“Excuse me,” she said in her best Riverlander. “Can you tell me where your queen is?”
The man responded with a look so scathing that Bex winced. Nemini had told her several times now that she hadn’t been a beloved queen, but Bex had thought she was just being self-deprecating. Now, though, she was wondering if her sisterhadn’t been telling the bald truth because this man looked ready to spit on her just for asking.
“The Tyrant of Pride is upstairs,” he replied sourly as he looked Bex up and down. “What are you supposed to be?”
That question was fair since she wasn’t burning right now and still didn’t have her horns. The void-turned-pride demons knew her only by her fire, not her face. He probably thought she was just a human with weirdly glowing eyes. Add in the part where she was standing next to a filthy, mad-looking prince clutching a seemingly dead body, and Bex wasn’t offended in the slightest when the man started backing away.
“I’ll find her myself, thanks,” she said, nudging the demon back into the crowd before walking to the edge to wave at Adrian.
He flew his broom up to meet her at once, dodging the clouds of flapping demons to hover Bran’s wing right next to the step Bex was standing on.
“What do you need?” he asked as she hopped over the gap.
“I think we all need to go up and see Nemini,” Bex said as she reached back to pull the distracted Leander onto the broom with them. “She’s the resident queen now, so let’s go see what she can do.”
Adrian looked skeptical, but he nodded and tapped his foot, sending the nine of them—seven hornless queens and two princes—up the middle of the stairwell toward the white tower.
And not far below, the flood kept rising.
CHAPTER 17
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THE CITY-SIZED CAVERNof the Middle Hells was packed when they finally made it back. Demons of every sort had formed a massive crowd around the tower’s base. The only reason they weren’t inside the tower as well was because Kirok had organized the war demons into a perimeter so the evacuating wrath and pride demons would have room to actually get off the stairs. Iggs was standing right beside the general, as was Nemini, who was still holding the ball of Bex’s fire over her head like a snake-haired Statue of Liberty. They all looked relieved when Adrian’s broom popped into view, but that was the only positive expression to be had.
“I’ll be with you in a second,” Bex said to Kirok and Iggs as she vaulted off the broom. “Nemini, can you take a look at our sisters? They’re not waking up.”
The Queen of Pride nodded and handed Bex’s fire back to her. Bex wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do with that, but the moment she touched the flames, her body sucked them back in. When everything was back where it was supposed to be, Nemini hopped onto the broom to join Adrian and Leander while Bex jogged over to Iggs and Kirok, who were standing in a grim huddle on the first loop of the white tower’s spiral stair.
“How bad is it?” she asked as soon as she got close.
“Not catastrophic yet,” Kirok reported with the stoic calm of a lifelong soldier. “But we’re getting close.”
“I’d say it’s pretty damn catastrophic,” Iggs growled, turning to look at Bex with red-rimmed eyes. “Did you hear about—”
“I did,” she said sadly, reaching out to touch his arm. “I’m sorry.”
“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for,” her demon muttered, wiping his nose. “That bastard king killed them before we even got here. I did find my sister, though.”
Bex’s face brightened. “Iggs, that’s great!”
“It’d be a lot better if I’d found anyone else,” he said, clenching his fists. “There were a lot of people running by, so there’s a chance we just missed each other, but there’s so many dead, Bex. What if my whole family’s—”
“It’s too early for that,” Bex reminded him firmly. “Forty thousand’s too many faces to search in the time we’ve had. Your family could still be alive, so let’s focus on keeping them that way.”
Iggs nodded silently, clenching his jaw tight in a desperate attempt to keep his emotions locked. Bex didn’t ask him to speak again, but she didn’t let go of his arm as she turned to Kirok.
“How many people are still waiting to be unchained?”
“Hard to say,” Kirok replied. “I believe Lys explained this earlier, but the current Middle Hells used to be divided into five separate caverns. The walls were proclaimed inefficient and knocked down centuries ago, but the chains are still organized by the old divisions. Last I heard, Desh’s team had finished unlocking the Hells of Envy, Lust, and Greed, the biggest three after War. They’re currently working on Sorrow, which is medium. The chains for Hate haven’t been touched yet, but they were always the smallest of the five, so I’d say we’re about seventy percent done.”
“That’s a lot better than Lys thought,” Bex said with a grin, happy to have some good news at last. “What about exits?”
“That’s less promising, I’m afraid,” the general said, turning to point across the smoky Hells at the lines of glimmering torches marking the stairs through the vertical slave towns on the cliffs that covered the cavern’s walls. “I asked the winged demons for volunteers to fly the perimeter and check the banishment gates. They’re not officially considered exits since all banished demons arrive on cliffs, so I thought the lockdown might not have included them.”
“And?” Bex asked hopefully.
“And I was wrong,” Kirok reported with a shake of his head. “The scouts that have come back all reported finding the banishment tunnels blocked with the same sin-iron security doors used to cut off the stairs to the Upper Hells.”
