Page 323 of The Spider Queen
Even when I closed my eyes, they still burned from the sand.
There was nothing here. The heat was scorching me through my clothes, and I had no choice but to get up and move. I somehow put one bare foot in front of the other. I gritted in pain with every step, watching my skin turn pink and then red.
And then the blisters came.
And so did the wish for it all to end.
Just as the sun finally set, I collapsed onto the sand, unable to go one step further.
Even though no rays of brutal light beat down on me, my body felt like it was already cooked.
My sun-fried brain finally pieced it together: I was in the Desert of the Forgotten. A place my parents refused to speak of because of the horrors they’d encountered here.
What other terrors lay in wait for me?
Before I could summon up the strength to worry about it, I passed out from exhaustion.
Dawn came and I awoke to the light of the morning sun. For a moment, I had forgotten the suffering of the day before because my body healed while I slept, but I soon realized my torment would start all over again.
I lost days, maybe weeks to this brand of torture.
My mind slipped away with each rising and setting of a new day’s sun.
I talked to myself to try and keep my sanity; sharp bursts of anger followed by wails of melancholia. At night, while my blistered skin knit itself back together, I thought of him. I hallucinated I was back there—in Hell. And I was with Lucifer, his large body looming over mine, his wings unfurled while he slaked our desire.
In the mornings I’d wake, with want on my tongue, my body loose from the hours of orgasms he gave me in my dreams.
I remembered his glowing, indigo eyes and wept with loss. Maybe we could’ve been happy. Maybe I could’ve been the balm he so desperately claimed I was. Could I have been more to him than that? Could I have truly loved the Prince of Darkness?
Scripture and bards had it wrong. He wreaked havoc, but he was as broken as any other creature that lived. He had bouts of happiness that were few and far between, but they did exist. His nature was to destroy; he fed on the wickedness of humans, on the deeds and bargains, trapping mortals and immortals alike.
But maybe—just maybe—Lucifer could be something other than what he was.
I was delirious.
It had been too many days since I’d eaten or drank anything. My dark hair was in matted knots due to sand and sweat. I was rank.
And still I hadn’t found the last pearl. Or seen any other life form. I had to have been walking in circles, because otherwise, I would’ve gotten to the end of the desert by now. But the dunes randomly shifted and rearranged, hiding the footprints I’d etched in the sand.
As I was lamenting my journey, slipping deeper into depression, I heard a noise. Almost like a rattle. I whirled, attempting to find the source of the noise—a noise I hadn’t heard for the entirety of my time in this place.
I saw nothing. Bright spots burned my corneas, and my vision danced. I continued to spin, slower this time, since moving too fast winded me and I grew light-headed.
Something poked out of the sand.
It looked like a black, jagged stone rising from the dune. My eyes tried to make sense of what I was seeing: it wasn’t a rock—this wasn’t a sand slide revealing rocks. There were no rocks here.
No, this was something else.
It was a claw, and as the sunlight illuminated it, it seemed to change from black to purple.
As it rose higher out of the sand, I saw the claw was attached to the exoskeleton of a very largescorpion.
Scorpion?
There were scorpions here?
I swallowed in fear as the scorpion’s entire body was revealed. It was huge—the size of a school bus. It loomed over me, its pincers suspended in the air, its sharp stinger curled upwards over its body, ready to strike.
