“Pretty sure I can guess,” Bex said, glancing pointedly at the white prince blood that was still dripping off the walls as she rose to her feet.
“Break time’s over,” she announced, fighting the urge to clutch her aching ears. “I’m going upstairs to see what we’re in for. The rest of you, stay down here and help Iggs get my demons back on their—"
Her voice cut off as the ground began to shake. It wasn’t a violent, earthquake sort of shaking. Nothing was breaking or falling apart. This felt more like some kind of giant machinery had just started turning deep within the mountain. Bex was still trying to figure out what that meant and who she had to punch to make it stop when the horrible alarm suddenly ceased. For a split second, there was blessed silence, and then a new horror began as a chorus of voices tore through the air like the claws of a divine beast.
“Tools of the Gods.”
Bex gasped. She’d taken a lot of blows in her life, but each of those words hit her harder than the Queen of War’s sword. She managed to stay on her feet, barely. Adrian, Boston, and Leander didn’t seem to feel it at all, but Lys went down like someone had dropped a lead piano on their head. Going by all the curses coming out of the Hell of Wrath, Iggs was having a similar problem. Bex needed to do something about that, but she was having a hard time concentrating. No matter how hard she tried to focus, her attention kept being dragged back to the voices that were still echoing down the spiral stairwell.
Eight divinely empowered female voices braided together, one of which was her own.
“Demons of Ishtar,” the queens’ combined voices said from every direction at once. “Your disobedience has been witnessed, and it shall not be tolerated. By the authority of Ishtar spoken through her divine daughters, we, your queens, command you as one: kneel before your conquerors, and present your necks to be chained.”
The actual order was short, but the voices spoke so slowly that it seemed to go on forever. By the time they finally stopped speaking, Lys was rolling in agony on the floor, bending themselves nearly in half as they frantically tried to offer up their neck. Without her divine name to shield her, Bex’s knees were bending toward the floor as well. She could make them straighten back out if she focused, but that was all she could do. Even when she called her Bonfire, the raging flames did nothing to stop the intense pressure to bow, to submit, to prostrate herself utterly before the queens’ divine will.
She couldn’t remember ever feeling anything like it before in her life. Even when she’d kneeled in the river before Ishtar herself, it hadn’t been like this. She swore she could feel the queens’ hands inside her brain, shoving her head toward the ground. Bex fought the sensation as hard as she could, but even with her fire roaring and Adrian’s frantic voice in her ear telling her to fight, her hornless forehead kept creeping closer and closer to the ground. She was just about to drop to one knee when a new voice boomed through every corner of the Hells.
Bex’s first thought was it must be Gilgamesh himself. There was no one else egotistical enough to follow a chorus of queens, except that wasn’t his voice. It sounded like a woman, and it was oddly familiar. Bex knew she’d heard that beautiful, commanding voice before, but she couldn’t remember where. She could only listen in awe as the lovely sound became lovely words that shook through the obedient silence that had fallen over the Hells like thunder on a silent night.
“Children of Paradise,” the new voice said, “the ghosts of empty crowns do not control you. Death isourrealm, so rise, People of the Riverlands. Rise and heed the words of Ishtar’s true daughters. Formed from her body, crowned by her hand, named by her lips, we alone speak in the goddess’ name. I amher firstborn, Queen of Pride, Ishtar’s Crown, and by that divine authority, I command you:be free.”
The pressure inside Bex’s head lessened with every word. By the time the new command finished, the eight hands that had been forcing her head to the ground vanished like mist in the morning sun, leaving only one behind. One living voice whose divine command still surged through Bex’s body like electricity, forcing her to rise so fast, she ended up standing on the tips of her toes. The queen’s divine authority held her there like a ballerina on a string for one long heartbeat, and then the overwhelming presence disappeared completely, leaving Bex blinking in the sudden, deafening silence.
“Again, what in theHells was that?”
The question came from Boston, who was curled into a spooked-looking ball in Adrian’s arms. His witch didn’t look much better, staring at Bex with a panicked expression that broke her heart to see, because what had just happened was anything but scary. Lys had already leaped off the ground with a shout so joyful it bordered on mania. Even Iggs, who’d never been a slave, was shoving the doors to the Hell of Wrath open with a roar of victory.
They wereallroaring. Every demon in the Hells was bellowing at the top of their lungs, shattering the quiet horror that had always hung over this place. Even her exhausted wrath demons were cheering, their voices as thin as worn threads but still audible through the doors Iggs had torn open.
The sound was enough to make Bex’s heart pound in her chest. She wanted to run over and celebrate with them, but now that the shock and holy awe of the Queen of Pride’s miraculous—andextremelywell-timed—reappearance was fading, Bex was starting to realize why the queen’s voice sounded so familiar. It wasn’t some dredged-up memory from her past in Ishtar’s Paradise. The words had been warped with power anduncharacteristically emotional, but the voice that spoke them was one she’d heard every day of her current life. She’d heard it only half an hour ago in the tunnel after Boston told them Adrian was here.
That was Nemini’s voice.
The connection was still crystallizing when Bex called her fire and blasted herself up the middle of the spiral stair like a rocket.
CHAPTER 14
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BACK AT THE BOTTOMof the Hells, Adrian was in a panic.
He’d seen the exact moment Bex realized who the Queen of Pride was. It’d flashed across her face like lightning right before fire engulfed her body and she’d launched herself toward the top of the tower where he’d left Nemini staring at her horns.
He was scrambling for his broom before her boots left the ground. Great Forest, how many more ways could this go wrong? All he’d wanted was to bring back a queen who wassupposedto be five-thousand-years dead. It should’ve been a miracle, but nothing was ever simple when it came to the daughters of Ishtar. Now he had to get upstairs and explain the situation before everyone involved jumped to the wrong conclusion. He was throwing his leg over Bran for the takeoff when a bandaged hand shot up to stop him.
“Not without me, you don’t,” Lys snarled as they hauled their bloody body onto the broomstick.
Adrian was scrambling to make them get off before they reopened the wound he’d just glued back together when Bran dipped nearly to the floor. When he looked up to see why, Iggs was sitting on the broom’s bristles with a stubborn expression across his once again human-looking face.
“No, no, no,” Adrian said as he struggled to keep his seat on the now furiously bobbing broom. “We can’tallgo. Someonehas to stay down here and keep an eye on Leander and the wrath demons. Also, there’s not enough room for—ow!”
He snatched his hands up with a hiss, glaring at the raven-carved broomstick that had just pecked him for implying that a broom made by the Old Wife of the Bones wasn’t capable of carrying a crowd.
“I wasn’t trying to malign you,” Adrian told it quickly, but he was too late. Bran’s honor had been impugned. The broom was already changing beneath him, transforming into its broomgrass raven form, which had plenty of room for everyone.
“Fantastic,” Lys said as they plopped down on the raven broom’s back. “Let’s go.”
“Bran doesn’t take orders from you,” Boston snapped from his perch on Adrian’s shoulder. “We’ll leave when our witch is ready.”
