Page 55 of Hell Hath No Fury (Tear Down Heaven #4)
“ Tools of the Gods. ”
Bex gasped. She’d taken a lot of blows in her life, but each of those words hit her harder than the Queen of War’s sword.
She managed to stay on her feet, barely.
Adrian, Boston, and Leander didn’t seem to feel it at all, but Lys went down like someone had dropped a lead piano on their head.
Going by all the curses coming out of the Hell of Wrath, Iggs was having a similar problem.
Bex needed to do something about that, but she was having a hard time concentrating.
No matter how hard she tried to focus, her attention kept being dragged back to the voices that were still echoing down the spiral stairwell.
Eight divinely empowered female voices braided together, one of which was her own.
“ Demons of Ishtar ,” the queens’ combined voices said from every direction at once.
“ Your disobedience has been witnessed, and it shall not be tolerated. By the authority of Ishtar spoken through her divine daughters, we, your queens, command you as one: kneel before your conquerors, and present your necks to be chained.”
The actual order was short, but the voices spoke so slowly that it seemed to go on forever.
By the time they finally stopped speaking, Lys was rolling in agony on the floor, bending themselves nearly in half as they frantically tried to offer up their neck.
Without her divine name to shield her, Bex’s knees were bending toward the floor as well.
She could make them straighten back out if she focused, but that was all she could do.
Even when she called her Bonfire, the raging flames did nothing to stop the intense pressure to bow, to submit, to prostrate herself utterly before the queens’ divine will.
She couldn’t remember ever feeling anything like it before in her life.
Even when she’d kneeled in the river before Ishtar herself, it hadn’t been like this.
She swore she could feel the queens’ hands inside her brain, shoving her head toward the ground.
Bex fought the sensation as hard as she could, but even with her fire roaring and Adrian’s frantic voice in her ear telling her to fight, her hornless forehead kept creeping closer and closer to the ground.
She was just about to drop to one knee when a new voice boomed through every corner of the Hells.
Bex’s first thought was it must be Gilgamesh himself.
There was no one else egotistical enough to follow a chorus of queens, except that wasn’t his voice.
It sounded like a woman, and it was oddly familiar.
Bex knew she’d heard that beautiful, commanding voice before, but she couldn’t remember where.
She could only listen in awe as the lovely sound became lovely words that shook through the obedient silence that had fallen over the Hells like thunder on a silent night.
“Children of Paradise,” the new voice said, “the ghosts of empty crowns do not control you. Death is our realm, so rise, People of the Riverlands. Rise and heed the words of Ishtar’s true daughters.
Formed from her body, crowned by her hand, named by her lips, we alone speak in the goddess’ name.
I am her firstborn, Queen of Pride, Ishtar’s Crown, and by that divine authority, I command you: be free . ”
The pressure inside Bex’s head lessened with every word.
By the time the new command finished, the eight hands that had been forcing her head to the ground vanished like mist in the morning sun, leaving only one behind.
One living voice whose divine command still surged through Bex’s body like electricity, forcing her to rise so fast, she ended up standing on the tips of her toes.
The queen’s divine authority held her there like a ballerina on a string for one long heartbeat, and then the overwhelming presence disappeared completely, leaving Bex blinking in the sudden, deafening silence.
“Again, what in the Hells was that?”
The question came from Boston, who was curled into a spooked-looking ball in Adrian’s arms. His witch didn’t look much better, staring at Bex with a panicked expression that broke her heart to see, because what had just happened was anything but scary.
Lys had already leaped off the ground with a shout so joyful it bordered on mania.
Even Iggs, who’d never been a slave, was shoving the doors to the Hell of Wrath open with a roar of victory.
They were all roaring. Every demon in the Hells was bellowing at the top of their lungs, shattering the quiet horror that had always hung over this place. Even her exhausted wrath demons were cheering, their voices as thin as worn threads but still audible through the doors Iggs had torn open.
The sound was enough to make Bex’s heart pound in her chest. She wanted to run over and celebrate with them, but now that the shock and holy awe of the Queen of Pride’s miraculous—and extremely well-timed—reappearance was fading, Bex was starting to realize why the queen’s voice sounded so familiar.
It wasn’t some dredged-up memory from her past in Ishtar’s Paradise.
The words had been warped with power and uncharacteristically emotional, but the voice that spoke them was one she’d heard every day of her current life.
She’d heard it only half an hour ago in the tunnel after Boston told them Adrian was here.
That was Nemini’s voice.
The connection was still crystallizing when Bex called her fire and blasted herself up the middle of the spiral stair like a rocket.