The Queen of Pride nodded at the golden body lying still as stone on the floor. “The Crown Prince was very convinced of his own rightness, and no one falls harder than the self-assured. His pride at being Gilgamesh’s reliable right hand had become his whole identity, so he had nothing left to grab on to when I ripped the curtain of ego away.” Her smile collapsed into a frown again. “He’d dug a deep pit in his heart to bury the suffering he knew he was causing others. I don’t know if he’ll ever be able to climb back out.”
“Good riddance,” Bex said darkly as she pulled Drox back into his ring. “Bastard used Mara against us.”
“He did worse than that,” Adrian said, taking a seat beside her on the throne’s massive arm. “If I understood Leander correctly, Alexander’s the one who actually pressed the button that flooded the Hells. Even if he was just following orders, there’s no excuse for genocide.”
“He can make his peace with the void, then,” Bex said, turning away from Alexander’s still body. “More importantly, where’s Mara? And did Leander survive?”
Adrian sighed. “He’s alive, but…”
His voice trailed off as he pointed across the shockingly bloody throne room to a miserable-looking figure curled up at the far edge. He was so hunched over, it took Bex several moments to realize she was looking at Leander. Boston was watching over him, but there was no sign of the Princess of Sorrow. Just her prince curled into a fetal position around something Bex couldn’t see but already knew was a hand.
“It’s probably for the best,” she said softly. “Mara deserved to be free.”
“They’re both free now,” Adrian agreed. “Though I’m not sure how long they’ll be able to enjoy it.”
Bex arched an eyebrow, and the witch leaned closer. “Leander’s injuries are severe,” he whispered. “I’ve triaged his wounds, and princes are tough, so I’m reasonably confident he won’t die if he stays still and avoids making his condition any worse, but he can’t keep going.”
“That’s fine,” Bex whispered back. “He’s already fought harder than I expected, and his sorcery would probably be useless against Gilgamesh anyway. He deserves a rest, but do you think you could wake him up for just a minute? He’s still our inside man, and I don’t know where to go from here.”
Adrian blinked in surprise. Then he looked around at the perfectly circular golden throne room with only one obvious door leading to a downward staircase, and he hopped off the throne they’d been whispering on with a sigh.
“Boston?”
The cat looked up.
“I know you just got started, but could you rouse Leander? We need to ask him a question.”
“You could have told me thatbeforeI began the sedation spell,” the familiar replied with a lash of his tail. “But fine. He was resisting anyway, so it’s not like I’ve lost much. Ask away, though I’ll warn you, he’s a bit delirious.”
“I can work with delirious,” Bex promised as she forced her aching body out of the golden chair—which was oddly comfortable for something made of metal—and hobbled across the room to where Leander was lying in a pool of his own white blood.
“Hey,” she said, squatting down beside him. “We still need to get to Gilgamesh. Do you know where we go?”
She gave him a poke as she finished, but the prince didn’t respond. He just curled harder around Mara’s severed hand. Bex tried the question a few more times with even less success, and eventually she stood back up with a huff.
“This is just great. We finally get to the part where his know-it-all attitude would actually be helpful, and he’s out cold.”
“Leander’s knowledge has been useful many times,” said Nemini, who was the last person Bex expected to come to Leander’s defense. “And I think we’re already in the right place.”
“How do you figure that?” Bex asked, waving her bloody hand at the empty room. “This whole place is just one big golden dead end.”
“It does look that way,” Adrian said as his clever blue-gray eyes darted over the carved walls. “But I’m with Nemini. This was where the chains narrowed and where Alexander was standing guard. He wouldn’t waste his time protecting a dead end, which means the path to Gilgamesh has to be in here somewhere.”
“You mean like inside the walls?” Bex wrinkled her nose. “Aren’t we already at the top, though?”
“Space in Heaven doesn’t always work like you assume,” Adrian reminded her, pulling his broom off his back. “Let’s go see what we can find.”
Bex still didn’t see how there could possibly be any hidden doors in a room that so clearly took up the entire top of a tower, but if both Adrian and Nemini said this was it, she wasn’t stupid enough to argue. There was something else she still needed to take care of in any case, so while Nemini and Adrian started tapping on the walls, Bex walked back over to the golden throne and crouched beside the still-breathing body of Gilgamesh’s unconscious Crown Prince.
Are you sure about this?Drox whispered as she rolled him over.
“No,” Bex whispered back. “But I’m already at the top of Ishtar’s shit list, so I might as well take everything I can get.”
There are different degrees of rebellion,her sword warned.Stealing the worship of her demons enraged her, but you needed them to win back Paradise, so it could still technically be framed as doing your job. This, on the other hand, is the literal definition of stealing from the gods, and that never ends well.
“So long as I beat Gilgamesh, I don’t care,” Bex said, reaching under Alexander’s armored body for the sword he’d dropped when Nemini touched him. “Even with all my new powers, I wasn’t able to defeat the Crown Prince without Nemini and Adrian’s help. I can’t take a risk like that against the real deal. I don’t care if Ishtar eats me alive. I’m not passing up this opportunity.”
I see your logic,Drox acknowledged, but his voice was still worried.I just hope you don’t leave me behind.
