permission, after all.”
I tried to give her a grateful squeeze but was too numb to feel if my hand responded to my brain’s command.
“I have to see him,” I said.
She dipped her chin. “I know you do. But I needed you to know.”
“Hey, Fauna?” She cocked her head, copper and silver strands cascading over her shoulders and doe eyes looking at me with curious concern as I said, “Don’t make this weird, but I’m pretty sure I love you.”
“I love you too, loser,” she said.
With that, she led us forward to meet the King of Hell.