“Still as impatient as ever, I see,” she mocked, grinning at Bex over the edge of Havok’s blade. “You’re burning the candle at both ends now, idiot. I won’t even have to swing to carry out my prince’s command. You’re going to kill yourself, just burn right up into a useless pile of—”
The queen’s insults cut off as Bex ducked under her oversized sword, using her smaller stature and blazing speed to dip past Havok’s guard and come up inside the cage of War’s four arms. She barely had time to appreciate the look of shockon her sister’s scarred face before she slammed her fist into the underside of War’s jaw at full burn, knocking her into the air like an armored bronze croquet ball.
Bex flew after her like a rocket. With so much white-hot fire roaring through her body, she didn’t even have to use her hands to blast herself off the ground like she usually did. The moment she thought about going up, the blazing flames covering her body shifted to make it happen, shooting her up like a jet through War’s open guard to hit her again.
It was even more satisfying the second time. War was a heavy-armored fighter. She wasn’t used to being juggled, but with so much fire at her fingertips, Bex’s punches hit like concentrated avalanches. She still hadn’t managed to break through Havok’s white armor—at this point, Bex was starting to wonder if anything could break through that stubborn sword’s defenses—but it didn’t matter. The sheer force of her hits was enough to knock War higher and higher, crashing her through the empty archer galleries that lined the inside of the spiral staircase like a baseball going through window after window.
With no ground to stand on and no ability to fly of her own, War couldn’t even fight back. Bex intended to keep punching her all the way up to Heaven when her sister suddenly curled her four-armed body into a ball and yelled something Bex was burning too hard to understand. It sounded like a command, but it wasn’t until a sword flew out of nowhere to stab her in the side that Bex understood justwhatshe was commanding.
Just as she had dominion over the flames of Wrath, her sister could control the weapons of War. She’d already done it once tonight when she’d stopped her demons’ arrows from striking Adrian. Now, War turned that power on her sister. With a single command, all the armaments carried by the war-demon soldiers watching from the bottom of the tower tore out of theirwielders’ hands to hurl themselves at Bex. Spears hurtled out of their cases, arrows shot out of their quivers, swords flew from their sheathes. Every weapon that Gilgamesh had made for his slave army shot up in a volley that filled the tower before honing in on Bex.
She blocked with a gasp, letting go of War to shield herself as the storm of weapons crashed into her from below. The arrows and spear hafts and everything else that wasn’t made of metal was instantly turned to ash by her fire, but the metal tips, spearheads, and sword blades were another story. They’d been forged from the same sorcerous gold alloy as the war constructs, and while they melted under Bex’s fire just like the golden lion cannons had, molten metal was still metal, and it was still flying at high velocity.
The result was a shotgun blast of searing hot, glowing gold that knocked Bex out of the air. The molten metal couldn’t burn her—nothing could do that now—but it stuck to her limbs like tar, and it was soheavy. The sheer force was enough to whack her into the tower wall like a mosquito. She was still struggling to get the molten sludge off her when three huge hands appeared to rip Bex out of her crater.
“Now you will learn,” the Queen of War’s furious voice huffed in her ear as she wrapped her armored arms around her struggling sister. “I am still Ishtar’s strongest daughter, and this time, I’m the one who’ll throwyouinto thepit!”
She leaped off the stairs as she finished. Bex was still so covered in molten metal, she didn’t even see where they were jumping until they slammed into the tower floor.
The impact shattered every bone in Bex’s body. Any other time that would have been a serious problem, but Bex was burning so hot right now that she barely felt it. There was so much wrath searing through her that all her injuries were healedby the time Bex shook the molten metal off her face, clearing her eyes to see the Queen of War kneeling on top of her.
That was a much bigger issue. Just like when she’d fought Havok’s armor form back in Felix’s prison, the queen was too heavy to budge, leaving Bex trapped on her back. It looked like all the war demons who’d been watching down here had managed to get to the edges in time, but while Bex was happy she hadn’t crushed anyone when they came down, having so many demons so close meant she couldn’t blast the Queen of War off of her without risking innocents getting caught in the explosion.
The Queen of War had no such concerns. She swung her sword over her head without even looking, carelessly slicing open any demons unfortunate enough to be standing too close. When the floor was cleared to her satisfaction, she pulled her sword back into its black ring so she could pummel Bex with all four of her armored fists.
“This is what you deserve,” she informed her sister calmly as she pummeled Bex into the black-stained stone only a few feet away from where she’d killed Kirok. “The Glorious Gilgamesh gave you everything. He accepted you as his princess, gave you freedom from our eternal responsibility and the love of his favorite son. If you’d been smart and died, you could have lived forever as the Princess of Wrath in the Heaven our Eternal King made for you. But you never were smart, were you, Bexa? You’ve always been just like our mother, too stubborn and wrathful to know when you werebeat.”
Her fists fell like anvils with every sneering word, bashing Bex’s flaming body deeper and deeper into the thick layer of stone that divided the Upper and Lower Hells. If she’d landed closer to the tunnel, the sin iron would’ve stopped her, but War had slammed her down at the opposite side of the tower, whichmeant there was nothing but rock between her and the flooding Hell below.
“That’s right,” War said, punching even harder when she saw the realization flicker across Bex’s face. “I’m going to do to you exactly what you watched Mother do to me. I’m going to cast you into that toxic flooded pit where not even your fire can burn. And while you die choking on the sins your precious Ishtar created us to eat, I’ll return to Heaven in victory to kneel before my king and tell him it is done. The Coward Queen is gone forever, and the whole world is better for it.”
“Would youshut up?” Bex roared, flaring her fire as hard as she could, but it didn’t work. The Queen of War was dug in now, and even the Bonfire of Wrath couldn’t blast her off. But just as Bex was starting to panic, she felt a fresh blast of rage hit her fire like a dry log. That normally didn’t happen unless she got angry about something, but Bex was focusing too hard on keeping War from crushing her head to think about anything else. Her flames had actually started burning lower as her fear and frustration smothered them, but the fury that was suddenly piling into her like fresh kindling got them going white-hot again, and as the unknown anger pumped into her system like gasoline, Bex heard it.
“Keep fighting,” someone whispered near her head. “Don’t let her win again.”
“Kill her,” begged another. “Set us free!”
“Avenge us,” said a man’s furious voice, speaking loudest yet. “Don’t let Kirok’s death be in vain!”
The pleas were barely audible over theclangof her sister’s punches, but the Queen of Wrath heard them. The crowd of war demons hadn’t run away when their queen landed. They were all still here, huddling close around her despite their Queen’s sword. Their dark eyes gleamed as they watched Bex take hit after hit, but not with fear or pity. Behind the stoic soldiermasks they wore on their bronze faces was eons of suppressed, smoldering rage. All Bex had to do was let it in, and the anger of the war demons roared inside her like fire engulfing a drought-stricken forest.
Bex embraced it with open arms, because these were also Ishtar’s children. They were not traitors. They were proud, brave demons who’d been forced to kill their own people to satisfy their queen’s twisted grievance. They were victims of Gilgamesh the same as her own wrath demons, and they were begging for her help. They offered their anger up to her like a sacrifice, and Bex was happy to accept because the creature crouching over her was no longer her sister. Ishtar’s poison had scarred her body and mind, but she was the one who’d made herself a monster.
She could have taken her freedom and run when Gilgamesh pulled her out of that pit, but she’d gleefully joined him and turned her sword on her own people instead. She’d killed demons who never had a prayer of standing up to her. She’d killed Kirokaltos, who’d barely been able to keep himself upright, merely for the crime of calling her out. She was a spiteful, selfish creature who chose Gilgamesh again and again with no concern for the people she dragged into slavery behind her. That made her even worse than the warlocks in Bex’s eyes, and for that, she was going to die.
The moment the goal crystallized in her mind, Bex’s wild flames grew steady. Her mind stilled, her heat sharpened, her breathing slowed. There was no more flailing, no more wasted movements, not even any pain. As the war demons’ ancient anger filled her to the brim, Bex finally became what Drox had always told her she was: a weapon forged in fire, the Blade of Wrath.
It was the one truth that had never been tied to her crown. Bex didn’t need a name or a divine sword to burn like she was made to. All she needed was fuel, and she had that in plenty,adding her own fury to the war demons’ silent scream as she shot up to wrap her flaming arms around the Queen of War’s armored body.
They were deep in the hole by this point. War had pounded her about halfway through the floor, but the pit she’d dug for her sister left her no room to maneuver as Bex locked them together. She filled the hole with her fire at the same time, blasting the two of them with her full heat until they molded together like two metals in a crucible.
Bex was so hot at this point that bits of her body were turning to ash faster than her regeneration could replace them, but her sister had it even worse. War had always been resistant to her heat, but everything had its limit, and from the sound of her screams, War was rapidly approaching hers. Her bronze body was bubbling like a molten river, but when she tried to rip her sister off, Bex’s body was too hot to touch. She was still desperately trying when Bex heard something big gocrack.
The sound brought a smile to her burning face. She was pressed against War’s armored chest, which meant she had a front row seat for the moment the heat got too much for Havok. His black ring was still untouched, but the white armor plates he used to cover his queen were breaking apart like bones in a blast furnace. Bex could see the fractures spreading like lightning across every piece of War’s armor, and the moment they got big enough, she released her sister to swing again.
The punch landed very differently this time. Even fresh off the anger of Kirok’s death, the best Bex had been able to do was knock War around. Now that they’d both been fired in the rage of an entire demon tribe, though, one hit was all it took to shatter Havok’s armor. His defenses broke like glass turning back to sand, the little bits burning up in flashes when they hit Bex’s flames as she slammed into War again, smashing her intothe air this time before following her out of the hole in a blaze of white-hot fire.
If she’d been anyone else, that would have been the end. Despite her treason, however, War was still a queen, the strongest of all Ishtar’s daughters. When Bex landed back on the floor of the tower outside their hole, she was already waiting with her black sword in her hands. She was no longer covered in Havok’s armor, but like every war demon, her own skin was armor enough. Her body didn’t even look naked thanks to the smooth bronze of her true self, but what should have been gleaming perfection was marred by huge pits where her body had corroded.
