He cut off with a yelp as the princess suddenly came to a stop. The abrupt change in momentum nearly pulled his arm off, but when he looked back to see what in the Hells was the problem, the fake Bex was staring at him with a look of awestruck delight.
“I knew it,” she whispered, squeezing Adrian’s fingers until he gasped in pain. “The Crown Princess said you couldn’t be trusted, that I’d have to watch you every minute to make sure you didn’t betray our king, but Iknewyou’d come around. No one can witness the greatness of Gilgamesh’s vision without coming to love him, for he is our glorious and eternal King! The one who will end all wars and lead us to true peace, and you will be his chosen heir, first among all princes!”
She dragged him closer, forcing Adrian, who’d been trying desperately to free his hand before she crushed it, to stumble back up the stairs before she pulled him off his feet.
“This is the moment I was made for,” she said, finally letting go of his hand so she could pull off her white glove. “Here!”
Adrian stopped rubbing his bruised fingers to stare at the bare hand she’d just shoved in his face, Bex’s stolen hand with Drox’s heavy ring gleaming like a sheet of black ice on her small, elegant finger. He’d known it was hidden under her glove, but the princess had never revealed it in his presence before. Adrian had assumed that was because she didn’t want to remind him that she was a fake. Now, though, he was beginning to think he’d missed something very important, because the princess was offering him Bex’s bare hand like a knife. Or a sword.
“Take it,” she ordered, staring at him with an eerily perfect copy of the real Bex’s resolve. “I was made to be your weapon, so take my hand and claim the Bonfire of Wrath for your king. I might not be as strong as the Armor of War, but my fire is the hottest ever created, for I was the Executioning Blade of Ishtar, the flame that burned the goddess’s enemies to dust! She used me as a tool of oppression, but you can use me for good. Your sacred blood is the forge that will turn my black blade white. All you have to do is take my hand. Accept your birthright, Prince Adrian, and together we will make me the strongest Blade of Gilgamesh ever to fight in our king’s sacred name!”
Her golden eyes were glowing by the end, lit from within with the same smoldering fire that used to shine from the real Bex’s eyes. Adrian could even smell her familiar smoky scent. It was the closest he’d felt to the real Bex since the night they sat under his tree in the Anchor, and Adrian missed it so badly that his bruised hand almost reached out to grab hers on its own before he curled it into a fist.
“I won’t,” he said, which was the absolute truth. The next part, however, was a lie so brazen it made his teeth hurt.
“I’m not worthy yet,” he said, reaching out to touch her hard white cheek instead. “The Crown Princess was right. I haven’t proven myself, but I will. I’m going to finish Pride’s horns and present them to Gilgamesh before he even knows to expect them. Only then, when I’ve performed an actual service to advance Heaven’s mission, will I be able to draw you without shame.”
“My prince,” she whispered, closing her glowing eyes as she rubbed her cheek against his hand. “You are truly a son of Heaven. I never doubted, but now that I’ve seen the proof with my own eyes, I will not rest until I’ve helped you climb to the top of Gilgamesh’s favor.”
“Thank you for understanding,” Adrian said, giving the princess a brief hug because it was the only way to keep her from seeing him flinch. “Once I prove myself to my father, I promise I’ll draw you as my sword and we’ll take our place together at his right hand.”
“Not even the Crown Princess will be able to doubt you then,” the princess agreed, her voice bright with excitement as she seized his hand yet again and started bounding down the stairs. “Come on! I don’t want to waste a second. Let’s hurry to the Hells and get you what you need to finish!”
Adrian was too busy running after her to reply, but that was for the best. His stomach was still churning from what he’d just forced himself to say. If he had to betray any more of his core principles sucking up to his father’s neurotic parody of the woman he respected most, he was going to be sick right there on the stairs. Fortunately for him, the fake Bex locked onto goals as hard as the real one. She was already charging ahead, forcing him to run or be dragged as they descended the Tower of Heaven.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The rest of the trip went almost too fast. Adrian hadn’t cared when all they were doing was walking spiral after spiral of endless, badly spaced, white-and-gold stairs, but the lower part of the palace where the multiple towers came together was a treasure trove of opportunities he desperately wanted to explore. Right at the bottom of the Crown Prince’s tower, they passed a room full of white-robed sorcerers working on stone tablets that looked a lot like the ones he’d seen in the Anchor Market’s control room. Adrian would’ve bet his hat it was a command center for the palace’s magical infrastructure, but which infrastructure, and how much command?
He dragged his feet hard in an attempt to slow down long enough to see something useful, but now that he’d tied their current mission to making her his sword, nothing could stop the princess. She blazed through the palace like a charging bull, forcing servants, sorcerers, even warlocks surrounded by their war demons, to jump aside or get run over. At one point, they passed right by another prince in full golden armor with a princess sheathed at his side. The Princess of Wrath didn’t even slow down to acknowledge him, for which Adrian was extremely grateful. He’d yet to meet one of Gilgamesh’s sons who wasn’t a pompous, violent, pain in the ass. This one certainly looked like he wanted to take him down a peg, but Adrian’s princess yanked him away before the other prince could do more than glare.
She dragged him even faster after that, which was a real shame because they were now in what was clearly the public part of Gilgamesh’s palace. Adrian had only seen the occasional servant upstairs, but these floors were packed with all manner of Heavenly denizens carrying all sorts of interesting things. The princess dragged him past a treasury filled with chests packed with coins of quintessence, an enormous, brilliantly lit hall full of accountants scribbling in floating, gold-bound ledgers, and a library full of scrolls that kept magically appearing and disappearing.
So many secrets of Heaven were on display that Adrian’s eyes were getting tired from being so wide. Many of the things he saw were stuff he’d never expected, like women wearing the white robes of Heaven. He hadn’t realized Gilgamesh employed women since every sorcerer and warlock he’d ever met had been a man, but there were plenty of them up here. Mostly in the libraries, but he also saw them counting quintessence with the assistance of greed demons dressed in the modest white robes of favored slaves.
“Why is all the quintessence piled up here?” he asked the princess when she dragged him past yet another overflowing treasury. “Do they make it in the palace?”
“Yes,” she said without missing a step. “One of the palace towers is entirely dedicated to manufacturing quintessence. They normally only move the chests down here when it’s time to ship them down the chains, but things have been backing up since the Anchors closed.”
Adrian’s ears picked up. “Are the chains close by?”
“Very close,” she said, pointing the gloved hand she wasn’t using to drag him at a large arched doorway that led to a wide staircase going down. “The hall where all the chains come together is right below us. Since Anchors are the only reliable entrance to Heaven other than death, Gilgamesh built the chains directly into the foundation of his palace.”
“Sounds like a good way to control access.”
“He did it to keep us safe,” the princess corrected, pausing her breakneck pace to shoot him a chiding look. “The chains are the most obvious invasion path. If they ended in the White City, anyone could march up and all of Heaven could be put in danger.”
“I never meant to question the king’s judgment,” Adrian said quickly. Then he added. “Can we go see them?”
It took a champion effort to keep his voice casual. Adrian wasdyingto see the place where all the chains connected, and what they connected to. In the desert, he’d seen them physically wrapped around the Wheel of Reincarnation, but he still wasn’t sure if that had been real or not. What he’d perceived as a black desert of sin-iron dust could’ve been a metaphorical representation to make abstract concepts like reincarnation easier to understand and manipulate. There was no question that the chains he’d seen there had been much closer together than they actually were geographically, but that didn’t mean itwas a total fake. For all Adrian knew, the chains passed through the palace and kept going into the desert from there. There was simply no way to know without investigating for himself, but the princess was already shaking her head.
“I’m sorry, my prince,” she said. “The chains are sealed behind the same edict that locked the Anchors. We can’t even enter the arrival room without Gilgamesh or Prince Hector’s permission.”
Adrian frowned. “Prince Hector?”
“The Prince of Envy,” she explained, turning away to pick up the pace again. “He’s the prince in charge of chain maintenance.”
Ah, Adrian thought as she dragged him behind her. Hector must be the dirty prince he’d seen in the Boston Anchor, the one who’d heard his teleport and sounded the alarm. Also the one who’d tried to kill him when he’d stuck his head through the sin-iron wall at the bottom of the Seattle Anchor while dressed as Yearling, the crow-pecked Anchor manager. Not someone Adrian wanted to see again in either case, but he still looked longingly at the wide stairs as the princess dragged him away.
