“Whoa, what are you doing?” I asked.
“You need something to protect your hands.”
I was already shaking my head. He couldn’t give me his shirt. It would leave his entire chest and back unprotected from the elements.
“Laila, please don’t argue with me.”
I stepped back from him. “No. Put your clothes back on.”
He sighed as if I was being childish, and I felt a rush of frustration and anger race through me. I’d traveled through four circles of Hell. I’d met demons, had my wings torn from my back, and taken the punishment of one of the damned. I could stand on my own two feet. And I didn’t want Joriel to see me as someone he had to take care of. I wanted to be his equal, wantedhimto see me that way.
Using my powers, I created a vision for Joriel. I didn’t make myself invisible by showing him a vision of the mountain without me there. He’d asked me not to do that to him again, and I would respect that. Instead, I showed him nothing. I took it all away, every one of his senses. I gave him the most complete vision I’d ever created. He saw, heard, felt, and smelled what I wanted him to. And at the moment, that was nothing.
“Laila?” he whispered. He wouldn’t be able to hear his own voice while he was trapped in my vision.
I watched his eyes widen, the pupils dilating as he tried to find light in the total darkness I’d created for him. I watched his chest rise and fall with shallow breaths. I hated every second, but I knew we needed this. We needed to be a team, and right now we weren’t. He was my protector, and I was the innocent little attendant who’d been lured to Hell.
When I was sure I could use my other powers without losing my hold on the vision, I stepped forward, placing my palms on either side of his face.
Joriel didn’t react to my touch. He didn’t feel it.
I poured my calming powers into him, forcing his body to relax. He fought me. I could feel his resistance to my attempts to soothe him. He didn’t want to succumb to a feeling that wasn’t his own. He didn’t want to, but he did. Peace settled over his features, and his body went slack.
Keeping the vision intact, I let through just the sound of my voice. “Don’t make the mistake of believing I am weak,” I whispered in his ear.
“Laila,” he moaned, the sound sending goose bumps up my arms and making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
I dropped my hands from his face and let go of the vision.
Joriel blinked in the sudden light.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice coming out so soft I wasn’t sure he could hear it.
His blue eyes focused on me, and I couldn’t read the thoughts swirling in their depths. “You are terrifying,” he said finally. But he didn’t sound scared at all. He sounded awed.
“Does that mean you’ll put your shirt back on?”
His lips quirked up at the corners. “Does my being half-naked bother you, sweetness?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, but only because I don’t want you getting more hurt.”
In all honesty, I rather liked the view of him shirtless. It hurt to see the scars that covered so much of his skin, and I hated the pain he’d been through getting them, but I also loved every inch of his well-muscled torso.
No small part of me wanted to run my lips over every scar, to taste his skin. And it didn’t help that I still remembered exactly what that skin had felt like under my cheek when he’d carried me out of the prison realm and through the land of dead souls.
Joriel pulled the shirt back over his head and raised his brows at me as if to ask if I was happy now.
I didn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, I looked up at the terrain ahead of us. The black color and the rivers of fire that cut through it made the mountain look like it was formed of ash rather than rock. We still had a lot of ground to cover. My muscles sighed in protest, but I ignored them. I didn’t have time for self-pity. I had a freaking mountain to climb.
* * *
The gatesto the Devil’s court were massive. Pillars of some kind of shiny black stone flanked either side. The gates themselves were a type of silver metal. Orange flames danced along them, the two so intertwined it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.
Fire bled from the gates into the river that ran down the side of the mountain, breaking off into smaller streams on its way down.
It was both beautiful and intimidating.
“Hellfire,” Joriel murmured from his place at my side.
