Page 48 of Hell Sent

Iron, the crowd inevitably began to murmur.

“Your gods have given you everything,” Azreth said to them. “You are born healthy and safe and free, to caring families in thriving cities. You could make art, or learn crafts, or read every book in Ontag-ul. You could travel everywhere and learn every language. You could create life, raise children or animals, or just dance and make love all day. You are not demons—you are free of this bloodthirst, this need tofeed. You have the freedom to make anything of your lives, and instead, you craveunmaking?You crave alack?Where is the beauty and cleverness in undoing things?”

Now the cultists looked more confused than angry.

He turned to Priestess Gereg. “You are spoiled, small children, and your god is a god of nothing.” He did spit in disgust, then, which he’d never done before, but he’d seen a mortal do it once, and it had looked like it would feel gratifying. Spittle hit the barrier and stuck there. Gereg gave it a look of distaste.

When the first iron chain came levitating through the barrier, he grabbed it, ignoring the raging burn of it against his skin, and whipped it back at the cultists. They ducked this time. One of them caught the chain in another levitating spell. Several of them worked together to push the chain back toward him. Petulantly, he threw it away again and again, until the iron had burned so much that he could no longer feel his fingers. There was no point in fighting. He wouldn’t escape them. He just wanted to hurt them.

Eventually, they maneuvered chains around him, and he was encased in agony. The iron sapped his strength, turning his limbs to liquid, and his legs went out from beneath him.

By the time they lowered the barrier, he could hardly see straight. The intense wrongness of the iron was almost as bad as the pain itself. It was an ugly, wretched thing, like an itch he couldn’t shake off, a horrible bitter gag stuck in his throat, insects crawling under his skin.It was overwhelming, blocking out his surroundings, so he was only vaguely conscious of being pushed and pulled through the hall.

He saw a dark staircase before him, very much like stairs into a dungeon beneath a castle, and it was as if he’d never escaped Nirlan at all.

Twenty

It was odd how cruel mortals could be, wasn’t it?

They had no need for it the way demons did. They simply enjoyed causing pain. Azreth had always thought that kin were uniquely perverted in their desire to cause pain and misery, but demons and mortals were more similar in that respect than he’d ever imagined.

He was kneeling on the floor, unable to stand. Candles flickered around him, barely illuminating the small crowd in the temple’s cellar. The iron on his skin burned, and burned, and burned. He wondered whether it would kill him before the cultists did. Could a person die from pain alone?

Perhaps he should have thanked them for saving him from the enthrallment, at least, since he hadn’t had the strength to save himself.

“I thought a demon would be more difficult to subdue.”

“It looks like a stray dog, shivering like that.”

“Should we kill him? Would the dark goddess be pleased?”

“Of course she would. She can’t love a creature this weak.”

He recognized the Priestess’s voice when it cut through the murmurs. “You cannot be a true demon,” she decided. “You lack the heart for it.”

Azreth struggled to raise his head. His vision was blurred. For a moment, he saw the eldress in front of him. Then he blinked, and she was gone.

* * *

“Azreth?”

A familiar voice cut through the pain, distant and very close at the same time. He shifted slightly, but his body felt impossibly heavy. The iron seared him when he moved.

“Azreth?”

And then her face appeared in front of him. It must have been a dream, but it was a painfully realistic one.

“Raiya?” he heard himself say, the word a hollow breath.

“It’s okay. I’m here. You’re safe.”Her voice was soft, but her eyes were furious, powerful. Her cool hands were on his cheeks, holding him, and he wanted to sink into the illusion.

Raiya’s face disappeared, and then magic swirled around him. The world tilted, and then he felt cold.

A weight began to lift off him. Slowly, the vise grip of the chains released, unraveling link by link.

Was he dead? Maybe this was the afterlife. In that case, there must have been a kind goddess watching over him.

The temple was gone. He was lying on his back on the ground. Above him was the vast expanse of the black mortal sky dotted with stars, and Raiya’s pale, lovely face.

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