“The answer to both of those is the same,” Leander replied in an exhausted voice as he bent down to pick up Lys’s body, which he’d laid carefully on the stairs behind him. “Unless you’re inside one of Gilgamesh’s private spaces, Royal Verses aren’t something that can be just tossed out on the fly. I needed time to build it up, and to get down here.”
He frowned at the white splatter that had been the prince. “I saw the whole fight on my way down, and I’ll admit, I’m shocked you survived. I thought for sure it was over when he named his princess, but I should have known she’d be able to resist. Otherwise, why would he need so many chains?”
“That does make sense,” Iggs agreed. “But why did she turn on him like that? I thought even the crazy princesses loved their princes.”
Leander shook his head as he carried Lys’s body down the stairs. “Hate is different. Hers was the last emotion Ishtar felt before she died. Not even Gilgamesh’s sorcery can overcome that level of ire, which is why her princes never last very long.”
“He did seem extremely hateable,” Iggs agreed, holding out his arms to take Lys from Leander. “Butyouwere awesome! That black-hole spell was clutch. You even evaporated her chains!” He grinned down at Leander. “Looks like you really are on our side now.”
“Destroying Demetrios is a pleasure I would have relished no matter what side I was on,” the ex-prince assured him. “But yes, I am most definitely not going back to Gilgamesh. Even if heoffered to forgive me, my father doesn’t tolerate sons who think for themselves, and I can’t tolerate him.”
“Welcome to the rebellion,” Iggs said, giving the prince a wink before looking down to check Lys.
That killed his victorious mood real quick.
“This is bad,” Iggs muttered, pressing his big red fingers against the delicate column of Lys’s throat. “Pulse is barely detectible, and they’re still bleeding like a faucet.” He examined the black-soaked bandage taped to Lys’s shoulder before shaking his head. “We need to find Adrian.”
“What’s he going to do?” Leander asked, strolling over to retrieve the Princess of Hate’s severed hand from the white pool of her prince’s blood. “Your comrade was struck by a Blade of Gilgamesh. There’s no witchcraft in the world capable of healing a wound like that.”
“Adrian’s can,” Iggs said stubbornly, changing back to his normal size so he could wrap a fresh bandage around Lys’s shoulder without having to worry about accidentally crushing them. “He’s done it before.”
“Oh, he has, has he?” Leander replied with unexpected bitterness. “Sounds like he’s quite the golden child. I look forward to officially meeting him and finally finding out what makes him so damn special that both Father and Mother bent over backward to fit him into their plots. Must be nice to be so loved. The Old Wives of the Blackwood never fought for me.”
There was a whole wide world of family drama in that statement that Iggs wasn’t touching with a nine-foot gun. And speaking of nine-foot guns, the 30mm cannon was still lying on the ground where he’d dropped it when he’d realized the fight was over. Lys was in a bad way, but even though the barrel was so dented it would probably never fire again, Iggs couldn’t stand the thought of abandoning the weapon that had just saved his life. He’d just put Lys down on a clean spot of floor that wasn’tcovered in prince blood so he could shove the battered cannon back into his knapsack when Iggs heard a strange noise.
It sounded like shouting. Iggs didn’t remember hearing anything like it during the fight, but he might have just been too preoccupied with not dying to notice. There weredefinitelyvoices coming from the giant door on the other side of the stairwell now, though, which was where Iggs got his second shock because he’d thought the only door down here was the one to the Lowest Hell behind him.
A quick look around proved that was incorrect. They looked identical with their towering height and giant images of Gilgamesh carved into their black faces, but there were definitely two different pairs of giant doors built into the circular bottom of the stairwell. The one behind him was dusty and silent, but the one in front of him was shaking like a crowd was banging on it from the other side. A large, strong crowd yelling for help in the ancient language of the Riverlands.
“I hear you!” Iggs yelled back in the same tongue as he ran over. “What’s happened? Who’s in there?”
The voices cried back in a frantic chorus, pleading with Iggs in the language of his homeland. The door was too thick to make out the exact words, but Iggs didn’t need to. He already knew what he’d found. Or, rather,whohe’d found.
“What are you doing?” Leander asked as Iggs changed back into his big red form.
Iggs didn’t waste his breath explaining something that was about to be obvious. He just dug his feet in and charged, slamming his now-giant shoulder into the prison door that separated him from the panicked, familiar voices on the other side.
CHAPTER 12
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
BEX WAS IN TROUBLE.
The second princess had completely blindsided her. Bex didn’t know how she could’ve overlooked a murderous woman made of bone, but the white figure had tackled her through the wall before she’d even thought to duck.
She’d still managed to get a solid hit in with her explosive short sword, but the backblast had sent her skipping across the flooded slave floor like a stone. She’d landed hard several hundred feet from where she’d started, but before Bex’s regeneration could even start repairing the damage, the princess had tackled her again. Now she was on her back in the water with a damn white statue crushing her rib cage and punches flying like gunshots at her head.
“Youcheater!” the princess screamed as she clawed Bex’s face with her needle-sharp, bone-white nails. “Youfraud! I’llkill you!”
She was going for the throat when Bex finally got a grip on the slimy stone beneath them with her good hand and shoved up with all her strength to knock the princess off. She started feeling through the water for her weapon next, but it was no use. The exploding short sword had gotten knocked out of her hand when she’d gone flying, and unlike Drox, Bex couldn’t call it back. Her combat knife was still strapped to her hip, though, so she pulled that instead, flipping the six-inch steel blade into a knife-fighter’s grip as she whirled around to see which brainwashed doll of Gilgamesh she’d pulled this time…
And nearly dropped her weapon again.
It was like looking into a cursed mirror. That was definitely a princess, but the features carved into its white face were Bex’s. That washermouth twisted into a hateful snarl.Hereyes replaced with gold and narrowed in fury. They were the same height, same size—even the way the princess had braced her sandaled feet on the slippery ground was a perfect copy of Bex’s current stance.
The only things missing were color and her horns, but Bex had always been paper-pale, and she didn’t have her horns right now either. If her hair had been white instead of black and she’d been wearing some kind of stupid toga wrap dress instead of combat fatigues, they would have been an identical set. Those were all the details Bex’s eyes managed to pick up before the red of her rage filled her vision.
If it’d been Drox in her hand, this was where he would have counseled caution. They didn’t know the extent of the enemy’s capabilities, and Bex’s own fighting strength was severely crippled. The wisest choice would’ve been to run back to the tower and get help, but Drox wasn’t here to remind her of that. He was on that abomination’s finger. Bex could see the lump of his ring under the white glove that covered the princess’s right hand.
