Chapter 37
Saer’s blood rushed through his ears, a pounding susurration that covered all else. Eyes unfocused and staring across the room, he tried swallowing past a throat as dry as desert sands.
The frightened mewls and whimpers of the remaining monks gradually slunk into his consciousness. Blood dried on his forehead, the sides of his face and lips, cracking and pulling at the skin. It itched.
“Kalia.” Saer’s voice sounded far away to his ears. His hands still pressed against his own chest, her shoulder leaning into them.
She lay limp against him, her body rocked by intermittent shudders and sniffles.
Saer tested moving his arms from between them, managing to get them out to his sides where they hovered.
What did a big brother do in this situation?
What should a Daemoenic do instead?
Which was right?
Why did ‘right’ matter?
Another sob broke from Kalia, and his impulses took over. Leaning down, he wrapped his strong arms around her smaller, softer form, and pulled her closer.
She fought back at first, then collapsed against him, weeping. The stone wall at his back braced them, and he tilted his head into the solid surface, taking deep breaths to slow the pounding of his heart while Kalia’s cries devolved into hiccups.
What monks remained were just as incapacitated, the aftermath of trauma.
Saer licked his lips and grimaced when he tasted old blood. “We need to relocate you.”
Kalia’s whimpering reply was inaudible.
“Kalia?”
“I was happy here!” The demoness followed her shrill declaration by slugging her fists into Saer’s chest, pushing herself away with startling violence.
Across the room, the whimpering brothers cried out in alarm, and a few returned to pulling and scratching at the door. Useless.
Saer released her and stared, baffled. “This wasn’t—”
“I told you to go! Why in the Hells don’t you ever listen?
” Sloth screamed, pounding her fists with renewed vigor against his torso.
She may have been the youngest, but she was still Daemoenic and stronger than a mortal.
The breath slammed out of him as she landed a particularly brutal blow to his diaphragm.
He wheezed. “Kaliaspher, stop!”
Other humans outside had finally taken notice of the chaos within the calefactory. The brothers wailed, panicked. “Let us out!” “Abbot Maurice is dead!” “They’re all dead!”
With a shriek, the demoness turned, wrenching out of Saer’s grip, and stretched out a hand. She aimed the brunt of her fury at the wooden warming room door, flames exploding with her Hellsfire. The usually composed and easy-going Kalia roared to everyone in the room, human and demon alike, “Out!”
Even those burnt and blistered monks scrambled to obey her with a frantic will, though they quailed at the inferno. Exasperated, Saer gestured to the flames and siphoned them into himself, leaving the frail, smoking aftermath of a door.
The brothers crashed through the burnt remains, scrambling to escape the horrors of the warming room.
Kalia’s stilted breathing filled the smoking expanse. Echoes of perpetual alarm and pain distanced themselves.
“Kal—”
“Frenzied Hellsfire, Saer.” The demoness slumped as though she’d spent every last reserve of energy she had left. “Haven’t you done enough?”
Pride’s first instinct was to snipe back at his youngest sister, to scream at her that they’d ended up here for the sake of saving her. For the sake of saving all of them!
She is afraid. She is alone.
The thoughts were his, but more reflective of something Neyu might remind him of to stay his hand. This realization, greater than anything, startled him out of his reactive anger.
‘Pieces of her live in you. They’re easy to see for those of us who knew her.’
Saer was learning to watch for them as well.
Lines creased his face in a deep frown, and he allowed the quiet to simmer. Saer shifted his legs under his body and stood with a grunt.
Kalia’s hushed and raw voice filled the emptiness. “I know you didn’t mean to.”
Pride winced. Of all the Daemoenica, Kalia wasn’t one to hold a grudge, always the quickest to let go. Even so, Saer wasn’t used to forgiveness, especially when handed out so readily. He answered with equal softness. “Are the ones our maker slaughtered—?”
Sloth gestured to her side with a tired sigh. “The abbot and brothers’ souls are here. I’ll get to it when I get to it.” The spirits must be confused and asking a multitude of questions or pleading. She seemed well-versed in ignoring whatever they tried to say.
An arm lifted as though she meant to brush her mousy brown locks back, then Kalia remembered her upper limbs were bathed in blood, and she dropped her hand in defeat.
She tossed her head instead to get the hair out of her face.
“Why don’t you go home, Saer? Let this go, apologize, resume your duties, and give the rest of us some relief. ”
Saer growled, and she rushed to say more. “Father’s so preoccupied with what you’re doing, he doesn’t acknowledge or care how hard the rest of us work.”
Though Sloth whined, Saer’s growl ceased as he absorbed her words. The Twins had said similar, even asked him to consider her in all of this. And he wanted to. Truly, he did.
And yet…
“I can’t do that.”
“Because Errshek has to die. Because somehow that’ll make all this better.” Kalia’s tone came mocking, and Saer’s patience from before, snapped.
“He can’t be allowed to get away with it!”
“With what, Saer? He lost her, too.”
“All the more reason he deserves to suffer the same. He should have known.”
Kalia let out a wordless holler of frustration and snatched at the corner of her bed linens to wipe off her hands. “You are impossible.”
“Then tell me where Errshek is so I can be on my way.”
For the first time since Lucifer possessed her, Kalia rolled her eyes up to Saer. It must have been difficult for Sloth to match gazes with Pride, but she somehow managed to weigh hers with profound aggravation. “I told him he needs to hide and made him leave.”
“But you know where he went.”
Kalia’s eyes faltered. She bowed her head, attention fixed with renewed vigor on scrubbing the drying and crusted blood of monks off her upper limbs.
“Kaliaspher.”
Her jaw tensed, and she shook her head, but didn’t say anything.
Energy, constrained and furiously vibrating like bottled electricity, hummed between them.
So close.
He was so close.
Saer reached from his gut, calling upon the essence of his youngest sister. “Kaliaspherikkana.” His whisper quaked with warning. Kalia spasmed and crumpled to her knees next to the bed, eyes shutting. The use of her true name hit its mark, ensnaring her like a barbed fishhook woven with syllables.
Fear slunk into her plea when she whimpered in turn, “Saer, please don’t.”
He shoved aside any part of Neyu’s influence, bitterness flooding in to take its place. “Kaliaspherikkana.” Teeth bared, Saer sent a spark of unmaking into her core with the word, enough to make her cry out and double over. It glowed there an instant, then vanished as Saer pulled it back.
A warning shot.
Kalia turned to stare at him with eyes too wide, betrayal in her gaze. She gulped for more oxygen, breaths shivering, but said nothing.
Saer’s rage drove him, his face aching with the sharp lines carved there. “By your true name, I command you to tell me where Errshek is, Kaliaspherikkana.”
Too much white around her coffee-hued irises, more effervescent tendrils of steam floated from the corners of Sloth’s eyes. The power of hierarchy coaxed whimpering words from her lips. “He sought the lake of a thousand lightning strikes. The Twins told us about it.”
“Where is it?” Saer shouted.
“I don’t know!” The demoness wailed. “Somewhere south of here.” Hiccuping again as the words fled her, she turned away and clutched at her bed linens, burying her face in them. “I don’t know anymore. Please don’t…”
Saer’s wrath ebbed away.
His expression softened, and he took a step forward.
Too late. Just go.
Neyu would never have reduced Kalia to this.
You can’t undo it. You have what you want. Leave.
Uncertainty waged war with the absolute conviction he’d known moments prior.
Saer tore his eyes away from the youngest Daemoenic and departed.