Keeping their claws locked into the tree, Lys returned to their original shape and reached up to tap the comm in their ear. No one had said anything over the radio since Adrian had asked for help, but the thunder was still booming from the palace, so the fight there couldn’t be finished yet. If Lys called for backup now, they’d undermine Bex’s assault. If they kept fighting the prince like this, though, they’d lose the war of attrition. Escaping was also a no-go with their body still glowing bright red from the Blade of Lust’s power. Even if they’d been invisible, though, Lys wasn’t about to leave this bastard alone to finish carving his spell into Adrian’s tree. Those roots were the key to saving the people Bex spent all her lives fighting for. The peopleLyshad fought for for the last two hundred years.
That decided it. If this battle was their last, Lys was determined to go down swinging. It was the same thing they’d sworn to the first Bex after she slaughtered their warlock in front of them. Everything Lys had done since—their devotion to their queen, the countless minions of Gilgamesh they’d slaughtered, the slaves they’d freed—it had all been for this moment. Thiswas the eve of the victory demonkind had been fighting fifty centuries to reach, and there was no way in all the sunken Hells that Lys was going to let a puny little backlines saboteur of a prince take it away from them.
The resolve had barely crystallized in their head when Lys launched off the tree like a spear. They folded their wings as they fell, ignoring the pain in their shoulder as they dove past the prince to land hard in the moss behind him. They kicked up the moment they hit, throwing wet moss and mud into the prince’s eyes to hide their arm as it swept around to stab the full four inches of the sin-iron dagger straight into the joint of the prince’s armored knee.
It was the same hit Lys had taught Bex to use on war demons. It didn’t work quite as well on a son of Gilgamesh, but they still got the prince to stumble. The moment he did, Lys shot back to their feet and used their now superior height to reach over the prince’s shoulder and slice through the leather strap that held his helmet in place. They snatched the golden protection off his head next, flinging the helmet off to the side as they dropped low to dodge the counter.
The blow came in like a freight train. The prince’s dagger flew over Lys’s head close enough to cut the tips off their rounded horns. The flash of pain that followed darkened Lys’s vision, reminding them that going toe-to-toe against a prince was exactly the sort of stupid, suicidal behavior they’d always warned Bex to avoid. There was no getting out now, though, so instead, Lys went all-in, twisting their body into shapes even lust demons weren’t meant to take to make sure they always stayed one step ahead.
When the prince came in for a grab, Lys changed the structure of their shoulder to allow their arm to swing past its natural rotation and twist him off. When he swung at their head, Lys collapsed all the space in their spine, shrinking their heightby a foot so that his dagger flew harmlessly over their head. They reinforced their rib cage with bone plating, doubled the size of their lungs to process more air, even turned their normally prehensile tail into a bony needle so they could stab it between the scales of the prince’s armor.
Every wild shift cost them dearly, but dying with cards still on the table was a soldier’s shame, so Lys used every dirty trick they’d ever devised. No matter how cleverly they moved, though, they could never seem to land their sin-iron dagger in a consequential spot. Worse, all the rapid changing was draining their stamina dry. Another thirty seconds of this and the exhaustion would melt their body into a literal puddle. If they didn’t score some actual damage before then, they’d have risked it all for nothing, so Lys decided to try somethingreallydangerous.
It was easy enough to start. Since they were both fighting with knives, the prince was already very close. All Lys had to do was swing for his throat to get him to dodge to the left. Normally, this was where Lys would’ve switched to his legs and gone for a trip. This time, though, Lys spun with him, changing the shape of their spine so they could turn the top half of their body in a full circle to catch the prince on the backswing. It looked like they were going to land the hit—italwayslooked like they were going to land it—but once again, the prince changed momentum at the last second, swinging his white dagger up instead to slice across the back of Lys’s exposed hand.
The razor-sharp Blade of Gilgamesh went through their skin like a hot wire. Lys had already moved their tendons out of the way, but the pain still caused their hand to open, dropping the knife they’d been gripping onto the torn-up moss at their feet. They were diving to retrieve it when the prince saw his opening and lunged, driving his white dagger up to the hilt in Lys’s chest.
The whole fight stopped. Lys clung to the prince’s armor, black blood pouring from their mouth. He gripped them just as hard, holding Lys still while he twisted the white blade in their body and shoved it upward, cutting through Lys’s ribs and into their heart.
The move was the one Lys had used a thousand times on a thousand warlocks, which was why they were prepared. The prince’s strike was in the right place, but Lys had already shifted their heart and lungs down to the relative safety of their stomach. The prince’s knife was still buried in their flesh, so it still hurt, but not so much that Lys couldn’t reach over their back with thethirdarm the prince had never even thought to expect and stab the black blade of the sin-iron dagger into his exposed windpipe.
The prince’s mirrored eyes were right next to Lys’s when the knife landed, so they got to watch the shock as it went through him, followed by pain and fear as the prince tried to shove Lys off him only to discover he couldn’t. They’d changed their body again, turning their arms into a bony prison that held the prince in place as he choked on his own white blood.
“How?” he wheezed through the quintessence pouring down his throat. “Your knife’s on the ground.”
“I have two knives,” Lys whispered back, giving the sin-iron dagger an extra twist to ensure the internal carotid artery that carried blood to the brain was severed beyond repair. “I switched them when I turned around. The one you made me drop was the steel knife my queen gave to me the night she set me free. This one, though”—they wiggled the sin-iron blade in his throat—“this one’s just for you.”
The strength in their transformed arms was already failing, so Lys jerked their unnatural third arm as hard as they could, slicing the sin-iron knife through the prince’s spinal column to finish the job. With nothing left to hold it, the prince’shead tumbled to the mossy ground with a satisfyingthump, his mirrored eyes wide like he still couldn’t believe what had just happened.
Lys couldn’t believe it either. After so many years of trying, they’d finally killed a prince, though whether they’d live to brag about it was another story. They’d saved all their vital organs by moving them out of the way, but they still had a fresh gash down their arm and a giant new window in their chest. Add in their still-punctured shoulder from the fight with the Prince of Hate, and Lys’s body was losing blood faster than it could regenerate.
They were already on their knees despite having no memory of falling. It was the scariest sensation Lys had ever felt, and though they’d told Bex a thousand times that demons could live through any injury that didn’t kill them outright, it was hard to believe when everything felt so cold. Their wounds didn’t even hurt anymore. All Lys could feel was numbness and cold, like they’d been turned back into the river clay from which Ishtar had so famously shaped her demons.
That was a beautifully circular thought to end on. But just as Lys was coming to terms with the fact that they’d finally gone and died for their queen, the torn ground beneath their body began to shift. Lys was so weak by this point that it took them several seconds to wake up enough to see the roots that had wrapped around their body.
Lys’s blood-deprived brain was still processing that information when Adrian’s relieved voice yelled, “I’ve got you!”
Lys blinked in surprise. The words hadn’t come through the comm. Adrian was speaking through the roots themselves, his words buzzing against Lys’s cold—and no longer glowing—skin like angry bees.
“What were you thinking?” the witch demanded as the roots squeezed tighter. “I asked you toinvestigate, not fight! Why didn’t you call for help?”
Because they didn’t want to distract him from Bex. Because they didn’t want to get anyone else killed. Because there’d been no time. Lys had all kinds of good answers to that question but no breath to speak any of them, so they made do with “Tell Bex I’m sorry.”
“You can tell her yourself,” Adrian said angrily as his roots curled up to cover Lys’s head. “Whose tree do you think you’re in? I’m going to try to stop your bleeding now, so hold tight and don’t move. This is going to feel pretty weird.”
That wasn’t much of a threat since Lys couldn’t feel anything at the moment. The second the witch stopped speaking, though, Lys felt the tree roots enter the hole in their chest. It felt like worms were invading their body, but while the wiggling was every bit as strange as promised, it wasn’t painful. The movement actually felt kind of nice, like Lys’s whole being was broken down and returned to the forest. They were relaxing into the sensation when Adrian spoke again.
“I should have checked on you sooner,” he muttered, sounding angrier with himself than with Lys. “The damage is much more extensive than I realized. I promise I’ll come back and treat you properly soon, but I have to focus on Bex’s fight right now. Just stay still and let the roots do their work. They’ll keep you together until I return.”
Lys could no longer move enough to nod, so they made do with tilting their chin. They were just about to drift away into the beautiful feeling of not being dead when they remembered to say, “Thank you.”
“You’re very welcome,” Adrian replied. “We’re a team, aren’t we?”
Indeed they were. That was why Lys had been so pissed at him for ignoring Bex back in Seattle. Adrian had certainly redeemed himself now, though, so Lys gave him the greatest gift they could give anyone. They entrusted Bex to his care, closingtheir eyes as the roots pulled them deeper into the heart tree’s protected core.
And above them, on the torn-up moss where they’d just fought, a man’s scarred, gold-ringed hand reached quietly through the empty air and retrieved the sword the dead prince had dropped, leaving his son’s headless body to rot where he’d been so ignominiously defeated.
CHAPTER 10
