“Shocker,” Bex joked, sitting down next to him. “Can I help? I’m a queen too.”
“True,” he said, flashing her a warm smile. “But as lovely as it is, your body’s already here, not trapped in there with the ones we’re trying to find.”
He tilted his head at the doors Leander was still silently working on, but Bex was too flustered by the compliment to follow.
“What are you going to do, then?” she asked, forcing herself to stay on target because this wasnotthe appropriate time for blushing.
“What I always do,” Adrian told her brightly. “Improvise. Here, hold this.”
He shrugged out of his black witch coat and plopped the garment in her lap before Bex could react. When it was off, he rolled up his shirtsleeves, which were far more wrinkled than Bex had ever seen Adrian allow them to become. Seriously, what had they been doing to him up in Heaven? Keeping him locked in a cage for seven days? She was still imagining horrors when Adrian pulled out his pocketknife and slashed the inside of his arm just below the elbow.
“What are you doing?” she cried, but the alarm in her voice quickly turned to horror when she saw the white liquid dripping from his wound.
“What isthat?”
“Quintessence,” Adrian said, giving her a guilty look. “I told you I was a prince, white blood and all.”
The expression on her face right then must have been a sight, because Adrian scrambled to explain.
“It’s not entirely bad. One of the ways Gilgamesh lured me into his trap was by teaching me how to use his magic. It wasthe only promises he actually made good on. I can use sorcery as well as witchcraft now, which is why I’m able to dothis.”
He tilted his arm, allowing the shimmery white blood to drip down his arm onto the carved cat and the princess’s severed hand that it was standing on. The result was a mix of woodsy-smelling witchcraft combined with the sudden pulse of magic Bex had always associated with the moment right before attack sorcery hit her in the face. She didn’t like the blend at all, but when Adrian reached down to close the princess’s fingers around the bloody cat, the lifeless fist clenched tight as a stone. It stayed like that for a solid ten seconds, and then its index finger snapped back out as fast as a switchblade to point straight at the door Leander was still trying to open.
“Voilà!” Adrian said, looking exceedingly pleased with himself as he rubbed his hand over the cut on his arm to get the healing started. “Instant daughter-of-Ishtar compass! And it looks like Leander was correct. The queens’ bodiesarein there, or at least the Queen of Hate’s is.”
That was enough to get Bex’s heart thumping as she handed him his coat back. Bringing her sisters back to life was the stuff of dreams, but it was hard to get really excited when she could hear her fleeing wrath demons moving slower and slower as they were forced to wade through deeper and deeper water. Iggs was doing a good job ferrying out the ones who couldn’t walk just like he’d promised, but the polluted water was up to the demons’ knees when Bex looked back, forcing them to strain for every step when they needed to be running.
It was a delay Bex wasn’t sure they could afford, especially when they hadn’t even started getting the pride demons out yet. She hadn’t counted how many void demons she’d stepped over during her first trip to the Lowest Hell, but Nemini’s people had been packed in like sardines, and there were still all the banished demons lying in piles that she hadn’t had time to pull out. Thecaves down here were small compared to the massive Middle Hells upstairs, but that was alotof demons left to evacuate, and the water wasn’t showing any sign of slowing down. Bex was about to say screw it and tell Leander to get out of the way so she could bash the doors open, cursed lock be damned, when the prince’s whole body jolted like he’d been hit by lightning.
The clay seal started to shake next, its cuneiform-covered surface folding in on itself like origami paper until it had formed a shape that resembled a man’s smiling mouth.
“Welcome,” it said, speaking Ancient Sumerian in a voice that sounded very much like Gilgamesh’s. “I have no eyes, so you must say. Which of my sons is foolish enough to set foot in the place where none should tread?”
“Leander,” Leander replied.
“Leander is in disgrace,” the seal informed him. “Try again.”
“Try this,” the prince growled as the hand he’d been hovering over the seal began to glow. “Royal Verse number one, Command of the King.”
“You are no king,” the seal informed him calmly as the light grew brighter.
“If you didn’t want to share your power, then you shouldn’t have forced the work of your empire onto your sons,” Leander replied through gritted teeth as sweat poured down his face. “Now,open!”
He thrust his glowing fingers wide, and the light in his hand flashed like silent lightning. When the glare faded, the transformed seal crumbled to dust. The last of it fell off the door as Bex watched, sinking into the rising water with a final disappointed sigh.
“Pompous old stick,” Leander muttered, shaking his hand, which looked bright red and burnt. “Did you finish the finding spell?”
“Yes,” Adrian said belatedly when he realized that question was for him. “It’s already going.”
“Good,” Leander said as he dug his burned fingers into the crack of the unsealed—but still handleless—doors. “Then let’s be off.”
He yanked the heavy door as he finished, prying it open a fraction of an inch before doing the short-ranged teleport thing Bex remembered from the fight on the chain to reappear on Adrian’s broom. Bex was about to ask him why he hadn’t opened it all the way when the doors burst open on their own, thrown apart by a wave of filthy, black water. It crashed into the stairwell in a ten-foot black wall, covering Nemini before Bex even realized what was happening.
“Nemini!” she screamed, running to Bran’s edge to dive into the water after her. Before she actually made it off the broom, though, her sister burst out of the wave on a pillar of hissing snakes, her yellow eyes flashing with fury as she raised her queen’s voice.
“Children of Pride!” she shouted over the crashing water. “Lift your heads!The age of humiliation and defeat is over! Your queen has returned! Follow my voice, and I will lead you to safety!”
The booming words sailed into the darkness. Now that the initial wave had spilled out, Bex was able to see why there’d been such a build-up. The Hell of Pride wasn’t just the Lowest Hell because it was the worst. It was literally the lowest point, with a floor that was four big steps below the level Nemini was standing on. The sealed doors had also acted like a dam, letting the flood build up inside.
