Ten years of enduring endless torture hadn’t broken me, but I’d be lying if I said seeing it again didn’t twist something in my gut. I’d buried the memories as deep as possible and intended to keep them that way. But the body remembers what the mind tries to forget. The chains. The fire. The meat hooks. The flayings. The screams.
Truly, I would be happy never to set foot inside those walls again. I would have loved nothing more than to stay on Earth with Lily and make a new home there. But Hell needed her just as much as I did. So, here I was.
I set my jaw and dragged my gaze away. I needed to focus on Lily, who wasn’t looking at the fortress or Lucifer’s army anyway. Her gaze was elsewhere, off to the side, just beyond the massive gates.
I followed her line of sight, and my chest tightened.
The stables.
Once, cages had filled that area. Row after row of enclosures big enough to contain an army of hellwyrms. They’d been Lucifer’s pride. He hadn’t created them, but he’d caged them,bent them to his will, then discarded them when they’d refused to do as he ordered. But Lily? She’d loved and cared for them.
And now there was nothing. Just stone and dirt.
“Where are they?” Lily asked, her voice almost too soft.
“Gone,” Calyx answered, his tone devoid of his usual snark. He folded his arms across his chest and sighed. “Lucifer purged them after you fled with Mephisar and Sable. According to him, two rebellious hellwyrms was justification enough to destroy the entire herd.”
Shock widened Lily’s eyes, and her mouth parted. “He killed them all?”
“Every last one,” Calyx confirmed.
Her entire body deflated with a heavy breath. Sensing her distress, I took her hand and gave it a squeeze. I refused to tell her it wasn’t her fault, because she wouldn’t believe me. Her actions had resulted in her father killing hundreds of innocent creatures. But what I could promise her was, “We’ll change it. All of it. No more cages.”
“It won’t bring them back,” she whispered.
No, it wouldn’t.
Her gaze connected with mine, and for a moment, the warrior in her fell away. Standing before me was justLily. The celestial who loved all creatures. She would mourn the loss of the hellwyrms, but it would also fuel her fire.
As though sensing her pain, Mephisar slithered over and came to a stop on her other side. She instinctively reached up and placed a hand on his side, stroking his scales.
“Guess you’re the last of your kind,” she murmured.
Mephisar rumbled a response, then dipped his head and snuffed at her hair. A quick flick, and his bifurcated tongue swiped across her cheek. She didn’t laugh or push him away. She just leaned against him and rested her head against his neck.
Eliza was the next to make her way over. “So,” she said as she lifted her hands and started gathering her hair together, tying it back with some sort of elastic. “This is where you grew up?” A wicked grin curved her lips. “Explains so much.”
“Oh, ha, ha,” Lily drawled, but the corner of her mouth betrayed her, twitching upward.
“I feel like we’re in theLion King,” Eliza said. Then she changed her voice into a ridiculous mimicry, low and dramatic. “We’re gonna fight your uncle for this?”
“Lucifer is herfather,” Calyx corrected her. “One would think you’d remember that, little bird.”
Eliza and Lily burst out laughing so hard that Calyx and I shared a confused glance. Clearly, we’d missed something here.
“What?” Calyx asked, brow furrowing.
“It’s—” Lily tried, but she couldn’t get the words out through her laughter.
“It’s from a movie,” Eliza supplied, chuckling. “From Earth. About a lion prince who has to—you know what, never mind. You wouldn’t understand.”
Calyx frowned, though there was a faint curve at his mouth that hinted Eliza’s attention pleased him. “I understand plenty. I just fail to see what’s so funny about confusing uncles with fathers.”
That only made the two of them laugh harder.
Calyx shot me a glance. “Do you know what this is about?”
I simply shook my head. Something Earth related, that much I knew. But I had no interest in learning more at this particular moment.
