Chapter Thirteen
Nina
Abell tolled through Temptation, signalling the hour when the city fell silent. I’d come to know that sound as the domain’s idea of dawn – when even the damned finally slept.
But slumber wasn’t on my agenda.
I was ready to attack the day. And maybe a few demons.
The wooziness from the feast lingered. After scrubbing away the night’s festivities in a hot shower, I felt steadier and reached for some semblance of normality.
The clothes I’d arrived in were gone, either destroyed or merely blinked out of existence.
I had to resort to Temptation’s wardrobe.
Waiting inside, beside beautiful gowns, was the gift.
Supple brown fighting leathers. The demon who had pulled me into this place was determined to hide his identity.
Perhaps that was why I refused his offering.
If he wouldn’t show himself, I wouldn’t wear what he wanted me to.
I can be stubborn too, you bastard.
With nothing comfortable to wear, I imagined something else, willing it into existence. The outfit materialised on cue. A fresh yellow skirt, matching waistcoat and white blouse – a bright ensemble against the dinginess of Hell.
The rest of the morning slipped by as I wandered the palace. My chambers were at the end of a quiet corridor, the only door in sight. When I explored further, the passages curved and narrowed, lined with locked doors.
I quickly became accustomed with my floor of the palace.
I named all of the stairways. The long corridor from my chambers led directly to the northern stairway, which went down to the ground level and led to the Betting Hall, kitchen, gardens, and feast hall.
The route was easy to remember, and I knew what portraits to follow to get back to my room.
I avoided the western stairway that climbed to floors I never dared visit.
I never went higher than my own level, never wanted to risk running into the other souls damned to Temptation.
Still, I was determined to find answers, so I continued exploring the palace as best I could.
I took the eastern stairwell next. It led to a long hallway lined with a hundred doors, each one a different shape from the last. The floor was unlike anything I’d ever seen.
A mosaic of glass shards in every colour, so delicately arranged it caught each flicker of candlelight and scattered it in brilliant fragments across the walls.
At the end of the hallway, a vine-covered gate was partly opened.
I moved closer and pushed it open, revealing a grove of fruit trees beyond.
Pale stone slabs scattered the ground, separated by roots that protruded through the crevices.
The trees grew low, their branches bulging with fruit that glistened lightly.
My stomach groaned with hunger, that recognisable gnawing sensation that was hard to fathom seeing I was dead . . .
It was the kind of hunger I remembered from the village, after nights of chewing stale crusts until my jaw ached, mornings when Tobias’s face was pinched and hollow.
The thought of him now, without me, made my heart clench so tight I couldn’t breathe.
Was he starving, as we so often were? Was he struggling to survive?
A round fruit dropped from a tree with a soft thud at my feet. The skin split, and the smell rose, sweet, spiced, impossibly rich. Before I realised, my hand was already reaching.
Licking my lips, I rolled the fruit around in my palm, then bit into it.
The taste . . . gods. It was nothing I’d ever known.
Juices flooded my mouth, dripping down my chin, hot and golden, like every hunger I’d ever had was being filled at once.
If only we’d had this in the village, Tobias and I.
No more nights of gnawing on nothing, no more empty bellies, no more fear of when the next scrap would come.
My chest shook with something between a laugh and a sob.
I grabbed another. Tore into it. Devoured it.
The skin burst, juice running sticky down my arms, over my wrists, soaking into the stone beneath me.
My teeth sank, chewed, swallowed, one after another after another.
The more I ate, the less I thought, the less I remembered why I was here at all.
But I wasn’t alone in the grove. Bodies lay slumped at the base of trees.
Their yellow-stained hands clutched half-eaten fruit, faces slick with the same sticky juice, bellies swollen, lips parted as they chewed and chewed and chewed.
Their eyes were glassy yet barely open, caught somewhere between hunger and dream.
Some had collapsed forward, mouths pressed to the fruit still hanging, gnawing mindlessly, too weak to pull away.
My jaw worked, I ate without thinking, and fluid flowed sticky down my chin. I lifted another fruit, my fingers slick and shaking, but halfway through the bite, a jolt of pain struck my hip. It ripped through the ravenous dream state. I coughed, spluttered, and spat pulp and juice onto the stones.
The sweetness turned sour on my tongue.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. My hands were sticky to the wrists, my sleeves smeared with the mess of it. I looked at myself, greedy, slobbering, no better than the husks slumped at the roots of the fruit trees. Shame scalded hotter than the hunger ever had.
I staggered backward, clutching my hip. The ache was a cruel blessing. It anchored me and reminded me pain was better than surrender.
I bit down on the inside of my cheek and tasted blood. With a startled gasp, the pain jolted me to attention. I tore myself away from the fruit trees and lurched for the trail in the distance. I was still spitting out fruit pulp as I stumbled into a gloomy entryway.
Whispers rose in the back of my mind. “You resisted.”
The crisp voices filled my head, stroking down my arms, a phantom touch that almost soothed. Their approval was worse than temptation, for it was a voice that purred with pride, and I didn’t know why.
I blinked into the darkness until I could see clearly. The shadowed chamber stank of hay and burnt paper. Shapes moved in the darkness, hulking silhouettes, four-legged, stamping against the floor.
A breath rolled out of the shadows, hot enough to sting my skin.
Chains rattled. Sparks flared. My eyes soon adjusted to the dim light, and I saw horse-like creatures behind low bars, but they didn’t look like any horses I had ever known.
Their hides were black as coal, their frames skeletal, and I could see their bones prominently through their skin.
The ends of their manes were licked with fire.
Smoke curled from their nostrils, and when their hooves struck the ground, bursts of flame pooled around them.
“Beautiful, aren’t they?”
The voice surprised me. A figure crouched at the far end of the space, lowering a bucket.
Jules. His locks draped around his face, and his hands were firm as he scooped some mash into a trough.
The creatures dropped their skull-like heads to devour it, smoke and flames billowing, but Jules didn’t even flinch.
“They’re called nightmares,” Jules said.
glancing up at me. “I call them snufflebeasts. Much more fitting, because they snuffle when they eat, see?” He gestured as one of the creatures shoved its burning muzzle into the feed and made a wheezing, huffing sound, almost comical if it hadn’t been so hellish.
“They’re wonderful creatures. Very misunderstood. ”
“You feed them?”
“I’m the only one who does.” Jules shrugged, his smile small, and he looked away.
“The other souls are too afraid. But these aren’t just beasts of this domain.
They’re older than all this.” His hand brushed one’s bony neck, and to my surprise, the creature leaned into the touch, fire licking at Jules’s sleeve without burning.
“They’re eternal creatures, connected to the Essence of Hell. ”
Several of the snufflebeasts (nightmares) sniffed the air as I drew closer. Their glowing eyes fell on me. One stamped, flame searing across the floor. Another hissed out a thick plume of smoke. They didn’t take to my presence the way they did Jules’. I stepped back, heart pounding.
“They don’t like strangers,” Jules said softly. “They don’t like to be caged in a domain either.”
He kept his eyes down as he stroked one creature’s muzzle. His voice lost its brightness for the first time since I’d met him. “I don’t like temptation much myself.”
I blinked at him. “Why are you here?”
Jules’s throat worked. His hand stilled against the nightmare’s bony hide. “ I thought I could reunite with my family.” He swallowed, and when he spoke again, his voice was shaking. “But that was a lie, told to me by a greedy demon.”
The snufflebeast blew out another rush of smoke, and Jules pressed his forehead against its burning mane as if seeking comfort in the fire.
Something inside me twisted. I’d only seen him smiling before, easy and light, as if nothing in this place could touch him. But now his voice carried cracks, and I saw the truth in them: he was as bound here as the rest of us.
I stepped closer, slow, careful, ignoring how the beasts shifted at my approach. Heat rolled off them, their breaths smoking the air, but my eyes stayed on Jules.
“You thought they’d be here?” I asked. My voice was rougher than I intended.
He nodded without lifting his head. “I thought if I played by the rules and gave in, I’d get to see them again.
My parents and my little sister.” His fingers tightened in the beast’s mane, and his laugh was low, bitter.
“Temptation makes you think you’re clever.
That you’ve found a loophole. But it only feeds on what you desire. ”
Tobias’s face flashed before me again. Hollowed cheeks, wide eyes, calling for me in the village.
Jules finally looked up, and no smile was left on his face. “I just wanted them back. But that was my weakness.”
I shook my head before I thought better of it. “That doesn’t make you weak.”
We stood there in the smoke, me watching Jules stroke the long mane of a nightmare. One of them snorted, sparks scattering, and Jules steadied it with a gentle hand, so at ease with the monster that I almost envied him.
“You survived the grove,” Jules said quietly.
I swallowed, the taste of fruit still sour on my tongue. “Barely.”
His gaze softened. “Barely is enough.”
I looked down at myself, my arms sticky, my clothes stained, the shame rising hot in my throat. I rubbed at my skin, trying to scrub away the juice, the proof of my hunger, but it stuck, and the smell of sweetness was turning rancid.
“Here.” Jules dipped a rag into the pail at his side and held it out. “It’ll come off.”
I hesitated, then reached. His warm and steady fingers brushed mine as he passed it over. I wiped my hands, my mouth, and the mess on my arms. The rag turned dark, streaked with pulp and ash, but slowly, the stickiness lifted. It felt like breathing again.
“You see?” His voice gentled, almost coaxing. “The demons want you to believe you’re ruined. That once you give in, you’re lost. But you’re not.”
The snufflebeasts shifted around us, stamping, huffing smoke. One tossed its burning mane, and sparks rained down like embers. I flinched, but Jules only smiled faintly. “They can smell fear. They don’t like it.”
He moved closer to one of the beasts, running his hand along its bony flank. “Come. Try.”
“I’ll be burned alive.”
“But you are not alive, Nina,” he said. “You know you’re in Hell, don’t you?”
I arched a brow at him, but I didn’t move. The beast’s eyes were locked on me, its breath spilling smoke between us. It looked ferocious and hungry, and was probably wondering if I tasted nice.
Jules extended his hand – not to the snufflebeast, but to me. “Trust me.”
I hated him for saying it, for making it sound so simple. But his hand stayed open, patient in the haze of smoke.
Against my better judgment, I took it. His grip anchored me as he guided my hand forward. The heat blistered near the creature’s muzzle, fire licking my skin, but when my palm met bone and sinew, the nightmare only snorted, exhaling a thick plume of smoke.
It didn’t bite. It didn’t burn.
The nightmare’s breath steamed against my arm, but it didn’t pull away. Like coals sunk deep in its skull, its eyes flared once before dimming. My hand trembled as Jules guided it along the ridge of bone.
“See?” he murmured. “They’re not all fury and fire. They just need someone willing to touch them without fear.”
“What’s that?” I asked, nodding at the contraption strapped across its back.
“Oh . . . that. It’s like a support harness. Just something I’ve been working on.”
My leg brace had always been bulky and noticeable. But this bracework was sleek, made from some dark material that wasn’t quite leather, and the straps clung to the beast’s ridged spine as though moulded for it.
“Doesn’t look like anything I’ve seen before.”
Jules’s mouth tugged into a half-smile. “Their bodies are built too lean, too skeletal to take a rider. But with the right saddle, who knows? Until then, they’re stuck in the barn.”
“So, you made this?”
He shrugged, though pride flashed in his eyes. “I’m just experimenting right now. People think strength is all brute force, but it doesn’t have to be. Sometimes it’s just about finding a way for the body to keep up with what the mind already wants to do.”
Finally, a sentiment in Hell I could get behind.
“Are you the only one that cares for the . . . snufflebeats?”
“No one else wants to. The other souls think they’re monsters. Leander barely remembers they exist. But someone has to look after them. Feed them. Speak to them.” His gaze softened as he stroked the beast’s mane, sparks clinging harmlessly to his skin. “They remind me of home.”
“Of your family?”
“I lived on a farm before I came here. It’s all a little foggy. I can’t remember my parents. But I know I had animals, just like these snufflebeasts.” He hesitated, eyes fixed on the beast as it snorted and leaned into his hand.
Tobias’s face burned in my mind again, thin, hungry, waiting for me to return. Would I forget his face eventually?
Jules’s voice dropped to a whisper. “They’re the only family I have in this place.”
The creature shuddered, mane flaring briefly before settling again. Jules didn’t move, his hand steady on its hide. For a long moment, neither of us spoke.
I envied him for it. Envied the way he could still find tenderness, still pour his care into something in Hell.
But standing beside him now, with the snufflebeast’s smoke pouring hot across my skin, I didn’t feel so hollow.
“You’re good with them. I could stay here all day, and just forget where we are.”
Jules blinked, and then beamed at me, and I didn’t feel entirely alone for the first time since stepping into the Domain of Temptation.