“Well…” I laughed. “You’re more attractive than Charon.”
“You have to be kidding— Ow!Fuck!” A cry of pain severed whatever she was about to say short.
My beast was on high alert, his hackles up and ready to attack whatever it was that might have hurt her. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
I waded over to her through the mud. She winced, her mud flecked face contorting in pain. “I think I rolled my ankle. It got caught on something.” She hunkered down in the filth, the dark sludge swallowing her small frame all the way up to her chin as she groped around her ankle. A second later, she pulled out a severed arm, its gray flesh swollen and dripping with mud. Its owner nowhere in sight.
“Oh, gross!” She flung the arm away, her lips peeling in disgust.
“There are bound to be far more nefarious souls in the Glutton’s Mire, Lilith. This is only the beginning of our journey. Can you walk?”
She gave a determined nod, but when she took another step, her mouth opened in a silent scream, tears gathering in her eyes and streaking through the layer of mud on her cheeks. I peeked into her mind just long enough to glean the level of pain she was in. There would be no more walking for her. “Lilith, you can’t continue like this. Your ankle will need to heal.”
“I can do it,” she insisted. She took another step and, this time, couldn’t smother her cry of pain before it slipped out of her.
“Stubborn woman,” I gritted, my fists clenching at my sides. I hated seeing her in this kind of agony, but there was little I could do for her.
“I’m fine,” she protested with a pathetic whimper.
“You’re a horrendous liar.” I scowled her as I scooped her up from the mud and cradled her to my chest. “Put your arms around my neck.”
Her eyes went as wide as saucers, and she thrashed a little in protest. “Lucifer, no. We have so long to go. I can’t ask you to carry me.”
“You’re not asking. I’m telling you. Now do as I say, put your arms around me. No queen of hell or otherwise should be made to walk through filth on a busted ankle.”
This time, there were no more protests. She did as I asked and wrapped her arms around my neck, drawing herself flush against me. This was the closest we’d been since our kiss.
Lilith was a wild demoness with courage that would trump any monster ten times her size. Yet she felt too delicate in my arms, so soft, so warm. I gritted my teeth, biting back the arousal stirring in my groin.
She’s injured, for fuck sake,I internally admonished my beast.
She refused to meet my eyes, her cheeks blazing with humiliation. The temptation was too great; I had to peek into her thoughts. Guilt ragged in her mind, making her flesh burn against mine.
“I can just shift. I have wings,”she thought.
The moment Lilith and I had shared in the boat on the River Styx forced its way to the forefront of my mind. I had pressured her to shift, and it had left her broken and hurt, and I had to find out the hard way that her true form was something of a trigger for her. Because of what that bastard Abaddon had done to her.
I refused to do that to her again. I’d rather carry her through this mire for the rest of eternity than subject her to that again. “Just close your eyes, Lilith. We’ll get to the other end soon,” I lied.
The mire stretched on and on, and I waded through it at an excruciating pace that had my spent muscles screeching with every miserable step. There was no sun here, just an endless expanse of plain gray sky that went on forever. Despite the lack of sun, the third level was humid, sticky, and the hot mud stunk of rotten flesh and feces.
As we slowly made our way toward the inner circle, the rock far below the mud was hot, making it boil in certain places like a hellish hot spring of filth and decay. The bodies grew more frequent as time went on, and I realized that not unlike the Sixth Circle, this place was also a graveyard. But at least in the Sixth Circle, the bodies were in tombs. Here, souls had just been carelessly tossed away into the sludge without a second thought lent.
This wasn’t the first time Lilith and I had made a difficult journey from one end of a layer to another. On the River Styx, time had become meaningless. The Fates only knew how long we’d been lying in the bottom of that boat. But here, this was physical torture. Every step was a step closer to the end, yet it seemed we were getting no closer to our destination.
I started counting steps, and when the numbers went so high my mind began to fumble with them, I turned my attention to Lilith and began counting her lashes, her hair, her everything.
It was insufferable agony that made my every cell scream for relief. But here, there was no such thing as mercy. Only suffering. Suffering and Lilith. Even though my arms burned under the burden of her weight, she was my only salvation in this stinking purgatory.
“You’re starring again,” she mumbled against my chest, her voice heavy with exhaustion.
If it wasn’t for her, I might have stopped walking. In fact, I knew I would have. Maybe I would have just laid down in the mud, just for a little bit, so I could rest my burning eyelids. And what were the chances of me getting back up? What was driving me forward? I looked back down at Lilith and smiled, the upward curve of my lips feeling foreign now.
When had I smiled last?
When had I done anything but walk?
I walked until all I wanted to do was lay down in the warm mud and go to sleep.
