“You can’t order me to go,” Adrian said, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Bex replied, giving him a wary look. “You’re not going to try to stop me, are you?”
“No,” he said, leaving Boston watching nervously from the windowsill as he walked over to join her in front of the sin-iron barrier. “I actually think a distraction is a great plan. The only part I take issue with is the idea of you doing it alone. It’ll be a much more convincing show if we go in together.”
He finished with a smile, but Bex looked at the ground, too overcome with fear and gratitude to make a sound. “Are you sure you want to?” she managed at last. “It’s kind of a one-way trip.”
“Of course it’s one-way,” he said. “Who wants to come back to the Hells? But you’re not going to be dying, if that’s what you meant.”
“I don’t see how I’m getting out of it,” she told him when she finally raised her eyes. “You’re a prince, so they won’t harm you, but Gilgamesh has been swatting me like clockwork sincethe fall of Paradise. If nothing else, the Queen of War is almost certainly going to be waiting for me. If I couldn’t beat her with Drox, there’s no way I’m doing it without him.” She reached out to touch Adrian’s face with a sad smile. “I’ve seen you pull a lot of miracles out of your pointy hat, but I don’t think even you can unpunch my ticket this time.”
“Don’t give up on me yet,” he said, capturing Bex’s hand against his cheek with a look so determined it stole her breath. “I realize I’m very late, but I still owe you a date. A witch of the Blackwood always keeps his word, so no one is dying until we get back to Seattle for the brunch I promised you.”
It was completely inappropriate given the circumstances, but that made Bex laugh. “Can we get pancakes?”
“All you can eat,” he promised, leaning in to rest his forehead against hers. “If I ever get my phone back, I’ve got a list of twenty breakfast places I want to take you to. Dinner places, too, and breweries and bakeries and parks and everything in between. There’s a whole life I want to explore with you when we get home, so keep that in mind before you do anything stupidly heroic.”
“Same goes for you,” Bex said as she moved even closer. “Who was it that got himself turned into a prince trying to find a way to defeat Gilgamesh?”
“I suppose it is a bit pot-calling-kettle-black,” Adrian admitted as he wrapped his arms around her. “But that’s why we need to stick together. Who else is going to put up with us?”
“No one,” Bex admitted, rising up on her toes to press a kiss against his lips.
Adrian grabbed her as soon as she moved, pulling her flush against his chest and slanting his lips over her until he was kissing her with the same overwhelming, mind-blanking sweetness as their first real kiss under his oak tree in the Anchor Market. This time, though, Bex was ready for it. She met himhead-on, grabbing his shoulders and pulling Adrian against her like she could make up for all the futures they weren’t going to get to share.
That sad thought was still drifting through her mind when Adrian’s hands—those strong, clever hands she loved so much—slid up to cup her face. Something inside Bex moved with them, because when he held her like that, like she was the most important thing in his world, making up for lost time no longer seemed good enough. She didn’t know how yet, but Bex was suddenly determined that she was going to live, because there was no way in all the Nine Hells that she was letting Gilgamesh take this away from her. Every version of Rebexa had died fighting him, butthisBex was determined to be the one who lived to see him fall. She’d break his tyrannical Heaven and move on to a glorious future where she was free to have a lazy brunch with her handsome witch any morning she wanted.
If there was a better reason to stay alive, Bex didn’t know it. It wasn’t time for those things yet, though. She still had a job to do, so she forced herself to pull away, trailing kisses down Adrian’s chin to his neck as she dropped back to her feet.
“I have to go burn a tunnel,” she told him, cheeks flushed as she jerked an uncoordinated thumb over her shoulder toward the blocked stairwell. “Can we pick this up again when we’re done?”
“Any time you want,” he promised, dropping one last kiss to the top of her head between where her horns used to be. “I also need to go to talk to Boston about what we’re going to do for our end. You get to burning. I’ll be right over here.”
Bex nodded and forced herself to let go of his coat. Adrian also took his time, walking much slower than he needed to back over to the windowsill where Boston had turned around to give them privacy. She was watching him pet his cat just for the pleasure of seeing Adrian’s elegant, long-fingered hands move,when Bex gave herself a shake and whirled around to get to work before she became the slowpoke who sank the entire mission.
The possibility hit her lust-dazed senses like a bucket of ice water. Bex fired up her flames at once, stoking her bonfire to a white-hot torch as she pressed her palms against the sin iron and began to push, melting millimeter by millimeter through the wall that stood between her and the future she wanted most.
CHAPTER 18
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IT TOOKFOREVER. BEXthought she’d beat the demolition team with time to spare, but she was actually the last to finish. Even using her hottest fire, the sin iron was thick and refused to melt. The toxic fumes it gave off when it finally did burned Bex’s lungs and sent her into coughing fits, forcing her to duck out for clean air every time she needed to breathe. By the end of the first hour, all Bex could think was thank Ishtar Iggs had come up with the ceiling plan. If they’d been counting on her to clear the stairs, they never would’ve made it.
The flood was only one floor below by the time she finished cutting a Bex-sized hole through the blockade’s center. Adrian had had his part ready for ages. He was waiting patiently with his cat on one shoulder and Bran’s broomstick resting against the other when Bex finally came out to say she’d made it to the final inch. She’d just pushed the button on her ear comm to ask Iggs if he was ready when she noticed General Kirok standing next to the door she’d just been burning through.
“What are you doing here?” she asked suspiciously. “I ordered everyone to help with the breach.”
“You did,” he said. “And I obeyed. Once all the charges were placed, however, your second-in-command Lys ordered me to return here and accompany you.”
“That wasn’t their call,” Bex replied angrily. “I know Lys is worried, but they had no right to order you into such a—”
“The order was at my request,” Kirok insisted, holding his flat, sandy-colored horns high. “You are marching into the lion’s mouth, but it is my people who were forced to be its teeth. The war demons are slaves, the same as all the other demons here. If you’re going to fight them, I wish to stand at your side, if only to show them there’s another choice.”
Bex looked away with a huff. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand how Kirok felt, but the Queen of War was almost certainly waiting just above them. Maybe not in person, but definitely close enough to ensure that her demons didn’t get a chance to disobey.
That was the entire reason Kirok had asked the Witch of the Present to draw the curse of obedience on his neck. It was supposed to be a failsafe, a way for him to choose death rather than be forced to be the Queen of War’s tool yet again. In Bex’s mind, that meant Kirok needed to stay as far away from his queen as possible. After all, if War never gave him an order he didn’t obey, the curse wouldn’t kill him, and he’d get to stay alive. If he walked into the trap with her, though, Kirok was dead. Even if Bex squeaked through this somehow, there was no way the Queen of War wouldn’t order him to kill her, and then the general would die.
Unless he’d been an inside man from the start.
