“You dare!” the prince roared, whirling around to stab his white blade into Lys’s open back. “Die with your queen, youfilth!”
He brought his knife down as he finished, its gleaming white edge perfectly positioned to sever Lys’s spine. But Lys was a seasoned soldier and an even more practiced shape changer. The second the knife’s course was set, they shifted their torso to the side, moving their flesh like water to leave the prince stabbing at nothing. But while the change was fast enough to save Lys’s back, nothing could save the rest of their body when the prince swung the fist he wasn’t using to hold his knife straight into their ribs. The blow sent Lys rocketing sideways into one of the fir tree’s gigantic knotted roots, which wasn’t nearly as soft or fluffy as the layer of thick green moss made it look.
If they hadn’t just consumed an entire bottle of artificial lust, that would’ve been the end. Lys had never been as good at regenerating as Bex or Iggs. Add in the blood loss from their wounded shoulder and the damage might’ve been fatal. Fortunately for Lys, the moment the witches had shown up with their bottled sins, they’d taken a page from their queen’s old book and started chugging. The results weren’t as transformative as Ishtar’s glowing water, but they gave Lysenough strength to get out of the splintered roots in time to avoid the prince’s next attack, which had been aimed to take off their head.
“Fancy dodging won’t save you,” the son of Gilgamesh warned, flipping the white knife over in his golden-gloved hand. “Nothing can at this point, because I know who you are. You’re the Coward Queen’s nursemaid, the one who always runs to find her after she dies.”
His handsome face split into a cruel smile. “My brother Leander reported the queen abandoned the fight against him after you were injured. I don’t normally take advice from traitors, but my orders were to stall the queen’s advance, and I like the idea of killing you far more than carving a bunch of poetry into a tree that keeps growing back over the words as soon as they’re cut.”
“Only an idiot would expect a Blackwood tree to stay still and let you mutilate it,” Lys taunted from where they clung to the side of the giant trunk. “But if you think I’m the easier target, that’s your mistake to make. I’ve faced a lot of puffed-up princes in my time, but you’re the sorriest one I’ve seen yet. Just look at your tiny little sword.” They flashed him a smirk. “No wonder your brothers sent you off to do the gardening. I bet you can’t even cut me with that thumbtack.”
That taunt was the cellophane version of a transparent ploy, but Lys had never met a prince who could take an insult. Sure enough, this one took the bait with a roar, shape-changing the stolen demon wings back onto his shoulders so he could fly up high enough to stab at Lys’s heart.
He didn’t even get close. The prince was fast, yes, but so was Lys, and more importantly at the moment, they knew how to use their wings. The prince’s flying wasn’t bad, but his wingbeats were merely efficient. He had none of the grace or natural instinct of someone who’d been born to fly. Lys, on the otherhand, had been flying since the first Bex set them free. They dodged the prince’s attack by miles, launching up the craggy trunk of Adrian’s tree to hide in the night-dark shadows of its interior branches.
It was a stalling tactic at best, but after their last two near-death encounters, Lys wasn’t about to try fighting a third prince alone. Unfortunately, they didn’t have a lot of other options at the moment. From the thundering blast of Gilgamesh’s cannons along with what sounded likeactualthunder, Bex clearly had her hands full already. Nemini would’ve been a big help, but Lys wanted her watching Bex’s back. Same went for Iggs and Adrian. Lys also wasn’t about to call a bunch of normal demons out of the rootway to come get slaughtered. That was the opposite of what Bex wanted, but Gilgamesh wasn’t the only one who could push a time limit.
If the Prince of Lust’s job was to create disasters that stopped Bex from entering Gilgamesh’s palace, then Lys would keep him too busy to cause trouble. They’d stay ahead of his short knife, attacking just enough that he never felt safe resuming his carving but not so much that they put themselves in actual danger.
It was still going to be a throw, but as the superior flierandthe superior shapeshifter, Lys had the advantage in the dense interior of Adrian’s tree. The Prince of Lust could disguise himself as a demon, but could he add owl feathers to his leathery wings to make them soundless? Could he turn his fingers into hooked claws that were perfect for moving through thick branches?
Lys didn’t think so. Most lust demons never even bothered learning those tricks, since serving warlocks and scooping sludge in the Hells didn’t require such advanced techniques, but Lys was a soldier of the Bonfire Queen. They’d been transforming their body into whatever weapon got the job donefor centuries, and they put all of that experience to work now, changing the color of their skin to match the fir tree’s dark bark and stretching their fingers into hooks that let them hang off the underside of the thick branches like a squirrel. They’d just gotten themselves nice and tucked away when the prince burst into the canopy.
“Come out and fight!” he bellowed, flapping his wings hard to support his armored weight as he looked around the dark forest of the heart tree’s interior. “Or are you as cowardly as your queen?”
Lys’s answer to that was to toss a fir cone over his head. The prince didn’t even notice it flying by, but he heard when it bounced off the branch behind him. His head snapped toward the sound at once, which meant he was looking the wrong direction when Lys swung up from the branch beneath him to drag their new claws across the prince’s unguarded wings.
They didn’t manage to slice them to ribbons, alas, but the prince still bellowed in pain. By the time he whirled around, however, Lys was already gone, swooping off on silent wings to a completely different branch several feet above him. They were about to drop down for another swipe they hoped would do some real damage when the prince suddenly pressed his white dagger to his lips.
“Reveal your desires, enemy of the Divine King.”
The whispered words were barely louder than the noise of the tree itself, but the moment they left the prince’s lips, Lys’s entire body started glowing red. This sent them into a panic for a second, because the prince’s words hadn’t sounded like sorcery. The recitation wasn’t long enough, and the prince had been speaking English, not ancient Sumerian. Lys was starting to worry they were facing another Leander-style genius caster when the prince lowered his twitching dagger to his side, and they finally realized what had happened.
This man was the Prince of Lust. That meant his sword had once belonged to theQueenof Lust, Lys’s native ruler. Not that Lys had ever met their monarch or knew what her sword did, but theydidknow how lust-demon magic worked. Changing shape was only the trappings. What actually made a lust demon a lust demon was the ability to know instinctively what others desired.
Lys did it all the time when they picked their targets, but they’d never had that same power directed back at them. Now, though, their intense desire to destroy this prince and everything he stood for was shining through their camouflaged skin like a beacon, lighting them up for the entire world to see as the prince spun around.
“Got you,” he said, flashing Lys a grin as he hurled his white dagger at their head.
Dodging wasn’t nearly as easy this time. It was only because Lys’s new hook-claws were already dug deep into the tree bark that they managed to fling their body out of the way in time. They’d just finished catching their balance when the Blade of Gilgamesh flipped in midair and flew at Lys again. No matter what direction they dodged, the white blade flew after them like a hornet, so Lys leaped off the tree entirely to go for the only cover they knew would stop it.
They jumped onto the prince’s back.
The bastard had been gleefully watching the chase from a safe distance. He was so engrossed in Lys’s imminent death that he didn’t even notice they were headed straight at him until Lys grabbed him by the wings. Since the prince was still flying, this meant both he and Lys went tumbling toward the ground. Lys was ready to ride him all the way to thecrunchat the bottom, but the prince grabbed a branch at the last second, almost ripping it off the tree with his weight before the supple greenwood finally stopped his fall.
“You’ll pay for that,” he snarled, calling the flying dagger back to his hand so he could stab it over his shoulder at the demon who was still clinging to his back.
“That’s what they all say,” Lys taunted, shifting their body around the prince’s strikes as they readied their own sin-iron dagger.
Not to stab him in the back. They’d already learned the hard way with Leander that the sin-iron blade was too short and the prince’s armor too thick for that attack to work. Lys needed an easier target, so they stole a move from the war demons and went for the wings instead, slamming the edge of their black knife into the tough cord of bones and sinew that connected the prince’s left wing to his back.
Even with sin iron, it was hell to cut through. Given how many times Lys’s own wings had been injured, they’d assumed it’d be easy, but cutting through the prince’s wing was like trying to saw through a steel cable. Maybe that toughness was why his wingbeats had seemed so stiff, but Lys was committed to the attack. Now that their skin looked like it’d been irradiated, hiding was off the table. It was offense or death, so Lys went after the prince’s wing like a mad badger, stabbing and tearing with their short knife until, all of a sudden, the prince’s entire wing joint came off in their hand with an extremely satisfyingpop.
His scream was even sweeter. The Prince of Lust bellowed in pain and fury as he let go of the branch he’d caught to drop them both to the ground. He was already angling to land on top, but Lys changed their body again as they fell, sliding around the prince’s torso like a snake before leaping off him entirely to fly back up into the air.
They almost didn’t make it. The reason Lys didn’t change their body this drastically all the time was because it was exhausting. The entire fight couldn’t have lasted more than three minutes, but they were already so tired they could barely gettheir wings open in time to check their fall. The energy from the witch’s tonic was long gone, leaving them coasting on pure adrenaline as they flapped back over to grab the tree trunk. But while it sounded like the prince had hit the ground nice and hard, Lys didn’t even have to look down to know he was still alive.
He was already kicking back to his feet in the bloody moss when they finally turned around. The prince regrew the wing Lys had ripped off a few seconds later, pushing it out of his back with the carelessness of a shapeshifter who didn’t have to pay for his changes. The price had already been covered for him by the white quintessence dripping down his golden armor. He could clearly do this all day, but Lys was already running close to empty, which meant it was time to make a choice.
