“You think they’re luring us in?”
Leander gave her anAre you kidding me?look, and Bex fought the urge to roll her eyes.
“Let me rephrase that,” she said, rubbing her temples. “Whatkindof trap are we walking into?”
The prince pursed his lips as he gave her second question some apparently serious thought.
“Something that needs us to be very close,” he said at last. “The palace can fire on anything within the Holy City’s walls, but Gilgamesh is too cheap to destroy his own capital if he doesn’t have to. When the lions didn’t start roaring the second we came up from the Hells, I suspected he was waiting until we were in bowshot because arrows don’t destroy buildings, but we’ve beenwithin the constructs’ optimal range for a good five minutes now and still nothing.” He squinted up at the battlements again. “They must be waiting for us to walk into the palace itself.”
“That would be suicide,” Bex argued, pointing at the empty white courtyard she could see through the fortress’s gate. “There’s two hundred feet of open pavement between the palace wall and the front steps. We’ll be sitting ducks if we step into that.”
“We’re already sitting ducks,” Leander pointed out. “As I said, the only reason we’re not already full of arrows is because whoever’s running the defenses has chosen to let us live. Probably so we’d stand around talking about it like we’re doing right now. You did say Gilgamesh’s objective was to waste our time, and what wastes more time than a nervous army?” His thin lips curved into a mirthless smile. “This way he doesn’t even have to spend ammunition to stop us, which makes it the most Gilgamesh move I’ve seen yet.”
“Then let’s not let him keep making it,” Bex snapped, calling her sword into her hands. “I’m going to spring the trap. The rest of you stay here and wait for my signal.”
Leander waved for her to be his guest. Iggs, however, looked shocked and furious. Nemini didn’t look too happy, either, but Bex shook her head.
“If they’re going to shoot at something, I’d rather it’d be me,” she said before her demons could object. “I’ll report what I see over the comm, so listen for orders. Leander, did Lys give you a radio?”
When the prince shook his head, Bex pointed at Iggs. “Get him on the channel,” she ordered. “I’m going in.”
With a firm look back at her army to make sure no one got any heroic ideas, Bex lifted her six new horns high and marched down the last half block into the grand plaza that surrounded Gilgamesh’s palace.
It took all of her willpower to do it. She was the one who’d pointed out they’d be walking onto open pavement, but actually stepping out onto all that exposed stone when thousands of mechanical archers had their bows pointed at her head sent Bex’s fight-or-flight instincts into overdrive.
The palace itself wasn’t helping either. It lookedsomuch taller now that she was standing directly below it. Just trying to see the tops of the towers from way down here was enough to give her vertigo, and the courtyard in front of her was equally discomfiting. The stones were cracked in places where pieces of the tower she’d destroyed had fallen, but someone must’ve cleaned up the rubble, because there wasn’t a pebble out of place. Just an empty, two-hundred-foot-wide expanse of blinding-white pavement leading up to the curved steps of the palace’s main door, which looked almost like the entrance to an enormous, super-ornate train station from this angle.
That felt like a silly way to describe the fortress of her ancient enemy, but that was seriously what it looked like. The bottom level of Gilgamesh’s palace was lavishly decorated with arches, reliefs of heroic-looking sorcerers, and ornate cuneiform inscriptions. Since the lowest floor also served as the base for all those towers, though, it had been built in a long, sturdy rectangle reinforced with columns and lined with wide white steps leading to multiple golden doors that looked like they’d been built to admit hundreds of people at a time.
The only buildings Bex knew of that were designed like that were train stations. The courtyard even had white stone benches along the walls so people could sit down. The seats were all empty now, of course, but the grooves worn into the stone spoke of centuries of use. Same for the wheel ruts in the plaza’s otherwise-pristine paving stones and the foot-traffic hollows that dimpled the palace’s white steps.
Put it all together and Bex felt like she was staring at the universe’s fanciest transport hub. Considering what Adrian had told her about the entrance to the chains being inside the palace’s main floor, though, that actually made sense. As the only reliable connector between Earth and Heaven, Gilgamesh’s palace basicallywasa train station. A realization that only made the vast emptiness feel even eerier when Bex walked out into it alone.
It felt like trying to sneak across a stage. Even the normally soft steps of her rubber-soled combat boots sounded like banging hammers as Bex made her way across the open pavement to the stairs that led up to what was clearly the main entrance. She was readying Drox to slice through the heavy golden doors when they suddenly began to swing open.
Bex froze in place, holding her sword ready in front of her as the huge palace doors creaked open to reveal—not an army of warlocks or a firing squad of sorcerers, but a single man. Not even an armored man. This individual was dressed in a spotless version of the same white silk shirt and trousers Prince Leander had been wearing when Bex found him in the Lowest Hell, though this man’s outfit also included matching white slippers. But while his clothes made him look like a lost guest from a five-star hotel, the white sword at his side and the mirrored eyes in his handsome face felt right at home.
“Welcome, Bex of the Bonfire, newly crowned Queen of All Demons,” Gilgamesh’s son announced in a ringing voice that filled the empty plaza. “I am Petros, Prince of Fear and defender of the Palace of the Highest Heaven. It is with great respect that my illustrious father, Gilgamesh, the Eternal King, welcomes you to his home. In his glorious name, he has bidden me invite you in so that we may discuss our differences like civilized individuals.”
The prince stepped to the side as he finished, revealing a golden table set with an artistically arranged feast of fruits, wines, cheeses, ice water, and fresh bread. There were two chairs with white fur cushions and a floating clay tablet with a golden stylus that seemed to be acting as a magical recording device. It looked exactly like what she’d expect from a peace talk with Gilgamesh, if Bex had ever bothered to imagine such a thing. But though the prince had yet to touch his sword, Bex backed several steps away.
“He’s lying,” Leander’s voice said calmly over the comm in her ear.
“No shit,” Bex whispered back, glancing up at the thousands of constructs still standing like statues on the palace’s battlements. “But why tell a lie so obvious? He has to know it won’t work.”
“He’s probably just wasting our time again,” Iggs said on the same channel. “I bet the food isn’t even real.”
“It’s a bad-faith negotiation for the purpose of stalling your advance,” Leander agreed. “You should kill him.”
“No argument there,” Bex said, eyeing the prince, who was still smiling at her like a morning TV host. “What does his sword do?”
“I don’t know,” Leander confessed. “The Prince of Fear has always been in charge of the castle’s defenses, so his abilities were kept secret from the rest of us in case of rebellion. He’s been doing that job for longer than I’ve been alive, though, so it’s safe to assume he’s good at it.”
The prince certainly didn’t look afraid. He was also still standing inside the palace’s giant doors, which wasn’t a place Bex wanted to step into alone, even with her new horns. That said, she also didn’t want to charge her army into a prince. Getting inside the palace would protect them from the shooting gallery, but even if they outnumbered him a thousand to one,trapping her demons in a room with a prince sounded like a quick way to get them all killed. She was still trying to figure out the right move when a new voice spoke over her comm.
“Keep him talking,” Adrian said. “And see if you can get him to step out of the building.”
“Why?” Bex whispered, flicking her eyes to the empty sky. “What are you planning?”
