The small tip of the conical building that was the Canton of Corpses was narrow and cramped. A single window did grace this particular room, however, breaking the pattern that had blocked the rest of the levels off from the outside world.
Raven was guessing this particular window was visible only from the inside of the library, which would explain why rumor was that none of the rooms were illuminated in such a way. No one who’d made it to the final level had shared this detail.
The sound of their breathing was loud in the small room, and the reddish-grayish light from that single window illuminated the book perfectly. It sat in the beam of Phlegathos’s light like a waiting beacon. It was practically pulsing with pent-up knowledge.
Raven took a step toward it, but Loki’s grip on her shoulder brought her up short.
“Are you sure you really want to –”
Raven jerked away from him. “Are you insane?” she countered before he could finish. “We’ve come this far and I have the key, and the Hunter’s Map brought us here for a reason, Loki. There’s no way I’m not opening that book!”
But as soon as she’d turned back around to once more approach the book, she was also stopping in her tracks, every muscle in her body flexed to the ripping point.
Her heart stopped. A full two seconds later, it started back up again, slamming with such horrid force against the underside of her lungs, she fell to her knees with the impact. She gasped, dragging in air as her good hand, the hand with the key, pressed to her chest and her eyes shut.
Her brother was kneeling beside her, and she realized faintly that he was speaking to her. She saw his lips move, but couldn’t make sense of what he was saying, not at first. It wasn’t until her heart had beat safely several more times that she found she could hear again. It came with a ringing sound, and it felt far-off, as if down a tunnel, but Loki was demanding to know what was wrong. He wanted to know if it was her hand, the knife, the box – what was happening.
She ignored his questions and peered deeply into his eyes. With fierce concentration and equally fierce will, she used every bit of breath she’d managed to drag into her now aching lungs and said, “He’s found me, Loki. He’s – he’s coming... He’s here!”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The Lord of the Nines could feel his steward behind him, watching silently from the shadows. But the king left him alone, and soon the Nightmare Lord departed, leaving him alone as well.
For countless long moments, the tall, lone figure of Nisse’s sovereign did not move where he stood on the precipice overlooking his burning lands. He appeared a monument in those moments, carved from stone, chiseled out of something insurmountable and daunting. The only parts of him that indicated otherwise were his hair, brushing across his strong chin and the curve of his neck, and his eyes, swirling like liquid metal, fresh from melting.
When he at last left the highest balcony in his castle, it was not through the portal his steward had used. Rather, he simply thought it, and time and space moved for him, allowing him passage as if it were bowing and scraping as he strode through its intricate, befuddling hallways.
When he reappeared again, it was with a terrible snapping sound, like far off thunder laced with the crack of a whip.
*****
Summer cringed when he appeared in her room, or rather what she’d already come to accept as her prison. It was gilt with gold and rubies, and the bed against one wall was draped in satins and furs, and though the air outside choked and burned, the air in this room was still and clean – and Summer knew it was all a lie. It was a mask, a charade, a cruel hoax that belied the torture she felt sure would come.
That was how Hell was, at least as she’d always been told. It was the promise of pleasure and the provision of pain.
Rather than utilize the bed or sit upon the cushioned benches or plush rugs, she remained standing, but backed up against the wall. The cold stone at her back reminded her of her predicament, and she hoped that in turn, it would spare her too much surprise when the agony came.
It was also pointless to back away, for she knew no amount of running or cowering was going to either rescue her or beg a more gentle treatment. There was nowhere in the realms that she could have escaped this particular man, and there was nothing in the realms he wouldn’t have done to find and re-capture Raven Grey.
Summer knew this. She knew it all too well.
And suddenly, standing in his presence now to gaze wonderingly up into those impossibly beautiful eyes framed by that starkly handsome face, she almost hated Raven Grey. She certainly didn’t understand her.
The woman was fortunate to be admired by someone like Lord Tanith. To be wanted by someone so powerful, so… perfect. What was Raven thinking, running as she did? How could she so blithely subject the entire world to war and famine and injury when all she had to do was take this man’s hand and join him on a throne that was made for her?
How dare she, Summer thought.
For the first time since this war had begun, Summer found herself actually imagining Raven on that throne, resplendent and perfect, as if she were fated to rule here. She saw her sitting tall, straight backed, her blue-black hair glorious around her like a midnight waterfall. She saw her gown, bedecked in innumerable jewels, and watched as devils bowed low before her, waiting to receive her commands.
Suddenly, Summer found herself wanting that vision to come true. If it came true, Raven could protect her. She would never have to worry again. Not for herself, not for her father, not for anyone she cared about.
She belongs here, she found herself thinking, wondering why she hadn’t realized it before. Summer had been blind until now. Now it all made perfect sense. She needs to end this, she thought, as the world became clear and her purpose even clearer. I have to do whatever I can to make Raven come back!
And Lord Tanith smiled.
It was glorious, that smile, and his sharp white fangs made Summer feel strange. Heat moved through her, not unwelcome, and her limbs felt weak. She could have died there in the presence of that smile, and it would have been good.
But then… that smile slowly slipped. And those beautiful silver eyes flashed with something that seemed alien in his perfect face.
And Summer’s mind felt strange. It felt like it wasn’t totally hers, like it had been tampered with. What had she been thinking about again?
The silver in those eyes heated up, shifting from swirling grays to molten red. They burned – and the smile was gone.
Summer snapped back into herself, realizing the spell Tanith had placed her under. In that moment, it was broken as he turned his attention elsewhere. The skies over Hell opened up, cracking with a sound Summer could never have imagined. She screamed, covering her head as red lightning split it into a million pieces. There was a flash before her, but she barely noticed it amongst the chaos that Nisse had all of a sudden become.
The thunder continued, unrelenting, and the stone floor beneath Summer’s bare feet rumbled with terrible tremors. When she peeked from behind her arms, it was to find the king was gone. She was alone in Hell, and it was angry.
*****
Tantibus felt the piercing knowledge of it a split second before all of Nisse reflected its king’s emotion, opening up above him with so much red lightning, the skies were bleeding. He swayed and braced his gauntleted hand against the nearest obsidian tree, gasping for breath as shock rolled through him.
His lord had sent out a single desperate call for him. The queen was here. She was hurt. She was bleeding.
He could even smell her blood, she was so linked with this land and its people. It smelled like snow and magic. He could feel her injury, a ripping pain in his right hand. She was desperate. He could feel that too.
All of this, he processed as he blurred through the Brittle Woods. Lightning sliced through an obsidian tree to his right. It exploded into sharp, black shards that flew outward in a blossom of shimmering gray, but he was long gone before they hit the ground, having already mad
e it to the portal that would take him back to his king.
The portal swirled around him, red and silver, but somewhere mid-way through the transport, it shifted, and Tantibus recognized that he was no longer headed to the palace. In fact, he recognized the change of colors, the density of the air; everything was vastly different.
There was a flash as the portal blasted through a barrier between one of Abaddon’s circles and the next. He was leaving Nisse. This had never happened before. In fact, until now, he hadn’t been aware the portals were capable of leaving one circle and entering another. Moving from one circle of Hell to the next was notoriously difficult. It was one of the things that made Abaddon infamous. Entire books had been written about travels through the Inferno. Of course, they were laughable drivel filled with outlandish and absurd imaginings placed into weak mortal minds by imps who were bored, but nonetheless, the realms were renowned for their impermeability. Moving from one to the next was epic.
Yet, Tantibus remained in that portal as it flashed a second time, taking him past not one, but two circle barriers. He’d gone from the ninth circle into the seventh.
It was Tanith. His power was drawing Tantibus across those impassible barriers. The Lord of the Nines was re-writing Hell’s rules with every new moment. Under different circumstances, Tantibus would have felt that urge to smile again. But his queen was in danger, and the entire kingdom was throwing a temper tantrum to put all others to shame.
The portal’s edges thinned, and Tantibus strode forward, stepping out of the transport to find himself at the center of the entryway to the Canton of Corpses.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Raven both felt and heard Drake’s arrival in Phlegathos. The ground shook, and so did her heart, pounding out a fierce rhythm that took her to her knees. She cried out to her brother, knowing above all else, that although every ounce of her body wanted to stay right where it was, the phylactery waited somewhere just out of reach, and it was the key to undoing the wrongness that had grasped the terran realm in an iron fist.
She needed to save the kids. She needed to save her father.
She needed to hang on a little longer and get Loki and Grolsch to safety. She needed to escape Nisse and find the means to turn back time.
And then, and then… she didn’t know. But that was then, and this was now –
And he was here.
Raven shoved herself to her feet, pulling from willpower she didn’t know she had, and scrambled to the railing that overlooked the remainder of the library seven floors below.
Drake of Tanith stood at the base of the stairs, looking up. The gray marble flooring at his feet appeared to have been scorched; a black scar of searing evidence radiated out from his boots in a star pattern. The smell of smoke filled the air. An angry magic-formed wind ripped through his hair and tore through his cloak, and yet he remained unmoving, a statue of absolutely beautiful darkness, with glowing eyes.
Those eyes imprisoned hers. Time stopped.
In that new stillness, he held her fast and slowly began to climb the stairs, a predator stalking skittish prey. The rest of the world fell away, and they were alone.
“Raven.”
His voice was that of the king of Abaddon now, and echoed with the power of his title. It was the embodiment of promise and need, that duo that tore down a strong person’s last defenses to lay them out for the slaughter.
“You’re hurting.” He took another step upon the winding staircase, and she watched him come, helpless to move, barely able to breathe. “I can feel your pain. I know you.”
He does, she thought witlessly, and found herself leaning forward just a little.
His glowing eyes flashed, his gaze intensifying as stark shadows claimed his face and his look became hungry. “I know you think you have to run from me.” Another step, smooth and slow. “You believe there to be no other way.”
There isn’t, she thought. I have to… I have to do… something.
“But some things were meant to be. This war… this kingdom… Us.” Another step, and he was so much closer now, moving between the third and fourth floors as if he’d forced time to skip.
She could almost feel him upon her, his heat, his strength. She could smell the leather of his armor, and the scent of smoke was stronger now. And something else – magic. It was the aroma of dark magic, like black diamonds crushed into wine.
So close.
There was the faintest hint of a smile curling the corners of his sensuous lips. “You can’t change fate.” He shook his head, just once. “And fate decided on us long, long ago.”
Raven’s confused mind could have sworn it heard something somewhere in the distance then. It reminded her of someone calling her name, but it was in a far field. The calls became yelling and screaming. There was an accompanying banging sound, like the small flint and steel birthday popping bombs she and Loki used to make when they were children and set off with their father’s help at midnight.
Loki…. It could have been his voice calling her. But he sounded like he was stuck down a very long hallway, or at the bottom of a well.
“Forget him, Raven.”
She blinked to find that he was on the level just beneath hers now. How had he done that?
“He will never understand you, and he will never accept you. You know this in your heart already.”
Everything was blurring – time, space, the line between what she needed to do and what she wanted to do.
But then a strong grip was squeezing her shoulder so hard, she heard her collarbone crack. Pain arced through her as she was yanked violently backward, and something familiar was forced into her already destroyed hand. She wrapped her fingers around the new object out of pain-wrought rage and surprise, screaming through gritted teeth as the dark seduction of Drake’s magic began to slough off of her, and she realized she’d been drowning in it.
Then the ground was melting around her, and the world really was blurring.
“NOOO!”
A bellow of fury shook the walls of the portal, warping them inward, and for a moment, Raven thought they would collapse. Their colors swirled viciously, red to black and back again, and pulsed like an angry heart.
Raven tried not to cry. She tried not to do anything but let the portal take her. She could tell Loki and Grolsch had orchestrated the escape. She’d had nothing to do with it. And she felt like a desperate swimmer, floating above certain death as the shark’s mouth rose higher and higher, closer and closer.
He was right there at the edge of the portal. He and his soldiers and his infamous steward, the Nightmare Lord, and all of Abaddon – so very close that she could still see the flames in his eyes.
But the map’s magic would not let him in. He wasn’t holding onto it the way they were. Somehow, it was stronger, even, than the Lord of the Nines.
Thank the gods, she thought.
But as the Phlegathos end of the portal closed, he heard her. I almost had you, my love, he told her, holding her at last with his powerful, echoing voice. A shiver wracked through her, and the pain in her shoulder was instantly gone.
He was inside her now, despite the magical separation. He’d stolen into her mind and body, and moved through her blood like a liquid fire, warming her from the inside out. She moaned low and closed her eyes, floating on a sea of sensual perfection. He was taking away all her pain, and yet she knew it was nothing compared to what he could give her. She knew because he told her – in that warmth, like lips whispering at her ear, he made promises.
They were promises he intended to keep.
And this was his final, hard thought, the one that stayed with her like an echo when she was at last released from his infernal, heavenly grip and the map was conclusively capable of whisking the three of them out of the seventh plane of Hell.
She gasped for air as the pain returned, and Loki was kneeling at her side. “I’m sorry!” he rushed to tell her.
“There was no other way,” Grolsch said from where
he stood over them in the portal. His left hand held one corner of the map that Loki grasped another corner of, and that the third corner of was tucked into her bleeding hand. It was turning red with her blood.
“Drake is too powerful now,” Grolsch concluded. His tone was harsh, but Raven knew he wasn’t happy about what he’d had to do.
“He had you, Raven!” Loki told her. He was shaking his head, and for a moment, Raven could swear he saw moisture in his gold eyes. He placed his free hand to her shoulder, and she screamed, not even meaning to. The pain was enormous, and Raven realized it wasn’t just her shoulder, but her entire right arm, from her bleeding hand to the base of her neck, that was throbbing with a hellish vengeance.
“He had you!” her brother repeated in a fierce whisper, as if he couldn’t truly believe how close they’d come to being defeated.
I almost had you, replayed Drake’s words in her head.
He was right. He’d almost had her. But not quite.
He was the most powerful inhabitant of the nine hells – but she wasn’t in the nine hells just yet. And she was just as strong. If she hadn’t been, Drake of Tanith would have transported directly to the seventh level of the library, overriding every safety put into place by the keepers of the Canton thousands of years ago.
She’d held him at bay.
“Not… quite,” she managed through those clenched teeth as Loki again tried to get his now glowing hand on her shoulder.
“Gods, please hold still and let me heal you!”
Somehow, he managed to firmly grasp her shoulder without her pulling away from him, and Raven choked down bile when it rose against the agony. Grolsch had broken her bones to free her from Drake’s hold over her. It took that much pain to draw her out of his spell. And she’d lost too much blood getting the key to the seventh level of the Canton.
The key!
As warmth and healing spread blessedly from her shoulder down her right side, Raven turned her head to peer at her left hand. It was closed in a tight fist and pressed against her leg, but the hint of something red poked out from its underside. She slowly turned it over and unclenched her fist to reveal the ruby red key the Canton had formed from her blood. She hadn’t used it to open the book, but for whatever reason, she also hadn’t let it go.