“The Fields of Punishment, I think.”
A shudder ran down my spine. The marshes and desert and snow hadn’t been pleasant, and they’d reeked of lost hopes and dreams, but I’d gotten used to it. I knew what to expect. Here, I had no idea what lay ahead.
“Laila.” Joriel’s fingers trailed over my bare arm, gentle and reassuring.
I closed my eyes and focused on his touch. I wasn’t alone. I had Joriel on my side. No matter what, I knew he had my back, and that was a weapon so much stronger than the dagger at my thigh or my ability to create visions.
“Assuming I’m right, there are going to be a lot more greater demons here. You remember what I taught you about owning the fight? Wait for them to open themselves up and then strike without hesitation.”
“I remember.” I squeezed his hand once before giving him a vision of the landscape around us but without me in it.
“Laila,” he said through gritted teeth.
I didn’t answer, didn’t move, didn’t even breathe. I gave him nothing. I could control sound in the vision too, but it was too high a risk to take away both Joriel’s sight and hearing while we were in the Fields of Punishment.
Joriel looked around, and I thought I saw a flash of panic cross his features. He reached out blindly, grasping at the space in front of him, and I moved.
I slipped under his arm, yanking the dagger from the strap at my thigh at the same time. When I straightened, the point of the blade was positioned directly over his heart.
I dropped the vision and grinned up at Joriel. “If you were a demon, I could have killed you, and you didn’t even try to defend yourself.”
He moved the dagger away from his chest in a movement so swift I didn’t even have time to fight it. And then his arms were around me, holding me tightly against his body.
“Don’t ever do that to me again,” he growled in my ear.
“Threaten to stab you?”
“Disappearon me,” he replied.
I was now ninety-nine percent sure I hadn’t imagined the panicked look on his face earlier. “Hey, I’m fine. I’m right here.” I ran a hand under his shirt and over the muscles of his back, rubbing in slow circles. The tension eased from his shoulders, and he buried his face against my neck.
This was not the reaction I’d expected from him. I didn’t know what to say, so I just kept stroking his back while he held me.
“High-ranking demons can sense angelic and demonic power,” Joriel murmured after a minute. “They’ll know what we are, so we’ll have to be more careful than we’ve had to be so far.”
After a few more minutes of walking, we were no longer on the outskirts of the fourth circle, and I got my first true glimpse of the Fields of Punishment. Fires blazed. Flames reached for the sky, filling the air with smoke and making it hard to see clearly. Any hope of sunlight was blotted out by thick gray clouds blanketing the fields in an artificial kind of night, and rain fell in fat droplets.
But it was the sounds that really made this place horrifying. Screams of both pain and panic rang out, mixing with the crack of whips against skin, the clang of chains, and the crackle of flames.
Every few minutes, thunder rumbled and lightning flashed, offering menacing glimpses of bare trees with pointy branches and the outline of some of the horrors the humans suffered.
“Holy shit,” I breathed. This was the Hell I’d heard about, what struck fear in the hearts of humans.
Every bit of me wanted to turn around and go back, do anything to avoid moving deeper into this torture realm. There was no way we could survive this. Even if the demons all left us alone—which I was sure wasn’t going to happen—I didn’t think I could walk through the Fields of Punishment with my sanity intact.
Joriel’s hand squeezed mine as if he could sense my mind spinning out of control. He didn’t say a word, but I felt everything he was telling me through that simple touch. He was here. We were going to survive this.
There were demons everywhere. It was impossible to hide from them, but most of them left us alone. They were more interested in their tasks of torturing the damned.
I tried not to look too hard at any of the humans. And to ignore the guilt that felt like a fist closing around my neck. Ignoring their suffering felt wrong even if they did deserve it. I didn’t know the crimes they’d committed in life, and reading souls wasn’t a skill I had been blessed with. I had no way of knowing if they really did deserve it, and I hated hearing their cries and pleas, knowing there was nothing I could do.
Another bolt of lightning flashed, lighting up the silhouette of several crosses. We were behind them, so I couldn’t see much of the people nailed to them, but a shudder still ran through me. Crucifixion was a horrible way to die in life, but the true horror of Hell was that you never died. You burned or hung or drowned for eternity with no promise of an end.
“They’re not here by accident,” Joriel murmured in my ear. “Everyone here was chosen by Lucifer personally to pay for their crimes against Father. The Devil hates humans—he wouldn’t keep a soul for eternity unless they were evil enough to deserve it. These aren’t just the people who rejected God’s gift of eternal life—they deliberately gave their life to wicked deeds and selfish desires.”
“You believe that?” I asked.
“I’ve seen it. The Prince of Darkness judges each soul and decrees the punishments himself. It’s his duty as the ruler of Hell.”
