Page 27

ELI

TIER TWO: WRATH

Admit, even in my state of unfamiliar self-interest, it hadn’t felt good to leave the girls behind.

I will also admit that the niggling feeling had not impeded Walter or me from putting our best efforts into barring the door and keeping the girls on the other side.

It felt imperative. I didn’t want Anna getting in my head any more than she already had, and if I had to hear Walter and Eletha bicker anymore, I was going to lose it.

So it seemed now that it was the girls against the guys in the race to the tenth tier.

Walter and I picked up the pace, moving away from the barred door on the side of a rock wall as fast as our legs could carry us.

How Bexley managed to gain so much distance between us in that short amount of time, I’ll never know.

I didn’t know much about the man, but what I did know was that he stumbled a lot, which in my experience had proven to be hazardous when trying to speedily get away.

I didn’t actually think Bexley was trying to get away from us, though I don’t really think he knew what he was doing—when he fell through the door or now for that matter.

My guess was he hadn’t even realized he was in the tiers yet .

“Where did he go?” said Walter. We had somehow turned our walk into an outright run.

I began to feel less bad about leaving the girls, as we got deeper and deeper into the forest. It was dark and ominous, but that wasn’t what set this creepy forest apart from the others.

I wanted to question Walter, to see if he felt as though he was at home in Unseelie, in a place like this, but one glance at him showed he was as guarded as me.

The air was dark and thick, not exactly smoggy but certainly not clear.

The trees looked old, with black bark and long branches bent at odd angles.

Odd sounds echoed around us. The only green in the forest seemed to be a few patches of dark moss that lined the ground and the bases of a few trees.

It felt lifeless and without color. I thought about letting Walter know that it felt like something was watching us, but when I looked to tell him, he gently shook his head, as if he already knew what I was going to say and didn’t think we should speak out loud.

We still had yet to find Bexley and had cleared a fair bit of the path.

Confused, the two of us slowed to a walk.

The exercise had felt good and the momentum forward even better, but with every winding turn in this forest, I felt more eyes on us and the need to slow down and observe our surroundings took over.

“Where do you think he could’ve gone?” I asked Walter. “He probably veered off the path and got lost in the forest.

“Should we go and find him?” Walter asked.

The old me wouldn’t have hesitated—a fellow man in need sent a surge through my bones and my body that lit me up with excitement.

But that was before. “What do you know about this Bexley guy?” I asked instead.

I was wary of wasting more energy on someone who didn’t deserve it, even though I was in no position to decide who deserved it.

“He’s been in Tartarus for as long as I can remember. I even remember Kaohs mentioning him to Mendax once or twice and that was centuries ago.”

“Bexley’s been in Tartarus for centuries?

” I scowled. It surprised me to hear that somebody that slept like a bum on the floor under tattered rags had been there for centuries.

I would have guessed someone who had been around that long would have been respected and admired—and in a much higher social position than he was.

Interpreting my look, Walter shrugged. “I don’t really know his story, but there are rumors that he was the Devil’s son, you know the keeper of hell, which I guess is like the humans’ Tartarus.” He shrugged again.

I was familiar with the concept of heaven and hell from the human realm.

I had spent enough time with Cal to know most of the human lore.

“If that were true, then wouldn’t he be revered amongst Kaohs and the others, instead of being kicked and screamed at all the time?

I’ve never been to the humans’ Hell, but Bexley doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy that could be the spawn of Satan. He seems harmless.”

Walter tipped his chin down, giving me a smug look.

“Did Cal look like she spent every waking second of her time plotting the demise of your kingdom and family? Did your mother look like she was capable of killing your dad? Or Anna, or me?” “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s leave mothers out of this.

But I get your point.” The last thing I wanted to do right now was to discuss my mother with Walter.

She was the reason he was here and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been waiting for him to lash out at me because of it.

In fact, even just in our makeshift group, my mother was responsible for nearly half their deaths.

“Should we go into this forest and find this guy or not?” I asked him.

At a rustling in the woods next to us, my head snapped to the side. “We are being followed.”

“There’s no way the girls have gotten out yet,” said Walter. “It took me five minutes to move those boulders in front of the door.”

“It’s not the girls,” I muttered.

“Yeah, I heard that too,” Walter replied when another rustle of dead leaves sounded.

“What sin is Tier Two? I can’t remember,” I asked. “Wrath,” he stated .

Wrath—strong feelings of hatred or resentment with a desire for vengeance.

It was the overwhelming feeling and desire for revenge that distinguished wrath from anger, which was balanced with reason and not sin.

I felt even more confused as we stood alone in the forest, and I tried to tie the two together.

“This isn’t exactly what I thought Wrath would be like.

I’d always pictured it to be some type of wild battle with giant monsters that made you do terrible things as punishment.

” Walter swallowed hard. “Although Treachery was a surprise as well. I don’t know why, but with all of the warnings and tales, I assumed the tiers would be a little faster-paced and more heinous. ”

“Where is everyone else?” It suddenly dawned on me. “Thousands of fae get sent here every day. We’ve seen none of them.”

“That’s the beauty of the tiers I suppose.

What good would it be to send someone into a pit of fire if they were a pyromaniac?

The tiers morph and adapt specifically to each individual, or in our case, each group.

I did think that it would be much more dangerous than this, though Treachery made sense.

The door only opened once we had all come clean and were honest with one another. ”

“Huh, I hadn’t thought about that. Well, I wouldn’t rule out a bit of action quite yet,” I mumbled as I looked around the eerie forest. There was no possible way this tier would be as easy as the last.

“So what are we doing? I say we leave the drunk and try to hurry out of this tier before the girls break free. These levels don’t seem to be very complicated, at least so far, so maybe we can hurry through them and get you to the Elysian Fields in time for me to return to Eromreven so I can send Kaohs after his girls,” he said.

The dirt path ended and only a narrow, worn path could now be seen leading into the thick of the forest.

“Anna told me Kaohs can’t enter the tiers. She told me to come here after I killed her to get away from him and Eletha,” I admitted.

“Huh. I guess she would know better than me. Bet she’s regretting telling you to go to the tiers now though,” he laughed.

Memories of her soft hand resting in my palm entered my thoughts. “I hate to do it, but I think we might have to leave the guy. If he’s been here that long, he’s probably been through the tiers a hundred times before.”

Instantly our gazes snapped together as we both had the same thought: Bexley could be our ticket out of here. “Wait…” I said.

“Bexley!” Walter called out.

I quickly followed, cupping my hands around my mouth and calling for the man. “Bexley! Bexley, where are you?”

“Oh shit, look!” shouted Walter.

I turned to see in what direction he was looking, only to find the space where he had been empty.

“What the—” I spun in a circle, but Walter was nowhere in sight. Vanished into thin air.

“You’re welcome” came a tiny voice from the ground.

Low to the forest floor, standing only a foot tall if that high, stood a gnome.

His sooty gray beard was coarse and wiry, where it lined the lower edge of his chin and jaw.

A pointed crimson hat, nearly as tall as he was, sat on his head.

His faded black, almost gray shirt was offset by overalls that matched the color of his hat.

“What did you do with my friend?” I asked harshly. Being no stranger to the garden gnomes of Seelie, I recognized immediately that this one was unusual. There was something menacing in his black eyes. Even with the smile on his face, it gave me enough reason to take a step back from him.

“He was going to murder you,” he said in a sort of singsong fashion with his unsettling smile still in place, causing the hair on the back of my neck to stand on edge.

“No, he wasn’t going to murder me. We were looking for someone from our group.” Immediately I regretted letting this forest abomination know there was a group of us. At least the girls were locked away safe.