Bex couldn’t explain. It was more of a realization than a technique, like suddenly remembering you had toes. They were easy not to think about if she wasn’t actively using them, but as soon as Drox had pointed them out, Bex was suddenly aware of a whole new landscape very similar to her fire. Things she simplywasnow, not things she used.
It’d felt so natural she hadn’t even noticed, but when Bex reached out for them, the new powers reached back like they’d always been a part of her, flooding her perceptionwith sensations she’d never felt before but that still felt like extensions of her own body.Literallyher own body, because the very first one Bex tried covered her skin in fear-demon scales that looked just like the prince’s. The only difference was that Bex’s scales were black instead of Gilgamesh’s unholy white. As black as the blood that boiled in her veins when she stopped defending and covered her sword in flames to slice through the buildings where she’d last seen her enemy.
The strike was nowhere near as powerful as the one she’d used to knock down Gilgamesh’s tower, but Heaven’s over-embellished white mansions were much less sturdy than the palace of its king. One swing was all it took to reduce them to rubble, flushing out the scaled prince, who suddenly looked much less sure of himself.
“You really are a monster, aren’t you?” he said, flipping his curved blade over in his hands.
“You should take a look in the mirror,” Bex suggested, gripping her own sword.
It was impossible to tell behind his white scales, but Bex swore the prince smiled at that.
“Gilgamesh originally earned his fame as a hero by slaying monsters, you know,” he said as he braced his clawed feet. “They were also creations of the gods, tools designed to spread fear so mortals would panic and pray for salvation. My father is the one who freed humanity from such abuses. He’s spent his entire life protecting mortals from things like you. Now I shall follow in his footsteps by ending the Queen of the Hells for good.”
Bex rolled her eyes behind her new protective scales. She was still trying to process just how far Gilgamesh had misled his son when the Prince of Fear leaped into the air. He kicked off the rubble of the broken building behind him and launched at her from an unexpected angle that forced Bex to roll out of the way before she got skewered.
“Gotta give you credit,” she said when she made it back up to her feet. “You’re one of the fastest princes I’ve ever fought. Pretty impressive when you consider how much armor you’re wearing, but your speed and scales won’t save you fromthis.”
She lashed out with her flames, covering the wrecked street in a raging inferno fueled by her wrath at this idiot who was attacking her when Gilgamesh was the monster who needed to be stopped. As always, her flames didn’t touch Adrian’s plants, but they turned all the luxury goods packed inside the Heavenly mansions into kindling. It was the sort of satisfying power move she’d wanted to pull from the start, but even Bex had a hard time getting a bonfire going in a rainstorm. Out here in the clear, though, nothing was holding her back, so Bex let her fire roar, covering the entire block in a sea of red-hot flames.
“Not so easy to hide in a burning city, is it?” she yelled as she watched the prince jump from house to house ahead of the destruction. “Why are you running, monster hunter? I thought you were going to slay—”
Her taunt turned into a gasp when she felt the prince’s white sword cut through her flames like a spear. She’d thought she was looking straight at him, but the Prince of Fear was suddenly behind her. If Bex hadn’t been covered in scales of her own now, his blade would’ve torn straight through her back, but she was more than just her people’s wrath now. She was also their fear, a wall against anything that would hurt them, and that wall held firm. Firmer than the prince expected, because he stumbled when his sword slid off her just like Drox had been sliding off his scales all morning, giving Bex the opening she’d been waiting for.
“You want to be like your father?” she yelled, letting go of Drox so she could whip around and grab the prince by his neck. “Then look upon what he has wrought! Let me show you whatyour king defends, and then we’ll see if you want to keep being his loyal servant.”
The prince was taller than she was, so Bex couldn’t lift him off his feet like she wanted, but that didn’t matter. Her new scaled fingers still dug into his neck like daggers, but she didn’t rip his head off like her anger was urging her to. She ripped into herself instead, reaching out with Sorrow’s power this time as she opened the floodgates and poured five thousand years’ worth of suffering straight into the prince’s brain.
He screamed as it swallowed him. Bex screamed as well, but she didn’t let go. She didn’t want to kill a prince who thought he was dying a hero. She wanted him to understand, wanted him tofeelwhat her people had suffered at his father’s “heroic” hands. The only cure for lies was the truth, so Bex poured it straight down his throat, holding him with one hand while she reached out to her people with the other.
She had to drop her guard to do it, but that didn’t matter anymore. The prince was no longer capable of fighting back as Bex reached through the connection she’d forged with every demon who’d given her her name. They were no longer actively praying to her for salvation, but they were all still there, and they answered when Bex called, offering her their sorrow just as readily as they’d offered their wrath.
The result was a wave of tragedy strong enough to wash all of Heaven under. If Bex had been the one being hit, she would’ve sunk even deeper than she’d fallen when the actual Blade of Sorrow hit her on the chain. Fortunately, she was just the conduit this time, but that was still enough to bring tears to her eyes as she poured her people’s sorrow—their suffering, their grief, their loneliness and pain, their lost loved ones, everything Gilgamesh had stolen—into the prince.
They were both on the ground by the time she finished, but Bex was the only one who stood back up. When she finallyunclenched her scaled hand from his throat, the Prince of Fear was sobbing in the fetal position. He showed no reaction when she poked him and did not respond when she called his name. Bex was wondering if it was possible for someone to die of grief when a man suddenly stepped up beside her.
“Now you see my princess’s suffering.”
Bex jumped. She’d assumed the newcomer was Adrian, but Prince Leander was the one standing next to her when she turned her head.
“War wasn’t the only one who hated the duty Ishtar sentenced her to,” he told her quietly. “Mara despised it as well. Who wouldn’t loathe being forced to consume the entire world’s sorrow? She only did it because her demons would’ve had to consume the poison by themselves if she’d abstained, and as you can see from my brother, no one should have to suffer that alone.”
“If you want me to apologize, it’s not happening,” Bex said, pulling back her new scales so Leander could see her face. “He knew what Gilgamesh was doing in the Hells and still supported him. He should feel the pain that he ignored.”
“I wasn’t asking for mercy,” Leander promised as he glared at his sobbing brother. “Fear was my father’s loyal dog. Unlike me, he served most eagerly. That’s why he was entrusted with the job of guarding the final gate, but…”
He trailed off with a sigh, and Bex looked over just in time to see his gaunt face grow stricken.
“I hate all my fellow princes,” he explained at last. “But Mara hated her powers even more. He’s sinking in the sea of her sorrow, of all your sorrows.” Leander’s thin hands squeezed into fists. “Mara never wanted anyone else to feel that way. So please, for her sake, would you put him out of his misery?”
Bex sighed. When Leander put it that way, it did sound monstrous. She hated Gilgamesh with everything she was, but she’d never enjoyed been cruel.
Compassion is a queen’s prerogative,Drox agreed.And you can’t get your sister’s hand back while her prince is trapped in a sorrow-induced coma.
“Fair enough,” Bex said, trying not to let her relief show on her face as she reached down to press her hand against the prince’s scaled forehead.
She felt her people’s sorrow the moment she made contact. It was like dipping her fingers into an ocean of suffering, but even though Gilgamesh’s loyal prince was the one drowning in it, Bex still hated that all of that pain had come from her demons. The whole reason she was doing this was to free them from such suffering, so Bex did the only queenly duty she’d always been good at.
She burned it.
