Page 58 of Hell Sent

“I’m not going to let any of them harm you. I will die before I let that happen. So worry about keeping still and conserving your strength, not about them.” She looked him in the eyes, her gaze fierce, and she was beautiful. She was a vythian killer—she feared no mortal.

When the first mortals caught up to them, Azreth tensed, but they did not attack. It was a group of Roamers, and they approached warily, and then they healed him.

He looked up at Raiya for reassurance as a Roamer woman wove magic into his injuries. There was an uncomfortable silence as the woman worked and other Roamers stared at him openly—with curiosity, not hatred.

Strangely, that pleasant pain in his heart flared. He had thought Raiya was the only one who could trigger that feeling.

When the vythian had come, he could have picked up Raiya and fled, leaving the others to their fates. He was glad he hadn’t. These people were worth defending. This place, the mortal plane, needed to be protected.

And right now, it needed to be protected from whoever had brought the vythian here from the hells.

Nirlan had summoned Azreth from the hells, so it stood to reason that he could bring other things here, too. Was he vindictive enough to call something as destructive as a vythian to his own homeland?

What would he bring next, if no one stopped him?

Twenty-Three

Azreth and Raiya left Ontag-ul with the Roamer caravan, eager to put the cultists and the dead vythian behind them.

The Roamers celebrated every night, drinking and playing games and laughing late into the evening. Raiya, wearing a cheeky smile, had given Azreth a cup of bitter liquor to drink, and then another, and then another. No matter how much he drank, he did not feel the same dizzy pleasure from it that Raiya and the others did.

There was nothing to celebrate that night, or any other night—it was just what the Roamers did. Raiya told him this was normal for humans.

“Why not?” she said with a shrug. “We’re mortal. Every day might be our last. I think we should make the most of it.”

He puzzled at that. Demons lived every day like it might be their last, too, but in a different way.“Does that frighten you?” he asked.

She thought for a long moment, then looked up at him.“Everyone fears death. You do, too, don’t you?”

“Yes. But my death is… not so inevitable.” Demons had such fraught lives that they rarely survived long. But under the right circumstances, Azreth could have lived for eternity. Raiya would never have that option, even if she were cautious. Thinking about it made him hurt.

“Believe me, we are very aware of the inevitability of our deaths,” Raiya said with dark amusement. “Especially humans. We’re the shortest-lived race in Heilune, and everyone else makes certain we don’t forget it.”

“I’m sorry.” He didn’t know what else to say.It was the one thing he couldn’t protect her from.

“I didn’t mean you should be sorry. Everything ends eventually. But just because it ends doesn’t mean it never happened. Dying doesn’t mean that we didn’t live. It can’t take away our memory, or the marks we’ve left on the world.”

She’d put into words what he’d already begun to understand about mortals: their mortality was why they spent years raising children, spent decades perfecting their crafts, and spent generations building great cities. Demons lived merely to live, but mortals lived to leave their mark before their end.

* * *

Later that night,in their tent, he lay beneath her on his back—a submissive, vulnerable position that somehow didn’t feel submissive at all with her. She was checking his bandages. The wounds he’d sustained from his battle with the vythian had mostly healed already, but she touched him with utmost care anyway, as if afraid of hurting him. He could have told her that he was fine and she needn’t have worried, but he didn’t.

She peeled back the bandage over his shoulder, where the worst injury was, and she winced as if the wound were her own. Azreth liked watching her as her hands explored him. His heart, in a permanent state of tension these days, clenched as she dipped her fingers in a salve and smoothed it over his skin.

After the vythian attack, he thought about Raiya’s mortality more and more often.When she had charged toward the beast with only a broken broom handle in her hands, he’d been certain she was about to die.

She was young by mortal standards. She had plenty of time left. But he found it difficult not to think about it.

“How do you want to die?” he asked.

She raised her eyebrows, bemused. “Are you plotting something I should know about, Azreth?”

“No.” He reached out to touch her face, holding her gaze on him. “You must have thought about it before.”

She pulled out of his grip and focused on his shoulder, her expression solemn. She was afraid after all, then. She disliked thinking about it as much as he did. He took comfort from that, because it meant she realized the gravity of her situation. A part of him had wondered if mortals simply lived in denial to preserve their sanity.

“What about you?” she asked. “Have you thought about how you’ll die?”

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