“What are you doing here?” she demanded, looking him up and down. “And what are you doingtohim?”
That last question was directed at Agatha, but the old witch just flashed Bex a smile that looked so much like Adrian’s it made her heart skip a beat.
“Helping,” Agatha said as she returned her attention to the intricate patterns she was painting into the hollow of Kirok’sbronze clavicle. “We’d hardly be good hosts if we let you go into battle without backup. Of course, a goodguestwould have warned us sooner that she was planning to leave, but we Blackwoods are an adaptable lot, and as you see, we’ve made do.”
“Made do with what?” Bex asked, more confused than angry now. “What kind of backup are you sending? And you still haven’t explained what you’re doing to Kirok.”
“She is doing what I asked,” the war demon replied, tilting his head to look at Bex around the tall point of the witch’s black hat. “The Old Wife of the Future informed me that you were beginning your assault tonight, so I am here because I’m going with you.”
“The Hells you are,” Lys snapped, tossing the tied-up body they’d been carrying onto the ground, where it landed with a startled grunt. “You’re a war demon whose queen is still alive and proudly on Gilgamesh’s side. Saying ‘we can’t trust you’ is afact, not an insult.”
“I’m well aware,” Kirok replied curtly, pointing one of his four hands at the black spirals that now covered most of his upper body. “That is why I asked the witches of the Blackwood to curse me.”
He said that last part as if it were the ultimate argument in his favor, but Bex immediately shook her head. “A curse can’t make you ignore orders from your queen.”
“But it can render me incapable of following them,” Kirok insisted, turning his head so that Bex could see how the black markings curled all the way up his neck and past his ear to the underside of his flat horns. She was still trying to figure out why that was important when Agatha explained.
“I’m cursing him against disobedience,” the witch said, keeping her eyes on her work as she deftly added more spirals to the dip between Kirok’s pectorals. “If he disobeys any order,even a minor one, the paint covering his body will release a poison that even demonic regeneration can’t keep up with. I’ve warned him it will be a slow and painful death, but he said he’s willing, so I’m making sure to be thorough.”
“The curse part I get,” Bex said. “By why would you rig it to trigger ondisobedience?”
“Because I still intend to obey your orders,” Kirok explained gravely. “The poison is only there to ensure that, if I am given a command I do not wish to follow, the mere thought of refusal will activate the curse and kill me.”
“Again,” Bex said, “why would you do that?”
“Because death is the only force strong enough to allow me to ignore my queen’s commands,” the war demon replied, lowering his horns as far as he could without getting in the Witch of the Present’s way.
“I am prepared to endure any suffering,” he said before Bex could get a word in. “Even a slow, agonizing death is acceptable if it means my queen can never make me a traitor again. I beg you, Queen of Wrath, allow me this opportunity to make amends for the evil my demons and I were forced to commit. I used to be a slave trainer in the Hells. I can guide you to whatever goal you seek in that terrible place. Just give me a chance to redeem myself and the soldiers under my command, and I swear on my life and my name that I will never betray you again.”
“He won’t be able to,” Agatha added, putting the final touch on her painting before stepping back to admire her work. “If he even thinks about disobeying your orders, the curse will kill him. Likewise, if his queen tells him to slay you, all you have to do is say ‘don’t,’ and the poison will cripple his body before he can react. It’s a custom mix of all my best toxins, and now that it’s on, they won’t even be able to see it’s there. Watch.”
Bex squinted in the fading sunlight, but the witch was right. The black lines that had looked so vivid just a few seconds ago were already fading into Kirok’s metal skin, seeping beneath his armored exterior until she could no longer tell which parts of him had been painted and which hadn’t.
“The poison will stay until the next new moon,” Agatha said as she wrapped her toxic paintbrush in a square of stained leather and handed it to one of the witches behind her. “I suggest you don’t give him any controversial orders until then. That curse has a hair trigger.”
“All the more reason not to risk it,” Bex argued, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’m doing this tosavedemons, not kill them by accident.”
“And that is why I must go with you,” Kirok insisted, squeezing his giant fists. “War demons are the guardians of all of Gilgamesh’s domains. If you wish to infiltrate them successfully, you’ll need an inside man. One whoisn’ta transformed lust demon.”
He finished with a glare at Lys, who glared right back, but as much as Bex hated to admit it, Kirok had a point. One of their plan’s biggest weak points was the fact that Lys was the only one of them who’d actually been to the Hells, and they hadn’t been back in centuries. An updated guide who knew both the jailer and the jailed’s side of things would be extremely useful, but Bex still shook her head.
“It’s too much of a risk,” she said. “Once we start, we can’t afford to make any mistakes. If that curse screws up, you could betray us to the enemy.”
“My curse won’t ‘screw up’,” Agatha huffed, glaring at Bex. “Who do you think taught Adrian how to do these things?”
“That wasn’t what I meant,” Bex said quickly. “It’s just—”
“You’re much more likely to kill him by accident than he is to kill you,” the witch spoke over her. “This curse will punishhim for disobeyinganyorder, no matter how insignificant. If you tell him to go left and he goes right, he’ll be dead within five minutes.”
That sounded like the biggest reason yet not to bring Kirok along, but the war demon’s bronze face was resolute.
“I don’t care,” he said, dropping to one knee in front of Bex. “When I was trapped in the Anchor doing those horrible things under my queen’s command, I swore a thousand oaths that I would make it right. If I do not go with you, and you die while attempting this attack, I’ll never get a chance to keep my word. I don’t care if my life is lost. I’d rather die by accident tonight than live another thousand years with this betrayal and no way to make amends.”
He looked her straight in the eyes as he spoke, and Bex’s whole body slumped with the force of her sigh.
“Can’t argue with that,” she said, holding out her hand. “Welcome to the team.”
She’d meant to help him back to his feet, but Kirok took her hand and bent his horns over it instead. It was the same position Iggs came out in whenever she used his name to calm his raging demon, the one that had made Adrian so angry after their first trip into Limbo. Bex secretly hated it too. It looked so subservient, but she knew better than to say so in front of old demons. To them, it was still the greatest show of respect, and it was a queen’s duty to accept that, even if she didn’t have a crown anymore.
