“Enter, child.” Two distinct voices spoke in unison, one deep and gravelly, the other almost melodic.
“Please, I can’t pull him any farther.” My side ached, the muscles tightening as the poison spread.
Another curtain of bones rattled, and a woman in a long black gown stepped through. Her right side appeared normal, almost human, with fair skin and a brown eye. The other half looked like she’d either stood too close to a volcano or she’d found the Arc of the Covenant along with the Nazis in Indiana Jones.
She stood in front of me, a white sheen clouding her left eye, and tilted her head as she examined my skin. I could only imagine how I must’ve looked. Possibly a bit like her.
“It’s Discord. He’s almost gone. Please help him.” I shuffled toward him, trying to kneel by his side, but my freezing body wouldn’t allow me to bend.
“Discord…” she mused.
“Yes, I know. I know there’s a price on our heads, but the game has only just begun. We haven’t had a chance. We…” My jaw tightened, my brows growing heavy over my eyes.
“Everything in Hell comes at a price.” She folded her hands over her stomach and returned her gaze to me.
“I’ll pay whatever you want. There’s a stack of ashmarks in my bag. Just, please save us. Save him.”
“I will help you.” She pulled the bone curtain aside, beckoning me deeper into the cave. “Him, I cannot save.”
15
CINDER
“You don’t understand. We’re linked.” I dragged myself through the bone curtain, my boot scraping across the obsidian floor with each step. I could no longer bend my knee.
“I understand clearly. Lie down.” She gestured to a bed in the back corner before stepping toward a cauldron hanging above a fire. An enclave had been carved into the stone, making it look like the open fire ovens from way back when, and she used a rag to swing the pot toward her, away from the flames.
I would’ve loved to do as she asked. To just lie down, close my eyes, and sleep for a few centuries. But my frozen muscles wouldn’t allow it. “I can’t.”
She looked at me with sympathy in her good eye, and she padded barefoot toward me. “I do this in exchange for the kindness he has shown me.”
She chanted something in an ancient tongue. My Latin was rusty at best, but this didn’t sound anything like it. The gravelly half of her dual voice seemed to slither over me, wrapping around me like a snake, while the melodic half tingled on my skin, making me feel lighter and lighter until my feet literally left the floor.
With one hand on my shoulder and the other beneath my leg, she lifted me light as a feather, stiff as a board style and floated me onto the mattress. Holy Hecate on a bicycle. I needed to learn how to do that.
“Where is your payment?” she asked.
“In my bag out front. Take however much you need. Take it all.” I turned my head toward her, and my neck froze in place. “He’s in worse shape than I am. Please help him.”
“There is nothing I can do for him.” She pulled the bone curtain aside and stepped into the foyer, leaving me alone with my burning, frozen body and my thoughts.
The whole if-he-died-I-died thing aside, I felt horrible about his condition. Every slight twitch of my muscles was incredibly painful, so I could imagine the amount of agony he must’ve been in. I closed my eyes and pondered everything that had happened.
He was a demon, one of the three responsible for my family’s curse. He was the reason Ash’s life—everyone in the coven’s lives—were on the line. If we weren’t connected, if I could survive his death, would I be so desperate to save him?
The answer should have been a resounding no. I should have hated him. But I didn’t. Not even close.
It had to be the blood bond making me feel this way, but truth be told, I was growing kinda fond of the big oaf. I know. I know. I was out of my mind, but of the creatures I’d met since I got to Hell, Discord was the most…human. He had real emotions, and while he didn’t express them much, I got the feeling he might even be a little bit melancholy. Handsome, brooding men were always hard for me to resist…no matter what their species, it seemed.
The seer returned with a small vial and the stack of cash. She fanned it, smiling with the good side of her face as if she’d just won the lottery. Okay, maybe she was a little human too.
“How is he?” I rasped, my lips barely moving as I spoke.
“Oh, he’s almost gone.” She took a tin from a shelf and set the money inside.
“Please, can you help him first?”
“No.”
