Page 36 of Hell Sent

But she did not look offended. She didn’t move away from him. In fact, she stayed very close, holding onto him.

“Thank you,” she said. “Again.”

He stared at her, loving the way she looked at him.

He felt something, then. A deep, unfulfilled desire taking root deep within him. Something like… longing.

A frisson of fear went through him.

He took a step back, snapped out of whatever madness had begun to take him. He should not have had these feelings. He should not have worried for her. He should not have been thinking of her as someone to be held and cared for, or as someone who would hold and protect him in return. She was his ally—which merely meant that she was temporarily not his enemy. They were not companions. Demons did not have companions.

Raiya just looked at him. Her hand was still bleeding, and she was shivering. The rain had made the cold sink into her.

He healed the cut on her hand with a spell, which drained the last of his magic. His wings and his arm both disappeared, and he staggered. When Raiya put her small hands around his shoulders in a vain but valiant attempt to steady him, he felt another stab of something powerful and dangerous in his heart.

He would not say the word—not even to himself, in his mind. He couldn’t think it, couldn’t make it real.

“Are you all right?” Raiya asked.

“I am still strong,” he said faintly.

The Paladins were racing around the streets below, searching for them. They’d spot him eventually. And they were stuck on the roof with no way down. He hadn’t thought this through.

“Hello there!” someone said in a harsh whisper, very close.

He spun to face the voice. An old woman was peering out from an open window on the roof that he hadn’t seen before. Her face was white as sun-bleached bones, but the color was smeared around the edges of her hair, like she’d painted it on. Black paint circled her eyes, and she was smiling, which made her face resemble a skull.

“The lady of darkness welcomes you,” she said. “You are being pursued by the Paladins, yes? Come inside the temple. Hurry.”

Azreth glanced at Raiya for an explanation. Looking at her expression, he couldn’t tell whether she felt comforted or threatened by this woman.

“Moratha cultists. Like Eunaios,” Raiya told him under her breath.

Eunaios—the mage who’d kept him caged in Nirlan’s dungeon. Azreth was suddenly imagining burning the temple down.

Raiya gave him a sympathetic smile. She took his hand. “Come on.”

He folded his fingers around hers. Against his better judgment, he let her pull him toward the window.

Sixteen

The old woman, Gereg, was a sort of eldress that mortals called a priestess. She believed that Azreth had been sent by their goddess to fulfill some kind of vague death prophecy.Moratha was the mortals’ goddess of death, and to mortals, demons were bringers of death, so he supposed he couldn’t fault their reasoning.

She showed them around the temple while she told them all this. Everywhere they went, stares followed.The cultists did not seem afraid of him. That made him nervous.

He walked among them unglamoured, and instead of running in terror, they followed him around and fawned over him, bowing low and staring in awe and showering praise. Perhaps someone with more sense or patience would have found a way to take advantage of this, but he just wanted them gone.

Unfortunately, he needed them. They had mages, books, and supplies that might help Raiya craft a counter-enchantment to remove his binding. And the Paladins couldn’t enter the temple while the cultists were guarding them. So when they discussed apocalyptic prophecies and waxed poetic about their own mortality, Raiya just nodded blandly.

“Your companion doesn’t speak much, Acolyte Raiya,” Gereg said after a while, studying Azreth with a keen eye. Azreth just frowned at her, because he didn’t know what to say, and because he already didn’t like her.

Raiya gave that easy, charming smile of hers, and said without missing a beat, “He is still new to the mortal plane. Our customs are unfamiliar to him, so he prefers to let me speak for him.”

He could tell that Raiya believed herself to be telling a lie. Maybe she thought she had pressured him into allowing her to speak for him. Maybe she didn’t know how relieved he was to have an intermediary between himself and the other mortals. If she hadn’t been with him, his life would have reverted to violence and chaos long ago.

She always knew what to say to ease tensions and build friendships. She was good at that. It had worked on him, after all. Azreth didn’t know how to talk to mortals. He didn’t even know how to talk to other kin. It was easier to just keep his distance from others.

After what felt like hours, the priestess finally left them alone in the temple’s main hall.

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