But he hadn’t broken his word. Not yet.
If what he’d said about Zaleos was true, there was no quarter to be found with him. What would he do with me when I showed up on hisdoorstep, alone and defenseless?
I shook my head. This place was maddening, and I couldn’t stay here any longer, couldn’t give the Prince a chance to draw me any deeper into his web of lies. I shut the door to my room, locked it, and used my desk chair to barricade it from the inside. The promise of solitude soothed me like a balm.
Sitri was lying to me, deceiving me, and that was all that mattered. The minutes to my emancipation were already ticking down. He would do everything in his power to reset the clock. That’s all this was—an attempt to hold me, to make me second-guess my judgment.
And if Sitri thought he’d gotten his way, he was about to realize just how wrong he was.
I watched from my bedroom window as Sitri and Draven left the estate on the backs of their demon steeds. They rode into Lantyca, where the lights of their mounts faded into the city’s sea of flickering flames.
A strange finality steeped the scene as I watched them vanish into the distance. I’d spent the last hour preparing for my exit. I’d lit my lantern. Drinking oils in waterskins hung around my waist, and from their leather straps dangled sacks of food. A box of matches sat in my pocket. I’d returned my knife to its place at my hip. Every precaution I thought of, I’d taken. Despite my efforts, the seeds of doubt that Sitri sowed took root. Soon, they would grow and bloom.
The Prince made clear the dangers he presented, but Zaleos was an unknown. I wasn’t even sure where his kingdom’s borders lay. Somewhere to the west, if what I’d overheard was accurate. The path we’d walked was calm when he first led me to Lantyca, escorting me along a worn road through unoccupied badlands. I’d be surprised if that road had stayed quiet. There was war out there in the dark, and one wrong move would land me in Vapula’s clutches—or back in Sitri’s, under much less favorable terms.
Still, this was the only way forward, and I couldn’t afford to delay.
A moment’s hesitation might cost me everything. Sitri wanted me to falter, to doubt myself, to be complacent in his custody until he learned how best to exploit me. I had to go.Now.Waiting any longer risked a reversal of my plans, and that could utterly damn me.
I tugged the window frame open, and the scent of sulfurous smoke rushed in to greet me. My nose wrinkled as I slid silently through it, planting my feet on the ground outside. The demons that swarmed here hours ago had departed with their Prince. Silence had settled over the empty grounds.
As I approached, my lantern illuminated the stable, and I studied its make. Breaking in posed little challenge. The building was made of wood and stone. The door’s two halves joined on the inside, and a metal post secured with a padlock held them in place. I didn’t know how to pick the lock, but that had never stopped me before. I focused, calling on Vapula’s gift to serve me, and surrendered my hands to its guidance.
Within my mind, a muscle flexed, lending me the talents I requested. Even here in Hell, I could rely on the prowess I had sold my soul for.
I unwound the wire handle of my lantern, bent it, and slotted it into the lock’s keyhole. I didn’t need to guide my hands. They worked on their own. Mechanisms clicked as they shifted in my favor, then they lurched. The padlock snapped open.
Before I entered, I returned the wire to my lantern. The more I worked it, the more resistance it offered, and the more hesitant I grew. Though I didn’t know the phenomenon’s name, I sensed the risk it posed.
Too much bending had made the metal brittle. I’d have to mind its fragility.
When I tugged the doors open, light spilled out. Nightmare was gone, likely taken into the badlands by the Prince. Of the two remaining horses, one was a calm mare, while the other was a gelding that snorted and stomped about his stall. I liked my odds better with the calm horse.
I found a narrow leather saddle in a nook above my head and tugged it down. A tangled mess of straps and metal tumbled after it. Straightening it out proved a nigh impossible task. When I held it up, the mare I’d selected trotted over and lowered her head to me. She stood perfectly still while I fussed with the straps and buckles.
I stepped back to admire my work. It was shoddy at best. The mare’s saddle sat at an angle, and I was certain there should be a blanket beneath it. A blanket that was nowhere to be found. The bridle’s straps looked wrong somehow, sitting twisted on the mare’s face. It looked awkward, but it would have to do. I wasn’t planning to sit around long enough to be caught stealing, and for my first time saddling a horse, I’d done well enough.With the saddle in place, I secured my supplies so they hung over the creature’s haunches. I tested my knots with a tug. They held firm.
I opened the stable stall’s gate, and the mare again surprised me. Rather than bolting or stumbling about, she didn’t move as I took her mane in my fist. My shoe slotted easily into the stirrup, but my lack of strength made the task difficult, and I didn’t have Sitri’s help to keep me steady.
On my first two attempts to mount, I failed to pull myself up, and with the third, I nearly lost my balance as I landed on the mare. I yanked her hair as I caught myself, but she didn’t startle. Once I was steady, I took hold of her reins.
“Now or never,” I whispered.
Mimicking the gesture I saw Sitri use before, I squeezed my thighs around the horse’s sides, and we were off.
My steed bounded forward. I lurched in the saddle. My heartbeat quickened as she made for the exit, and I locked my legs even tighter around her flank. I saw the low doorway a moment before it would have struck my head and barely ducked out of the way in time. Once it had passed over me, I leaned forward, trying to steady myself.
The horse set a brisk pace, and I struggled to control her as she strodeacross the estate. Her hooves kicked up loose dust, and the bouncing of her back threatened to unseat me. I nearly slipped as she burst into the courtyard. I jerked forward, my body crashing into the horse’s neck. My lantern hit solid leather at my hip. The fragile handle broke and sent it flying. Glass shattered with a crash, and the flame went out. I cursed under my breath as the world around me shrank. My steed’s fire-like hair still cast some light, but it scarcely illuminated a few feet in each direction.
Demons shouting behind me drew my attention. When I turned, two shadowed figures stood in the mansion’s lit doorway—Apollo and Mara. I grit my teeth, my stomach dropping as a cold sweat set into my hands.
It was too late to turn back now.
I had to get control of myself and my steed, but I had no idea how to command her, and keeping my balance took all my focus. The mare didn’t need my input, though. She shot through the gates of Sitri’s estate, hurtling us into Lantyca.
The horse’s hoofbeats thundered against the stone road as we raced down the hill. The city below stood as a bastion of light, a nest of fallen stars in the darkness of Hell. Even without the lantern, I made out the crude buildings that lined the city’s roads, and the terrible demons that walked them.
As I reached level ground, crimson eyes burned into me. Each demon that noticed me pointed, gawked, and elbowed any of the bipedal, half-beast brutes within their reach. They flooded from their workshops. Poured into the streets. The stomping of work boots and hooves echoed through Lantyca, stirring up a commotion I knew I couldn’t quell. I swallowed, unable to drink down my growing panic. Whatever spell they’d been under the first time I traversed the city, it had broken now.
