“I’ll bite.”
That surprised a brief smile from him.
“Then let’s go save your soul.”
They pushed through the hotel doors onto Hell’s crowded streets and descended into the depths of Pandemonium.
CHAPTER 22
Hell had a subway system. Of course it did.
The station yawned open in the middle of a residential street, stairs descending into darkness punctuated by neon signs in Abyssal script. Demons pushed past them going up and down: workers heading to early shifts, pleasure-seekers stumbling home, teenagers laughing too loud at jokes Ava couldn’t understand.
Some of them stared at the golden chains glowing beneath her skin. Most looked away quickly. A few lingered too long, their gazes calculating.
Victor kept his hand on her lower back as they descended. The chains pulsed warmer at his touch, responding to his presence with something that felt almost like jealousy.
The platform stretched wide beneath vaulted stone ceilings. Smooth black basalt, worn by countless feet. Signs advertised destinations in Abyssal script that shifted when she tried to read it directly, but the bond translated automatically, the words settling into meaning a half-second after she saw them.
The Serpent’s Vesper. Three stops. Crimson District.
A demon in a business suit waited near the edge, horns filed down to polished nubs, checking something on a device thatlooked almost like a phone. Two succubi chatted by a pillar, their wings folded tight against their backs. An elderly demon with bark-like skin sat on a bench, reading a newspaper that smoldered gently in her gnarled hands.
Normal. All of it looked so normal.
The chains pulled harder. Ava pressed a hand to her sternum, feeling the hook behind her ribs. Marchosias. Getting closer with every step.
A train arrived with a rush of hot air. Sleek and black, windows tinted so dark they reflected nothing. The doors slid open with a hiss. Victor pulled her aboard.
The interior was clean. Seats upholstered in something that felt too smooth, too warm, to be leather. Advertisements lined the walls in multiple languages, selling products she couldn’t identify and services she didn’t want to imagine.
They found seats near the back. Victor positioned himself between her and the rest of the car. Subtle, but deliberate.
“You’ve been here before. Before you left.”
“I grew up here.” He was watching the other passengers without appearing to watch them. “A long time ago. Before I decided I wanted something different.”
“What made you leave?”
The train lurched into motion. Through the dark windows, she caught glimpses of tunnels carved from living rock, veins of something luminescent threading through the stone like frozen lightning.
“I got tired of being what they expected me to be.” He was watching the tunnel walls slide past, but his focus was somewhere else. Somewhere older. “Tired of the games. The hierarchies. The endless jockeying for position and power. I spent eight hundred years climbing, fighting, proving myself, and one day I realized I couldn’t remember why any of it mattered.”
“So you left.”
“I ran.” A ghost of a smile. “Dressed it up as philosophy, called it a search for meaning, but really I just couldn’t stand another century of being what Hell made me.” He paused. “Andromalius was the only one who understood. He helped me figure out how to pass in the mortal world. How to be something other than what I was born to be.”
“And was it worth it? Leaving everything behind?”
He looked at her. Really looked, the way he did when he was about to say something that cost him.
“I thought so. For a long time, I thought I’d found what I was looking for.” He laced his fingers through hers. “Now I know I was just waiting. For something I didn’t know I needed until I found it.”
The train stopped. Passengers shuffled on and off. A demon whose face was mostly eyes squeezed past them, muttering apologies.
Ava felt the chains flare, a sharp tug that made her gasp. They were getting closer. Marchosias’s territory. His domain.
“How much further?” she managed.
