Chapter 40
The Portal Opens
The torches flickered in the brackets on the wall. The shelf began to shudder and move. She froze, heart lodged in her throat. She had maybe thirty seconds before whatever wretched thing that crossed through the portal was here.
Elizabeth slowly edged away from her seat, looking for something, anything to defend herself with. There was nothing, only shelves and books upon books. She couldn’t fight with books.
A raspy snarling and a thrashing sound filled the air.
Dread filled her heart.
She inched away from the entrance to the portal room and down an aisle, backing further into the library. Caspian hadn’t been at dinner, and likely wasn’t in the castle. Unless a servant came running to her aid, she was alone.
She looked around and cursed, for in those precious few seconds, she hadn’t realized she had moved herself further into the library and farther from the exit. The sound of heavy breathing filled the air.
She crept down an aisle and wedged herself behind a leather armchair in a corner, resigning herself to wait and hide until the creature moved on.
Heavy footsteps echoed through the library. They sounded like they were moving farther away from her, and then she heard nothing at all. She strained her ears, but all was quiet.
Elizabeth waited a moment, then breathed a sigh of relief. She waited another couple of minutes before she finally relaxed.
The danger had passed.
Deeming it safe, she poked her head out of her hiding spot and stopped dead.
A lizard-like demon was sitting in the aisle, quietly lying in wait with its spiked hackles raised.
The creature had a horned face the size of a large hound, swishing its forked tail in the air. A globule of spit dripped from its maw.
It growled. The only warning it gave before it pounced.
She froze as its jaws opened, revealing razor-sharp teeth.
Then a blur of shadow slammed into the lizard-demon, and it let out a barked whine as it was thrown against a bookshelf.
Her relief was short-lived. The demon that had come to her rescue was even more frightening.
This demon was massive, with horns and an ugly, animalistic face that was currently snarling at the one that had just attacked her.
The demon was impossibly broad, with a back rippling with muscle and the look of an oversized man with blue-black skin and monstrous wings.
It had horns that extended upwards from its forehead.
A permanent snarl etched the man’s face, twisted with evil and hate.
Realization hit her. It was the demon from the library. The one she had glimpsed several times, lurking about the castle.
It stomped on the forked tail of the smaller lizard-demon, making it screech.
With large hands, the demon brought the lizard-demon up to eye level.
It hissed and snarled and swiped. The larger demon twisted its neck.
A sickening crunch reverberated across the room, followed by a thud as he dropped her attacker to the floor.
The demon from the library bared his pointed canines and took a step towards her.
She screwed up her eyes, closing them tightly, not wanting to watch, just wanting it to be over.
But nothing happened. She cracked open an eye to find the demon appraising her with curious eyes.
It extended a hand towards her; his hands were as big as dinner plates and looked too large for his arms. Perhaps, it had never seen one of her kind before. Tentatively, she put her smaller, human hand in his.
Clearing her throat, she said, “Thank you. For—helping me.” She paused and asked, “What was that thing?”
No answer came, and she felt foolish for asking. Perhaps, it was stupid and did not understand what she’d said. She axed that idea as soon as she had it, though, for its eyes were not flat and dull. They were sharp and intelligent, and tracked her movements.
She jolted as she realized his eyes were pools of silver flame. The creature’s flickering eyes grew heavy-lidded with exhaustion.
He grasped her hand and tugged, and with no small amount of wonder, she realized he had been trying to pull her to her feet.
He surveyed her, as if looking for any injuries.
Seeming satisfied, he turned to leave. His skin was tarnished black, as if he had rolled around in soot and ash.
Blood and grime coated his arms, but she couldn't tell if it was his or someone else’s.
An arrow stuck out of his thigh, something she didn’t see earlier in her panic. She wondered how he was still standing.
She looked at his bulk and size and immediately resolved to never set foot through the portal if these were the manner of creatures she would find on the other side.
He picked up the heavy lizard-demon and slung it over his shoulder as if it weighed nothing. With a half-hearted shrug, the monster limped away, dragging its injured leg behind.
“Wait!” she called. “Who are you?”
But no answer came.
His wings were similar to Asmodeus’s wings, except for the black feathers dotting the membranes in an odd, random pattern, like a fledgling bird that had molted. A large black feather drifted from its back onto the floor.
A twin to the one she had found before.
Darkness spiraled around his thick legs, wrapping around him like a second skin. He stepped forward, and the darkness flared, as if pulling at him, licking up his legs as if trying to pull him back to the Underworld whence he came.
Elizabeth grabbed his wrist, and he turned to her curiously.
“You’re one of the demon princes, aren’t you?” she asked, glancing at his eyes.
He surveyed her, as if wondering if she was out of her mind.
He pulled away and walked off without an answer. She followed him, for some reason wanting to ensure he was alright.
“You are, aren’t you?” She glanced at his wings and horns. “Are you cursed like Asmodeus?”
They arrived at the portal room’s entrance, hidden again behind the bookshelves. The large demon looked between her and the bookshelf. Clearly deciding not to trust her, it dropped the carcass of the lizard-demon on the ground, leaving it for the servants to find.
The creature limped towards the exit, but its leg completely gave out, making him stumble.
“Here, let me help you.”
She wrapped her arm under his massive shoulder and hoisted him up. Or, at least she tried. Gods, he was heavy. She took off some of the weight, gasping at how heavy he was, and waited for instruction.
“Where?” she wheezed, determined to help even though he was monstrous and several times her size.
The demon didn’t answer.
She pointed and directed, forcing him to come with her through the castle. Having explored most of the castle by now, she knew there were many unused guest chambers. She rapped on a random door and cracked it open, revealing a guest chamber with a four-poster bed.
She set her patient on the bed and ordered sternly, “Wait here. I’ll be back. Don’t move.”
The demon looked at her curiously, not moving an inch.
She hurried away and returned a few minutes later with supplies. She had no poultices or bandages, but she had found sheets and towels, a knife, and a bottle of brandy she had filched from the kitchens.
Why the creature was here or what importance he had to the castle was a mystery, but she sensed it was up to her to help him—she couldn’t quite explain why.
Perhaps it was because he had saved her life from that red demon in the field, and now again with the lizard-demon. She felt she owed him a kindness.
Her charge sat on the mattress, his breathing laboured. Now that her adrenaline receded, she took in his rough shape. He gestured towards the brandy, and she shook her head.
He gestured again, insistently, and she passed it to him, bewildered. “I read in a book once that they used alcohol as a disinfectant in place of a healing poultice. I thought it would help against infect—”
Her babbling was cut off as he chugged the brandy. He paused, took another swig, and gave it back to her.
She grimaced and set the bottle aside. Remembering how Caspian had tended to her arm, she gently dabbed his wounds with a damp towel, not entirely sure what she was doing.
Incredulous, she watched blood wash off him, leaving his skin clear and largely unblemished. Most of the blood and grime on his arms wasn’t his, which was a surprising but small blessing.
The blood smeared across the pristine white towels. His blood was red, but darker than hers, almost black. There was a large cut on his bicep, a few shallow, half-clotted cuts on his arms and forearm, and the arrow buried in his thigh.
“Shhhh, shhhh,” she murmured when he grunted as she brushed the damp towel against a particularly large cut. “You’re okay. You’re alright.”
She cleaned his wounds and used the knife to cut strips of cloth from the bedsheet, which she planned to wrap around his arms, torso, and thigh. The cuts came out jagged, and she cringed, feeling like she was butchering Caspian’s priceless sheets.
Lying a few strips out, she held the damp towel against his arm. It seemed logical to apply pressure and try to stop the bleeding as much as possible before she bandaged it.
She decided to practice her bandaging skills on the wound on his arm before dealing with the larger one on his leg. She eyed the arrow sticking out of the meat of his thigh warily—it looked more complicated to clean and bandage.
Maybe he would thank her for her efforts, and she would finally have an ally in this castle besides Fiza. The idea cheered her on as she gritted her teeth against the nausea that rolled through her stomach from the sight of his wounds.
“Do you have a name?”
No answer.
“What is it you do for the castle?”
A slow blink was all she received.
She rinsed the towel in clean water and wrung it over the wound on his arm, spilling water over his broken flesh until it ran clear instead of black and brown with soot and muck. She did it one more time, not caring about the water on the flagstones below. She could mop them after.
“Ready?”