8. Leah
Leah
Rancor. Vyle. Baine. Malice.
Ominous names for horrifying places. Demon lands no human should ever see. But they’re whispered about back in Strata, and none more so than the domain tied to the harvesting of our souls, run by a lord no one ever sees in the human realm.
Except, apparently, when he decided to make an exception to possess little old me. It’s certainly one way to make a girl feel special.
“You’re the Lord of Malice,” I say stupidly when my feet are on solid ground again.
He’s brought us to a courtyard of the castle, landing with no more effort than a slight bracing of knees as his wings concertina behind him, folding inward before disappearing out of sight altogether.
In their place, shadows shift around his shoulders.
You might not even notice them if you didn’t already know what he was.
Or who he was.
The Lord of Malice. I don’t know if I fully believe it yet—I haven’t quite grasped the scale of my bad luck to be bound to him of all demons. The moment he releases me, his hands dropping from my waist, I take several steps back, studying him in the fresh light of this information.
He seems far less interested in examining me—his gaze is directed over my head, toward an archway on the opposite side of the courtyard. “My name is Syrus,” he says.
I clamp down on a hysterical laugh at the normality of this introduction. Oh, we’re meant to be on a first-name basis now, are we? What should I call the Lord of Baine? Bob?
His mouth flattens into a thin line, and his eyes flick down at me for just a second. Long enough for me to feel the brush of his consciousness against mine.
“Call me whatever you want, human. It’s no concern of mine.”
Shit. I need to remember that anything I think too loudly—too directly—he can hear. I have to keep my guard up if I’m not going to seriously piss him off or spill all my secrets. And now I know who he is—Syrus, or Lord Syrus, or whatever—that’s more important than ever.
He’s moved on, nodding to the pair of demons coming through the archway.
“Don’t tell me Vizmodeus has you wringing your hands about the wards too, Quill?” Syrus says to one of them disapprovingly.
The demon who answers is huge, several inches taller than Syrus, with mottled gray skin and a bald head. He twitches his leonine nose, smelling the air, and his eyes—the irises as black as his pupils—fall on me.
“The chamberlain warned me about her, my lord.”
I swallow, wondering exactly what I’ve done to piss off this demon so soon.
There’s another archway behind us. It would be massively risky to take a run at an archway leading who-knows-where, but if I absolutely have to get out of here, it’s an option.
I size it up as discreetly as I can, making sure to keep my thoughts quiet so Syrus doesn’t hear my plans.
But his attention is fixed on the other demon now. He’s shorter and leaner than Quill, with silver hair and bone-white skin. In fact, his whole face looks startlingly like a skull, with eyes sunken into deep black sockets and a mouth that stretches wide, revealing too many teeth when he talks.
“It’s like I theorized: she doesn’t trigger the wards, either at the castle walls or—” he pauses, seeming to remember I’m present. He speaks in Cyrax instead, the guttural words meaning nothing to me, before he finishes in the common tongue: “Not as long as she’s bound to you.”
“Well, it’s a good thing she’s not a threat then,” Syrus says. The Lord of Malice sounds bored again, his fingers drumming on his thigh like he wishes to be done with this conversation.
“Forgive me, but I doubt she’s harmless, sir,” Quill says, gesturing one of his hefty arms in my direction. “I can smell the blood on her from here.”
A sharp wave of nausea hits me as I look back down at the stains on my clothes and hands. My nose must have gone blind to the smell. I’m stunned there was even a brief moment I forgot that I’m covered in the gore of other people.
The demon lord’s head turns sharply toward me, then he looks away again, unfastening the catch of his cloak at his neck as he approaches the archway behind us.
“Yes, do something about that please, Viz, and put her in one of the northern apartments until I need her.”
He sweeps out of the courtyard, the shadows dancing behind him as he goes.
Even though I’m left in the courtyard with a pair of demons who are plenty intimidating in their own right, I exhale in relief.
There’s something oppressive about being around the Lord of Malice, like his power makes it hard to breathe.
Or maybe it’s the fear of him jumping inside my head and taking over my body at any moment.
My head already feels clearer with him gone.
The skull-faced demon, Vizmodeus, clenches his many teeth as he looks at me. I can see the bulge of his jawbone moving beneath his thin skin and sense he’s not happy with this task.
He says something to Quill in Cyrax, then jerks his head in my direction.
“Come with me.”
I follow after him. I don’t think I have a choice, not with the hulking Quill standing there, arms folded across his chest. Besides, Syrus said something about fixing the me-covered-in-blood situation.
In a place where so much is wildly out of my control, I focus on that one small thing.
I don’t know how long it will take before I stop hearing the screams of the sorcerers as they died.
As I killed them. But maybe it would help if I could wash up and change clothes and feel the tiniest bit clean again.
We step out into a network of crisscrossing corridors, and I try to orient myself.
It’s obvious this building is very old, with stone rather than brick walls and imposing pillars which sweep up into vaulted ceilings.
I stare up at the sharp ridges of the arches, layered one after another all the way down the hall like ribs, like I’m stuck in the belly of a huge beast.
When we get to the end and pass through a dark wooden door, we’re suddenly outside again, crossing a high, open-air walkway between one building and the next.
I try to pay attention to where we’re going, getting a sense of the castle’s layout, but there’s a lot of it to see, and the demon beside me keeps distracting me by asking questions.
“What’s your name?” Vizmodeus asks, sliding a pale, bony hand into a deep pocket. I’m surprised he finds what he’s looking for so quickly, because the brown coat he’s wearing is in fact more pocket than garment. I’m sure it must get confusing remembering what he put where.
Still, he pulls out a thick roll of parchment that looks like it shouldn’t fit in the various folds of his clothes, then tugs a pencil from somewhere beneath his silver hair.
Despite the shade of it, I get the sense he’s relatively young, maybe mid-thirties.
Except that can’t be right, because I know demons live much longer than humans.
“My name is Rose Radley,” I say, repeating the lie I told Syrus.
The demon scribbles it down. “And where in the Mire are you from?”
I blink, not recognizing the term, which makes him click his teeth.
“The human realm,” he clarifies.
“Oh, um, Pax.”
He nods, making a note of this. “Not that he actually checked before he took you. Still, I suppose it wouldn’t matter…” He trails off before muttering something to himself in Cyrax and amending his pencil scratchings.
I study the demon while I have the chance to.
For someone who works for a lord—did Quill call him the chamberlain?
—he looks rather disheveled. His hair sticks up at odd angles, the shirt beneath his coat is rumpled, and there’s smudges of pencil all over his white fingers.
His skull-like features might be unsettling, but something about this disarray makes him less frightening.
“Age?” he asks.
“Twenty-four.”
He makes a disapproving noise at this, as if the number offends him.
“And what’s your occupation? Do you do anything?
” He glances at the wedding ring on my finger.
I hadn’t even realized I was still wearing it.
I automatically twist the metal loose before pushing it back into place again.
At this moment, I’m too scared and exhausted to come up with another lie—if Syrus needs me, I just have to hope that’s protection enough.
“I used to collect things off the plains and sell them…after a battle.” I avoid using the word scavenge; it suddenly sounds harsh in my mind. The demon’s deep-set eyes flare anyway.
“You’re a mire rat?” He shakes his head, giving a bitter laugh that makes his jaws clack together.
I don’t answer. I haven’t heard the phrase before, but I can easily guess what it means. It makes sense the wingers have their own, unflattering name for us. Fair’s fair—we have plenty of unflattering names for them.
“Well, I suppose there may be some advantages to that,” he says, lifting the parchment to write it down. Given he hasn’t bitten my head off yet, I try my luck with a question.
“Do you know what he’s going to use me for?” I ask.
The demon’s jaw tics again. “Something he should’ve left to me. Of course, it’s typical he’d possess first and ask questions later. You know my hair used to be black before I took this job?”
“Was it?” I reply, because he seems to expect an answer.
“No,” he grins, showing his many teeth. “But you believed it, didn’t you? Because even a mire rat like you can see working for that man is a pain in the proverbial.” He goes back to scribbling on his parchment.
I’m surprised he would complain so openly about his lord, but then maybe I’m so much of a non-entity he’s not worried. Perhaps he assumes I’ll be dead from the possession long before anything he says to me comes back to bite him.
It’s a sobering thought, and it puts me back scanning our surroundings, gathering information as he rolls up the parchment and tucks it back into the depths of his coat.
We cross another bridge between buildings, giving me a brief glimpse of something that looks like a garden lying below, sharing a wall with the perimeter.
A moment later, we stop in front of a heavy black door.
I swallow, trying to prepare myself for what might lie beyond.
No matter how old and grand this castle looks, this isn’t the extravagant home of some moneybags landowner.
It’s a fortress. The seat of Malice’s power.
That probably means iron bars and dungeons and armories.
I listen carefully for any noise creeping beyond the door.
If there are human souls being imprisoned and tortured in this place, maybe Syrus thinks I’m best housed with them.
All this flashes through my mind in the few seconds it takes Vizmodeus to open the door, revealing…a bedroom.
“Terrifying, isn’t it?”
The demon’s grin has a hard edge, and I realize I took a full step back from the door as it swung open.
He walks into the room, clearly expecting me to follow.
“What awful demonic lodgings have we concocted for you? Best watch out for that bed,” he nods at the very ordinary looking four poster draped in a velvet throw.
“And I’d keep an eye on that futon in case it gets any ideas.
And oh—holy darkness save us—not a wardrobe. ”
He spins around to see my reaction, looking very pleased with himself.
“Come on,” he says, throwing his hands up when I just stare at him. “If my time’s going to be wasted showing you around, I’m allowed to have some fun with it.”
“I’m laughing on the inside,” I say flatly, studying the room as I step further inside. He can taunt me all he wants, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to let my guard down.
“What’s through there?” I say, pointing to a smaller door in the corner.
“A washroom. You know, for bathing? Or do mire rats not clean themselves?” the demon asks, his eyes glinting in their deep sockets.
It’s clear he doesn’t like me. It feels like there’s more to it than just thinking this task is beneath him.
Whatever it is, I’d rather not linger in close proximity with him alone.
When he dug into his pockets earlier, he shifted his coat, and I saw a slim sword strapped to his hip.
I’ve seen blades like that too many times, shedding shadows that tear ephilium apart.
I won’t forget what this man is—what all of them are—just because they’re capable of holding a conversation.
I move toward the window. The light in Infernum is different, more purple than yellow, and it streams through the glass, warming my face as I look up into the sunless sky.
“I think that’s all I need, thank you,” I say, managing to sound almost polite. The demon’s jaw clicks again, but he shrugs. For a moment, I think he’s going to say something else, but then he leaves without another word, closing the door behind him.
I hold my breath, releasing it in disappointment when I hear the slide and thud of a bolt.
I don’t know where that blind streak of optimism came from thinking they might not lock me in, but I shake it off. From here on out, hope and prayers aren’t going to get me anywhere. I can only rely on myself.
And right now, that self desperately wants this blood off her.