Page 43 of Let Me Win You

Holding on to my flying horse with both arms, I somehow managed to steer it to follow Pandora.

Charity and Kindness were way ahead of us already, flying along the wall and around the maze building.

“Where are we going?” I screamed after Pandora, who kept moving up to the top of the wall.

Was I supposed to followher? Or the virtues?

Worry buzzed through me. If it was dangerous for us to stay near the opening doors, how would Invi fare down there? Even without a body to lose, one could suffer when faced with danger.

My head was spinning when I tried to look down, and I couldn’t see a thing through the thick black smoke spreading over the ground below.

“What is happening down there?” I asked Pandora, catching up to her.

“Come this way.” Pandora waved for me to follow her over the wall. “It’s a perfect view from here.”

My pegasus lined up with hers, and we hovered over the prolapse in the roof.

“Keep at this height. Don’t get any lower,” Pandora warned. “Things can get nasty inside these walls.”

The exposed section of the maze had high walls constructed from stone and metal. The walls were so high and the space between them so narrow that sunlight didn’t reach the ground between them. Sharp rocks littered the packed ground, and black smoke clung to every turn and corner inside.

“Just hownastycan it get down there?” I asked anxiously.

This whole idea of the race had disturbed me from the beginning. But seeing this dark, sinister place made me realize it also might be extremely dangerous.

Pandora shrugged in reply. “I mean the maze is the gateway to hell, so…not exactly a pleasant place to be.”

“How close is the actual hell here?” A shiver ran across my shoulders, and I clung harder to the warm neck of the pegasus. “Why did we even come here? If you absolutely had to have this stupid race, why not have them run along the creek in the forest or on the road in town?”

“And what would be the fun in that?” Pandora laughed in sync with the kaleidoscope of colors bursting through her shape.

I couldn’t believe how much she was looking forward to this. “Are you really going to havefunwhile watching your children fight for their lives in this nasty place?”

She tossed a lock of her hair over her shoulder. “Calm down, little human. You’re forgetting that my children are powerful entities, practically immortal, and perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. Ira is actually the one in charge of the maze. It’s his second home. He spends more time here than in his own lair.”

“Ira…lives here?” I cast another glance down at the grimy walls and the dark, narrow passages, wondering how anyone would spend a minute here not because they had to but because they wanted to.

On the other hand, with his hooves, his head of a bull, and his state of barely contained rage, Ira actually fit right in there, visually at least.

“He keeps the maze stocked with horrible beasts to torment the sinners for the devils,” Pandora explained.

“Are there more than one devil?”

“Of course there are. One wouldn’t possibly be able to look after all the circles of hell on his own, not with your world supplying a steady stream of sinners on a daily basis. There is also an entire army of demons to manage and supervise. It’s too much work for one being to do it all, no matter how powerful he may be. Hell is huge. The maze is just the very top circle of it—a front hallway, if you will. The actual hell spirals deep under ground. And trust me, it is as ghastly as they say. Let’s just hope you’ll never see the inside of it.”

“How do I make sure that I won’t?” I asked, seriously disturbed by the possibility of landing here at any point of my existence.

“Hell is not as hard to avoid as many think. Just try not to mess up majorly in this lifetime, and you’ll be fine.” Pandora scanned the maze below us. “Oh look!” She pointed down inside of the outer wall. “There is Invi. And the others.”

In the gloomy darkness of the maze, the glowing figures of the sins were easy to spot, even through the thick, black smoke that hugged the walls and the ground. Invi’s tail pierced through it like a bright green ribbon shimmering along the passages. Gul and Ira followed close, both currently moving just as fast as my Sin of Envy.

“There are several ways to get through the maze,” Pandora explained. “Only one is the shortest, but it’s not necessarily the safest. The trick is to figure out which way it is, because the maze doesn’t stay the same.”

“What do you mean it doesn’t?”

“It’s not stationary.”

Her reply didn’t really clarify anything, but I didn’t ask again, focusing on what was happening below.

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