“Fuck,” Daniel cursed. “She’s going to cry, Lex. You know I don’t deal well with crying females.”
I snort-laughed. “I promise not to dry my eyes on you, Daniel.”
He still wore a slightly panicked look, very at odds with his overtly masculine badass façade.
“Why did that upset you?” Even with his dragon voice there was a layer of concern tingeing Lexen’s words.
I had to clear my throat a few times. “I felt a connection to you from the first moment I saw you. Before that, actually. Your house would always draw my eye and curiosity. Like that time you slowed your car next to me and cracked the window. There was this draw to go closer.” Fear had made me run, but part of me wanted to open that car door and see who was inside.
Lexen nodded, clearly remembering what I was talking about.
“Then when you kidnapped me and were such a bastard,” I continued, “it was easy to hide those feelings … focusing instead on my animosity and annoyance. Only the more I got to know you…”
“The stronger it got,” he finished for me.
“Yeah, pretty much.”
I was about to ask him what he had meant about his world and dragging me into it, when I noticed that we were now past the land of flames, moving across an entirely new landscape.
“Gauntlet ofMalinta… monsters,” Daniel said, following my line of sight. “Be grateful that Lexen will have the strength to bypass it also.”
Grateful didn’t even begin to cover it. It was a land of swirling sand. Which doesn’t sound that terrible until you take into account that every time one of those huge mounds of orangey sand shifted in the breeze, claws would emerge. There were thousands of monsters pushing their way in and around the sand, fighting each other, ripping wisps of what I assumed were souls to shreds. Creatures I had no names for, creatures that would probably haunt me. The screams were very loud now that we were flying above it, and I had to tear my eyes away because I was starting to feel nauseous.
“Focus on me, Emma,” Daniel said when I looked down again. “You can’t help them. That’s the first thing to learn about the justices. It’s every Daelighter for themselves.”
“How can you stand living near this place?” I murmured, my jaw clenching hard as I fought to stop the tears. Seeing those souls beg … cry … scream … it was too much for me to handle.
Daniel’s features were hard, his eyes flat. “Like Lexen, I have no choice. Born to the Imperials. Royal blood and all. I will fulfill my destiny to curate and punish the dead.”
Which was clearly the last thing he wanted to do, judging by that tone.
“Are there any Daelighters who go straight to the land of redemption at the bottom?”
Daniel shrugged. “Imperial is the underworld for all of Overworld, all of the different lands and sectors. Some of them are brutal. Some are gentle. But very few beings make it straight to freedom. Most land in the bottom three platforms, though.”
“We’re also very long lived,” Lexen reminded me. “Daelighters don’t die from natural causes. Our lands and the network keep us young and strong, so we have generally lived a long life by the time we end up in House of Imperial.”
That long life was still a concept I wasn’t quite able to wrap my head around. No doubt it was one of those things preventing Lexen and me from having a chance together. Seemed pretty unfair that fate wanted to throw us together – his soul choosing mine as the one and only – and then I was going to die in sixty years. I mean, I’d take those sixty years, but I wasn’t sure Lexen would want the same thing.
Shit, why was I even thinking about this? I was only seventeen years…
“What date is it?”
If anyone was surprised by my random question, no one showed it. “We have a different calendar to you,” Lexen replied. “But I keep track of both. It’s September 16th.”
My birthday was yesterday.
I had turned eighteen and didn’t even know, probably because I’d been stuck in an egg prison at the time. I’d turned eighteen without friends or family, without a single happy birthday or gift. Without my parents.
Lexen’s hand pressed into my spine and he couldn’t move it without dropping me, but somehow he managed to shift his thumb slightly. Letting me know he was there. “Breathe, Emma. Just breathe. I got you.”
The rumble of those low words in my ear jolted me from the soul-crushing sadness tearing through me, tearing me down. A hand brushed my cheek and I whipped my head up and locked eyes with Daniel. We stared for an infinite amount of time, a sense of understanding between us. We both lived with a pain inside that was threatening to destroy us.
“Don’t let the demons win,” Daniel said, his tone solemn. “Keep fighting them, badass.”
I actually laughed, shaking my head. I wasn’t much of a fighter. It fell a little too close to exercise for my liking. Maybe I could read the demons to death. That was more my speed.
Lexen dropped a little lower as we passed the gauntlet of monsters. I tilted my head back so I could see his face better. My position was awkward, but I saw enough to know he was fatiguing.
