Chapter Twenty-Six
I scanned the faces at the royal end of the table, desperate for any clue. The banquet’s attendants hummed with subdued thrill. Anath vibrated with satisfaction. Baal leaned back into his chair in amusement. Dagon and Melqart appeared not to care in the slightest, as if simple court proceedings were far beneath them. I didn’t dare turn my head to see the faces of Caliban or Fauna.
“Azrames of Hell,” Anath said to the room, voice booming with authority, “you’ve been accused of Astarte’s deicide through inaction. Her handmaiden, Jessabelle, befell a similar fate. You, Azrames of Hell, were present when the high goddess of your allied pantheon required assistance in the face of our shared Heavenly foe, and yet you stand before us, unscathed. How do you plead?”
“I fought, Lord Baal,” Azrames answered honestly.
He’d fought, all right. I may have been drugged out of my mind, but I had still seen him swing the meteor hammer. His great crime in Phoenician eyes was that he, a lowly civilian, hadn’t done enough to protect their goddess. I was fairly certain we wouldn’t be having this conversation if the security footage hadn’t been wiped.
I shot Caliban a panicked look. His face was unreadable as he watched his fellow demon.
Fauna’s fingers slipped around my arm. Her nails bit into my flesh.
Azrames broke eye contact with Fauna, straightening his shoulders as the goddess addressed him.
“Your Prince has remained in our courts as your advocate and has brokered an agreement. It was determined that the Canaanites will recognize our allyship with Hell. While justice must be served, we’ve reached an arrangement. Your Prince has requested that your life be spared in recognition of the efforts made to defend Astarte against her heavenly foe, despite your failure to do so. As your punishment, Azrames of Hell, you have been given a choice by the rule of three. You may serve as a ward of our realm for three centuries, choose three of Hell’s citizens to be sacrificed in your stead, or kneel before the court and receive three thousand lashes.”
Fauna’s nails bit into me so hard I was certain she’d broken skin. I was grateful for the pain as it anchored me. I shot my gaze from Anath back to Azrames as we waited for him to speak.
Anath’s tone was begrudging as she added, “Our brokered deal for ongoing allyship with Hell grants Azrames the Prisoner’s Reprieve, as is customary to his realm before a sentencing. Azrames, you will be allowed to partake in our festivities, and are granted the rights of a conjugal night spent with a mate before your sentence is carried out.”
My head spun. He was supposed to drink wine and fuck with this axe over his head? None of it made sense, and no one around me was helping piece the puzzle together.
I knew intrinsically that he would never let three innocents die for him, though I wished he were a little more wicked, a little more selfish. I was pretty sure I would kill at least twelve humans in my stead, most of whom were my clients, some of whom were girls I’d gone to school with. I was certain Fauna wanted the same, as she was doubtlessly thinking exactly what I was. Three hundred years in subservience to the Canaanite realm may be a mere dot in the face of eternity, but even my twenty-six years had felt unbearably long. How could he possibly live in bondage for lifetimes?
I couldn’t begin to fathom the carnage and gore of three thousand lashes.
I’d once dated a man who’d commented on his country’s brutal corporeal punishment by saying, “Caning is the worst fate imaginable. If you’re going to break the law, do something that earns you death.” It had horrified me at the time, but this amplified that punishment to an unfathomable degree.
A few dozen strikes would kill a human. Between the blood loss and the chunks of ripped flesh, there would be no way to survive one hundred, unless they were carried out over the course of weeks and months. Azrames was a demon, and surely he would find a way to survive. But three thousand? The essence that stitched his being would surely shatter after the first thousand. He’d undoubtedly lose his mind after the second. The man who went into such a sentence would not be the one who came out.
I struggled to calculate what the number meant. Even if the one executing the punishment had the stamina to wind up and crack the whip every thirty seconds—an impossible task—it had to be more than twenty-five unbroken hours of unspeakable brutalization. It would surely go on for days, if not weeks.
My imagination filled with the image of Azrames’s slate-gray, shirtless form lying in a pool of black blood. His iron face would turn to shades of bloodless ash. Irretrievable pieces of him would cling to the whip. He’d be little more than pulp by the time they finished.
He relaxed as if the options were far kinder than he’d expected. He dipped his head to acknowledge the ruling, then righted himself as he said, “I’ll take the lashes.”
“No,” came Fauna’s horror from beside me. She lurched as if to lunge around the table, but Ella intercepted her. The court shuffled with curiosity as they watched the Nordes react to the decision.
“It’s okay,” Azrames mouthed, speaking to Fauna once more. He kept his half smile, but the twinkle in his eye was absent, leaving only coal-black irises staring back at us. My heart cracked as the entire banquet hall watched him attempt to soothe her fears while saddled with the weight of indescribable torture.
“Do something,” I pleaded with Caliban under my breath.
“I have,” he whispered back.
It wasn’t enough. This wasn’t justice. I was the reason Astarte and Jessabelle were dead. I was the reason Azrames and Silas had been in Bellfield in the first place. I was the only one deserving of punishment at this table.
I looked to the Phoenician gods once more, but they remained unfazed.
“Excellent,” Anath said with a flick of her wrist. “Your magic will remain limited until you’ve departed our kingdom. Rejoin your party and celebrate among us until your reckoning. But Hell needn’t have all the fun. Silas of Heaven,” she said, turning her attention to the battered angel. “Your life will be forfeit—”
“He didn’t do anything!” The outburst clawed its way from my belly to my throat. I couldn’t stop the words, though I may as well have, as my cry went utterly ignored. Silas’s crime was the unforgivable act of helping me.
“—a sentence to be carried out on the third and final day of our banquet.”
Baal joined her on her feet. “In our magnanimity, we’ll grant a parting wish, angel. How would you prefer to die?”
Silas looked at me again and my blood turned cold. He was trying to tell me something. I saw the unspoken message in his eyes, even if I couldn’t understand his meaning.
“Caliban—”
He shot me a look, but it was not silencing. It seemed several immortal beings in the room were trying to tell me something that I couldn’t begin to understand. There had to be a way. One could talk to God through silent prayer, right? I had no idea if demons or angels could hear mortal thoughts. Part of me was horrified at the idea, but I rolled the dice.
Silas, I cried out silently.
He did not react to my plea, but Caliban slipped his arm around my waist and dug his fingers into my hips with commanding force. Perhaps they were both telling me to shut the fuck up.
Silas rolled his shoulders and lifted his chin while he accepted his sentence. He leveled his gaze at the goddess as he answered. “By combat.”
A slight murmur rippled through the gathering.
“What if he wins?” I asked under my breath. Clearly, I was not as quiet as I’d thought.
From across the banquet hall, Anath answered. “He will not.”
“My,” Baal said, teeth glinting in true amusement, “it is a party indeed. My subjects, my peers.” He smiled at the people scattered throughout the room, then at the gods, fae, and deities around him. “And my most welcome guests. Please rejoin us for another day of merriment tomorrow as we celebrate Dagon and Anath’s return to our kingdom.”
The armed guards flanked Silas as they began to push him from the room, but allowed Azrames to stay back with only two centurions. The moment the sea of armored men parted, Fauna broke free from our hold and threw her arms around his neck.
“Go with Fauna,” Caliban whispered.
I looked up at him with questioning eyes.
“No one will question me coming to fetch you later. Go.” He gave me a squeeze. And while I loathed to part with him, I had to remember that we’d come for more reasons than one. I was not just a girl who needed to be with the one who held her soul. I was a human who’d infiltrated kingdoms and the domino with which we’d topple chaos. He understood the pain in my eyes, and didn’t move from where he stood. It would have to be me who left him.
“Shall we?” I asked as I turned to Estrid and Ella. I forced a brightness into my voice and a smile on my face that no part of me felt. They gave Caliban a small, respectful bow as they left. I shot a final, desperate glance at Caliban before leaving with my Nordic party as we followed Fauna and Azrames from the banquet hall.
***
I spun on my heels, the bobbing effect of the sign on my vision keeping me nauseated and reeling.
We hadn’t returned to the room Fauna and I had shared, but were in a small wing of clustered suites. I paced by the adjoining doors and alternated between flexing and stretching my hands as I panicked. “What are we supposed to do?”
Azrames swept me up mid-stride with a grin. “You’re supposed to say hi to me.”
“How can you be so calm!” I was in hysterics. Azrames was meant to be enjoying a Prisoner’s Reprieve on the eve of the end of the world, and he was acting like it was any normal Tuesday.
“Let her go,” Fauna said tersely. “She doesn’t deserve the love.”
Azrames set me down and ruffled my hair. “Being mean to you is the truest sign she loves you, Mer-bear. It is Merit, here, right?”
I struggled to remember if any name aside from Merit Finnegan had bubbled to the surface in Bellfield, but I didn’t possess the presence of mind to truly address it. I took a partial step away from Azrames to let him see my desperation.
“I won’t let this happen,” I swore.
There was pity in my eyes as he looked at me. The sentiment rippled through the room, shared by all but Fauna. “You have a lot of heart,” he said. “You hold no blame for what’s to come.”
Fauna bared her teeth at me. “We spent a week together in your fucking apartment, and not once did you explain that this all happened because you signed your life and blood freely to Astarte.”
“Six days,” I said under my breath.
“What?” She bit off the word.
I echoed the callous words back to her that she’d said on my couch in the height of my panic. “It wasn’t a week. It was six days.”
“What’s done is done,” Ella said, voice a gentle lull behind us.
“Bullshit, it is,” Fauna snapped. She pointed a finger at me. “You went into a terraformed god-trap without me. You took on deities without me. You came back to me without them . And after trying to sleep with me, you gave me a woefully incomplete recount of events, Merit Fucking Finnegan.”
Azrames draped an arm loosely over my shoulders, but everyone in the room understood the gesture. He didn’t blame me, even if he had every right to. “You tried to sleep with her? And you failed? Damn, Fauna.”
I shook free from the weight of his arm and stepped away from him. It caused me too much pain to look at him, particularly given his attempts at friendly levity. I didn’t want to see the kindness in his dark eyes, his smooth skin, his hard jaw. I couldn’t handle the easy, youthful face, the confident posture, the pretty lies of reassurance stitched together in grayscale.
“We need a plan. We need—”
Four hands flew up to silence me. I knew it wasn’t just the armed guards posted outside the door to ensure Azrames stayed put. The walls had ears. My entire face scrunched, tendons flexing, muscles clenching as I fought the urge to scream. They watched my silent tantrum as I worked through my helplessness—immortals observing a human who barely had the wherewithal to keep herself alive, let alone survive the realms.
“My dog,” I said suddenly. I looked meaningfully at Fauna. “I can’t be expected to survive another night without my dog. You know how humans lose their minds when they’re separated from their animals.”
Azrames’s brows met in the middle. His confusion was starkly contrasted against the wide eyes and rigid spines of Ella and Estrid.
It took far too long for Fauna to allow calm cooperation to replace the blame and rage painted over her freckles. Through clenched teeth, she looked at Azrames. “Merit needs her dog back. Does this gift for language flow in two directions?”
Caliban had been right. Whatever present he’d bestowed upon me had been extended to her as well. Azrames nodded slowly.
“Great,” she said testily. She reached the door, and I watched a transformation happen. She shook the fury and betrayal from her features. A metamorphosis of butterfly proportions swept over her as she pushed open the door and called into the hall with a high, sweet, smiling voice. “Excuse me? We’re in need of attention.”
Two attendants appeared as if stepping from the sparkling walls themselves. Hewn from shadow and glistening stone, two enormous beings of any gender or no gender at all looked down at Fauna. She exemplified Ella, sugar-sweet and desirable with each dripping word.
“As her ancestor and appointed guardian in the realm of her bloodline, I’ve been made responsible for the Prince’s human. As her escort, it’s my obligation to ensure she’s as comfortable as possible. She’s been separated from her dog for a day now. I’m not sure what you know of humans and their dogs…” She paused, waiting for some form of acknowledgment from the servants, but none came. Fauna nodded along knowingly. “The last few centuries have become a circus in the mortal realm! The way they treat their pets, no god could guess the ruling species.” She flashed a disarming smile, and I saw it land.
Maybe these Phoenicians hadn’t been on mortal soil in hundreds of years, but they weren’t so detached from the realm that they couldn’t appreciate human slander. One returned her smile.
“She’s throwing quite the fit,” Fauna continued. “I know the Phoenicians remain firmly allied with Hell. The Nordes wish the same for both the Phoenician realm and our allegiance with Hell. Please do three realms a favor and indulge this spoiled human. It should remain at her side throughout the rest of her visit to your beautiful kingdom. Will you see to it that her animal is brought to us before we have war over something as foolish as a girl and her pet?”
She was unbelievable.
The attendants exchanged a few muted mutters before returning to the stone from whence they had come. The moment Fauna closed the door behind her, the godly charm evaporated. She glared at me and stormed to the bed.
The Nordic pair chatted quietly amongst themselves in ancient Norse, presumably intelligent enough to remain far more cryptic in a foreign kingdom than I could ever hope to be. Azrames followed Fauna to the bed, scooping her tiny form against him. She looked like a kitten as she curled against his chest and began to cry. No one dared disrupt their moments together.
Ella and Estrid disappeared behind doors in our collection of suites. Given the day’s tragic news, Fauna and Azrames deserved to remain undisturbed. Neither of them looked up from where they comforted one another while I went to the far door and gave it a tug. I was relieved to find that the next room was empty.
I closed the door and began the waiting game.
I hated that Caliban had sent me away from him, though I suspected he had his reasons. Maybe it strengthened the case for the arrival of Nordic ambassadors if I demonstrated their importance to me. I hoped it wasn’t to give Fauna and I time together, as it was evident that she blamed me for the tragedy looming over Azrames. Perhaps he knew Fauna would have a better chance at brokering Fenrir’s release without raising suspicion. She had been incredibly charming—alarmingly so.
My mind took me to the Mediterranean cliffs as Poppy had clutched me and demanded that I ask Fauna about her true intentions. I had no idea how much the nymph was capable of hiding, or if I was another victim of her subterfuge.
I was too stressed to choose the bed, but sank onto the floor, back upright. I rested my head against the wall behind me. It was a nightmare. I’d awaken to see the leaves of the trees rustle over the river in the warehouse district. I’d avoid the internet, terrified of the flood of texts regarding Geoff Christiansen and what his doxxing had done to my career. I wouldn’t check social media or read the news. I’d look at my phone to have memes and dry jokes from Nia and Kirby, knowing they’d be trying their best to salvage my mood while I was on the lam. I’d check my email and see that deadlines were still looming, if I still had a job in the wake of the news. There would be no gods, or kingdoms, or fae. There would be no travel between realms.
I’d been raised to believe in Heaven and Hell.
Christianity spoke of the prophet Elijah being so righteous that he was taken to Heaven on a chariot of fire long before his mortal days had finished. I’d told my mother that it sounded like he’d been abducted by aliens, and she’d very calmly told me that all alien lore was a misunderstanding of humans trying to interpret the signs of angels and demons. Accepting the reality of Caliban and Silas meant that my mother could be right about the what and where, even if she’d missed the mark on the numerous other questions that made sense of our world.
We’d visited a public museum once on a rare family vacation, and my mom had pointed to a statue from central Africa.
“Demons are clever,” she’d said. “They’ve taken shapes and names throughout history to trick people into believing they’re gods.”
“So the Egyptian gods…?”
“Demons,” she confirmed.
I’d thought of the art on Grandma Dagny’s wall. I’d leafed through as many books on Norse mythology as I had of the fjords, of pictures of smiling women in wool bunads as I had of the homeland she’d ached for, even if she’d never been allowed to understand the call that pulsed through her blood. “Odin? Thor?”
My mother had nodded along with my train of thought while guiding me amidst the exhibits. All demons, of course. My father had trailed somewhere behind, tightly glued to his pamphlet. He was a smart man—just not one who was interested in a life with my mother or me.
“What’s smarter, Marlow? To assume everyone around the world is a gullible idiot making up fairy tales? Or to think perhaps there’s something very real going on—something sneaky, something tricky—that cultures and languages and people around the globe respond to?”
“So, they’re real?” I’d asked. We’d stood between a plate and a fertility vase as everyone milled around me. “Thor is real? This goddess”—I gestured to the vase—“she’s real?”
“God made the world,” my mother had said confidently. “And He did not make idiots. He made angels who were beautiful and brilliant and powerful. When they fell, why wouldn’t they want to be recognized for their power? Of course the resulting demons were intelligent. He made brilliant entities. It’s no surprise something so resourceful would try to make themselves equal to God. Try and succeed, in many cultures, to call themselves false gods.”
I’d lifted my fingers, but stopped just shy of touching the exhibit. I’d looked at it breathlessly. “All gods are demons?”
“Except our God,” she’d agreed.
“Except our God,” I’d repeated.
I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry when I thought of her now. My mother, the powerful psychic with fae blood coursing through her veins, stood on the precipice of understanding. She saw it all. She perceived so much, she understood so much, and then zoomed right past the truth. The gods were real. Demons were real. It was all real. But she’d needed to filter it through her lens of comprehension.
Aloisa had applauded my mother for her feats.
I thought of my remedial knowledge of the Japanese pantheon and their loose use of the word demon . It didn’t denote malevolence or goodness. It was simply a word to dictate a spiritual other . There were good demons, and bad demons, in their mythology.
Words were just words, after all.
It was something Fauna said to me time and time again. They were sounds—consonants and vowels—we spat out to form meaning around our understanding. Whatever we said, as long as we conveyed our message, it was fine.
Like true names, there was a core meaning to each word. Most of us are neither worthy nor able of comprehending their importance.
I suspected Aloisa thought my mother’s solution was far more honorable than my atheistic denial of anything and everything beyond the realm of flesh and blood. Maybe my mother had prepared me for belief. Perhaps she’d prepped me to see things outside of how they’d been painted. Even in my most zealous evangelical state, I’d believed in angels and demons in a tangible, powerful way. But this…
“Mar?”
I opened my eyes and saw Fauna standing in the doorway to my room. The slabs of stone were so silent when they opened and closed. They swung shut noiselessly, and we were in a dimly illuminated space once more. I remained on the floor as I looked up at her. She took a few steps into the room and slid next to me.
“Mer, I mean,” she corrected quietly.
Three words, but they each dripped with pain. I softened as I shifted to look at her. I hadn’t spent a lot of time attempting to empathize with what Fauna might be going through. Her horror at Azrames’s sentence…
“Your dog will be here tonight,” she said. She fiddled with her fingers, watching them carefully as each movement betrayed nerves and stress. “And then you’ll both go back with Caliban.”
My mouth turned to cotton as I watched her. Dread filled the small room.
“I need to ask you a favor.” She looked up at me with wide eyes at last.
There it was. The reason for my dread. The excellent command of emotion. The pieces of her that would tug at my heartstrings. I looked into her larger-than-life doe eyes and did my best to remain impassive.
“Caliban can end this,” she said quietly.
I shook my head. Even if I was dreaming, I knew the rules of this nightmare. “Fauna, the walls—”
She bridged the short gap between us, wrapping her hand around mine. “He’d do it for you.”
I swallowed against my instinctive protest. I hated myself as I said, “Azrames won’t die.”
The silver spikes of true tears lined her eyes as she laughed a sharp, humorless laugh. She blinked against the bubbling water, but a single stream ran down her cheek. She shook her head. “ Caliban won’t die,” she emphasized, “but we’re going to pluck out his eyeballs, and tear off his fingernails, and break his bones, for weeks, and weeks, and weeks. But he’ll survive.”
I looked away. I’d known my words had been thoughtless before I’d said them, but now I hated myself.
“I’m sorry. I care about Az. I…”
“He’ll do it for you,” she repeated. “Caliban can end this.”
I looked back at her. “It might mean—”
She touched her ears, reminding me that the walls were listening. I bit my lip and drew a stilling breath before using one of the few lessons I’d learned in Sunday school.
It was a horrid, albeit useful, appropriation of language.
We were taught American Sign Language for all our favorite worship songs and Bible verses, not just at our church, but as an often-problematic trend in evangelical congregations across the country. Even at the time, it had been a curious choice. The teachers hadn’t known why, save for the power of actions and body movement. One Sunday school teacher had suggested that they were always looking to recruit new members for the interpretation team, as many took turns rotating through sermons and messages throughout the week. My knowledge consisted of major religious language, the alphabet, and a few fun animals and curse words.
A dark part of me chuckled thinking of the worship leader who’d been so intent on teaching us the ASL to “Our God Is an Awesome God” as I turned to Fauna.
It was a slow process picking my way through the alphabet at every word I didn’t know, but I gambled and told her, “It might mean war.”
Caliban had said that the other gods had incentive to see Heaven fall. It was why Astarte had been willing to let Caliban into her clinic. Perhaps it was why her death hadn’t been met with an instant battle cry from their pantheon. The good of the many outweighed the good of one deity, as long as they got some form of justice.
But I didn’t care about their justice, their motives, or their rivalries.
After a long pause, she lifted both hands and made a few signs that were utterly foreign to me. I responded by holding my pinky to the middle of my chest for I. I used my forefinger and middle finger, pinching them to meet my thumb in a rapid motion as I said no. I used my index finger near my forehead, flicking and bending it to communicate understanding .
She made an amused face, then loosened her shoulders as she held my eyes. Fauna took her time as she picked each and every word with one hand, spelling them out. After each letter, she’d wait to see me mouth it to know I was up to speed.
T-H-E-N
I nodded along encouragingly. I knew these letters.
S-T-A-R-T
My blood pressure kicked up as I watched the intensity in her face.
W-A-R.
That was it. She knew exactly what she was asking of me.
She sat still as she watched me, examining every twitch, every shift, any micro expression that might convey what I was feeling. My eyes flicked over her shoulder to the closed door. Beyond it, I knew Azrames sat on a bed, ready to take three thousand lashes because he’d come to my aid. He’d been roped into this because she was tied to me, and he loved her. He was my friend, yes, but we would have never crossed paths had it not been for her.
I watched her honey-brown eyes burn with questions. Inhuman white dots mixed with the copper freckles that decorated her nose and cheeks as her face wrinkled with intensity. Her eyebrows leveled with panic and seriousness as she waited, and waited, and waited.
I thought of the King of Hell as he’d risked it all to stand against Heaven. I thought of the story of the Aesir and Vanir, and how Odin had chained Fenrir to a rock in fear of his power. I thought of Hades’s subjugation in the Underworld. I thought of freedom fighters and abolitionists throughout human history. Ella, Estrid, Fenrir, Poppy, and Dorian were a new set of names in a long line of revolutions. Poppy’s warning floated through my memory.
Ask her why she’s helping you. Ask her why she really came into your life.
I held her gaze as I signed five letters.
C-H-A-O-S.
Fauna closed her eyes slowly. If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn it was to keep herself from bursting into tears. She sniffed before pulling me into a hug. We didn’t have long to revel in whatever came of our embrace before scuffling drew our attention. Despite the thick stone walls, the sounds of arrival and the call of our names cut through the door.
She pulled me to my feet as we pushed our way into the main room.
Fenrir sat politely in the middle of the room with his tail around his feet.
“She may keep her dog,” the attendant said stiffly, as if the words had been practiced, “as long as it remains well-behaved.”
I spoke over Fauna, answering, “He’s extremely intelligent. He won’t be a problem.”
The surprise in their eyes confused me for a moment before I realized they were speaking what should have been a dead language to my human ears. Oh well. I was the Prince’s human. For all they knew, demon royalty had selected me because I was a talented linguist. Let them speculate.
The closed the door behind them as Fenrir looked at me.
“You’re intelligent yourself, Marlow.”
My eyes widened in fear at the use of my true name. I gaped at the enormous canine in the room. A god-killer so powerful Odin himself had strapped him to a rock for eternity. Fenrir, the beautiful, shaggy horseman of the apocalypse.
Fauna gave me a final squeeze as she parted for her night with Azrames. Fenrir and I carried on alone, escorted down inky marble halls by servants.
“They can’t hear me,” Fenrir said into my mind. “I choose who can and cannot perceive my words. As such, I allow some to perceive me as the domesticated pet you claim, while few know me by my true name. Speak to me in your mind, and only I will hear.”
I didn’t bother to question him. I held his eyes and kept my mouth shut as I thought, “What do you know of our situation?”
“Tell me.”
And so I did. I told him of Bellfield. I told him of my bond with the Prince. I told him of the punishments for both Azrames and Silas. I told him what our Phoenician hosts believed. I told him of Fauna’s plea.
“There is much you do not know, human, and it is not for me to fill in those gaps. I honor your spirit, and I honor our deal. As you rightly identified, I have a taste for anarchy. My teeth are yours, as I am your weapon as we bring the world to its knees.” The words rang through my thoughts as his lips pulled back from his teeth in a smile.
“Let’s give them hell,” I said, returning the smile.
“We’ll give them more than Hell,” he said. “We’ll give them what Hell stood for.”