Page 24 of Hell Hath No Fury (Tear Down Heaven #4)

“Nemini?” she called softly, reaching back toward the void demon, who still hadn’t budged from the shadows where they’d entered. “You good?”

Nemini didn’t reply. She’d been weirdly quiet since they’d arrived in the Hells, even for her.

Bex was about to walk over and just ask what was wrong when Nemini pushed off the stone and padded after the others, her snake-headed figure slipping in and out of sight like a shadow in the flickering light of Desh’s tiny lantern.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Bex hadn’t seriously considered the incredible feat that was the Founders’ Tunnels until she was walking down them. She’d thought it’d be a few back doors and connectors, but the tunnels went on forever.

They also went every where . They weren’t just a ring around the outside that let demons move behind the cliffside hovels without being seen.

The secret tunnels went down as well, burrowing into the stone beneath the flooded sin-collection floor.

The bolts that anchored the slave chains actually stuck through the ceiling in places, and there was sin-filled river water dripping everywhere.

It looked like a cave-in waiting to happen, but Desh led them around every danger like an old pro, keeping the pace and pointing out all the places that were good for making camp and hiding out.

Most of these had demons in them already. Just like Desh had said earlier, there were whole camps of escapees down here. They all waved at Desh and Streya and gawked at the newcomers, but no one seemed to recognize Bex without her horns.

Bex was fine with that. It was hard enough being crownless around demons who already knew her. Having to introduce herself to a bunch of desperate, starving slaves as the Savior Queen Who Couldn’t Actually Do Anything Yet might have broken her.

Just thinking about it dragged Bex dangerously close to the empty pit left by the loss of her name.

The fall Nemini had helped her climb out of was always lurking at the back of her mind, but Bex stayed out of it by stubbornly reminding herself that, even after their failure at the tower, she was still doing better than any Queen of Wrath before her.

None of the other Rebexas had ever made it even close to the Hells.

She just had to push a little farther, be a little cleverer, and she could snatch her stolen power back from Gilgamesh and return to being a queen who was strong enough to actually help people.

Just thinking about coming back to right all the wrongs she’d seen since they arrived was the bonfire that kept Bex moving. She was still imagining all the ways she’d smash this horrible place the second she was strong enough when Desh finally came to a halt.

“Here we are,” he said, gesturing at a stretch of tunnel that—to Bex’s eyes, at least—looked exactly the same as all the others they’d walked past. “This is the place, right?”

That question was for Streya, who nodded frantically and pointed at a stretch of darker rock in the middle of the wet tunnel floor.

It wasn’t until the little demon stuck her hand through it, though, that Bex realized the spot wasn’t a natural discoloration or a puddle of the black water that was constantly dripping down from the flooded floor above.

It was a hole. A crack in the floor that went down into a darkness so thick, even Bex’s eyes couldn’t penetrate it.

“Where does that go?” she asked, crouching down for a better look.

“The Lowest Hells,” Desh answered with a shudder.

“I don’t know if Lys explained this already, but we’ve got three layers down here.

There’s the Upper Hells where the war demons toil like good little worker bees, the Middle Hells where the rest of us commoners slave away, and the Lowest Hells, which is the polite name for the pit where Gilgamesh throws all his troublemakers. ”

Bex perked up. “Troublemakers?”

“Now you see the picture,” Desh said as he reached up to hang his lantern off one of the sin-iron bolts sticking through the low ceiling.

“Since you’ve been leading rebellions against Heaven for five thousand years, there’s a bunch of your old followers languishing down there in eternal torment.

I was stuck down there myself before Prince Leander fished me out for his backstabbing plot.

It’s a horrible, soul-crushing place, but it’s not the sort of prison that requires chains.

Why else do you think my neck was still clean when I came back? ”

“Because they wanted us to accept you without suspicion?” Lys guessed.

“Because the Lowest Hells are so awful, they don’t even bother slapping you in irons before they throw you in,” Desh corrected as he tapped his bare foot against the edge of the hole Bex was crouched beside.

“If you want a distraction, there’s a whole army of proven rebels with clean necks right below us.

The tricky part’s figuring out how to get them up here. ”

“Tricky part?” Lys repeated incredulously.

“Try impossible. The reason Heaven doesn’t bother with chains in the Lowest Hells is because they’re famously inescapable.

My warlock threatened to banish me there all the time back when I was a slave.

He said they were a prison of the mind, a place so warped and terrible that not even the strongest demon could crawl out with their sanity intact. ”

“Warlocks are always saying shit like that to mess with you,” Desh argued. “The mind-prison thing’s legit, but the rest is bollocks. It’s completely possible to come out with all your marbles. Just look at me! I got my brains back the second the prince pulled me out.”

“How does that help us?” Lys demanded. “In case you haven’t noticed, we don’t have a prince. Until Bex gets her horns back, we’re just a bunch of normal demons. If we stick our heads into that hole, we’ll be just as trapped as every other poor bastard that gets tossed down there.”

“We’re not all normal demons,” Desh said with a grin. “We might not have a prince, but we do have her .”

He stabbed his finger at Nemini, who was still hanging as far back from the rest of them as she could without actually being lost in the dark. She retreated even farther when Desh pointed at her, and Bex smacked his hand down with a scowl.

“Stop that,” she ordered. “What does Nemini have to do with any of this?”

“Because she’s a void demon,” Desh explained confidently.

“The Lowest Hells work by dropping your mind into a pit so deep you can’t make your body move to get out, but Nemini lives that way all the time!

Endless voids of nothingness are literally her bread and butter, which means she should be immune to the Lowest Hells’ effect.

She can hop right down and grab our fallen soldiers no problem.

Once she brings them back up here, their minds should return just like mine did, and we’ll have an army of demons with clean necks and an axe to grind against Heaven ready to raise hell in the Hells. It’s perfect !”

He finished with a flourish, but Bex could only sigh.

Not because Desh’s plan was bad—it was actually pretty great—but because she didn’t even need to look at Nemini to know that she hated it.

She’d already pulled all the way back into the shadows, blending into the dark until she was just two yellow eyes glinting at the other end of the tunnel.

“I figured we’d tie a rope around her waist and lower her down,” Desh went on, oblivious.

“That way, if I’m wrong and she can’t handle it, we can just yank her out.

If she can handle it, though, we’ll have unfettered access to the vault where Gilgamesh keeps all his most dangerous enemies. You literally couldn’t ask for better.”

There was a lot more Bex could think to ask for, but she didn’t want to stomp on Desh’s excitement.

It was obvious from his face that he truly thought he’d found their winning ticket, and for all Bex knew, he had.

Unleashing a bunch of demons who weren’t starved and chained into the Middle Hells at a time when Gilgamesh’s security was at an unprecedented low could be a total game changer.

Before Bex could agree to anything, though, she needed to talk to the person who’d actually be doing it.

“Excuse me a moment,” she said, motioning for the others to stay put as she got to her feet and walked back down the dark tunnel to where her friend was hiding.

“Hey,” she said quietly, crouching beside the patch of darker shadow she was pretty sure Nemini was hiding in. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

“Not particularly,” the darkness whispered back.

Bex frowned. “Do you not like Desh’s plan?”

“No,” she sighed. “It’s fine. It’ll probably even work. It’s just…”

Her voice trailed off with a tremor. Bex was squinting into the dark, trying to see if Nemini had flitted away or just gone silent when an arm reached out to grab her one remaining hand. The rest of Nemini appeared a second later, falling out of the shadows to lean against Bex’s side.

“I can’t do it, Bexa,” Nemini whispered. “I mean, physically I can, but…” She pressed her face harder into Bex’s leather coat. “I’m sorry. I know I said I’d help, but I didn’t think… I didn’t know we’d be…”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Bex said, hugging Nemini close. “If you can’t do it, that’s fine. We’ll just find another way.”

“I should do it,” Nemini said, closing her eyes tight as the swarm of black snakes on her head slithered down to shield her face. “You would do it, but I’m not you. I’ve never been you, and I can’t… I can’t …”

“It’s okay,” Bex said again, reaching up to pet her snakes, but it was just an automatic gesture. She knew she was supposed to be focusing on her friend, but what Nemini had just said was buzzing inside Bex’s skull, giving her an idea.

“I’ll do it.”

Nemini jerked out of her arms. “What?”

“I’ll do it,” Bex said again as her face split into a grin. “You just said I could, right?”