Halle folds her arms across her chest and tips up her chin. “Don’t insult me.”
It’s my turn to smile and I let my canine teeth sharpen in the process. “Dearest Hel, be prepared to be insulted many times.”
“Fine.” She huffs. “No traps. No cages. No tricks. You’re all free to leave whenever you like.”
Her focus slides past me and farther to my left.
“Even the keeper.” Her eyes narrow for a moment before she spins away from me, muttering to herself. “What a face for him to claim as his own.”
I glance back again, surprised to find the keeper now leaning up against the tunnel wall on the left side. He has struck a seemingly nonchalant pose, but his non-threatening demeanor doesn’t make a difference to my instinctive reaction.
What is it about that face that’s so startling?
Another question for which I need an answer.
“Come. Quickly now.” Halle waves us toward the depths of the tunnel ahead of us while the hounds step clear of the path.
It looks like they intend to bring up the rear when they head in twos to the side of the tunnel and wait there.
I hurry back to retrieve the book, scooping it into my arms while my pack rapidly fans out around me again.
Without speaking, they seem to know exactly where they want to be. Anarchy and Lucian stand in front of me while Rumble and Strife cover my back. Riot flanks my left side while Jonah resumes his position on my right.
“You, too, keeper,” Halle calls back. “Don’t fall behind.”
Emil lifts himself off the wall, remaining like a shadow behind me while the hounds follow behind him.
The path has a very gentle decline that tells me we’re heading slowly downward.
Halle mentioned something about ‘rings’, and I have the sense that the path curves slightly, such that we could be traveling down in some sort of extremely wide spiral.
Halle glides ahead of us, the outline of her crimson dress merging with a growing amber light that tinges the air as we descend into the Underworld.
It’s surprisingly quiet, other than the soft, crackling sounds of firebrands that rest against the walls farther along the path.
I suppose I expected screaming. Certainly sounds of pain. The clank of metal. The crack of whips.
There is none of that.
What’s more, the whole place smells oddly sweet and homey.
I lift my nose, inhaling deeply, aware that the dark elves are doing the same, their noses shifting momentarily into panther form.
Halle seems to have eyes in the back of her head, or maybe she simply heard our deep inhales because she drops back a little to walk on my left.
“It smells like home, yes?” she asks. “A final reminder to those who come here of what has been lost. Cruel, I know. But that is hell.”
“Cruel?” I shrug. “Not to those who never had a home.”
There were a few moments in time when I called the apartment in New York ‘home’, but that was an illusion. Before it, I only had my cell.
Halle flinches, but I ignore her reaction. It may have sounded harsh, but it’s the truth.
“It smells like a treat,” Anarchy says from in front of me, licking her lips as she throws a dangerous grin at Halle. “Dessert, perhaps.”
I’m honestly not sure if Anarchy’s referring to the scent in the air or to the likelihood that she’d like to sink her teeth into Halle.
The goddess looks a little thrown.
