Page 66 of Hell Hath No Fury (Tear Down Heaven #4)

Bex looked up just in time to see Lys land in front of her, using their wings for balance as they touched down on the tip of Bran’s carved beak, the only empty space left on the extremely overloaded broom.

“I’m so glad you made it out!” they cried, reaching out to hug Bex as much as they could without overbalancing. “Cut it kind of close, didn’t you?”

That second comment was directed at Adrian, who gave a dazed shrug. Bex had just reached down to help him up when Leander charged past them to teleport himself and Mara, who was still cradled in his arms, onto the stairs.

The very full stairs. The bottom of the spiral staircase was hidden under twenty feet of black, foamy water now, but the rest of it was lit up bright as day thanks to all the torches being carried by the crowd of demons going up.

Mostly drenched and dazed-looking pride demons, but there were wrath demons in the mix as well, plus a ton of others.

Envy and hate demons were scattered all through the crowd with torches to light the way up for those who could walk.

Those who couldn’t were being carried up the center by a flock of winged sorrow, lust, and greed demons.

The fear demons were there as well, using their ability to walk on walls to create a bucket chain of helpers that carried weakened demons straight to the stairwell’s top.

It was the most beautiful display of spontaneous cooperation Bex had ever seen.

The sight of so many demons helping each other made her heart swell up so big and fast that it was painful.

The only reason she didn’t start jumping for joy was because, while there were a lot of demons on the stairs, there still weren’t nearly as many as she’d expected.

“Where is everyone?”

“That’s the bad news,” Lys told her with a somber expression.

“They drowned, didn’t they?” Bex said in a shaking voice. “I was too slow.”

The guilt was already pulling her down when Lys shook their head. “That’s not what happened.”

Bex stared at them in confusion, and the lust demon sighed.

“The evacuation went faster than expected because there weren’t nearly as many demons down here as we thought,” they explained.

“We assumed Pride would be as big as Wrath with a population of around a hundred thousand, but they turned out to be a lot smaller. According to the pride demons I talked to, most of their villages were wiped out during the war, and the ones who survived were decimated by the Queen of Pride’s death.

By the time we got their Hell emptied, there were almost as many banished demons from other clans as actual void demons.

The good news is that—between the unexpectedly low numbers and Nemini using your fire like a lighthouse—we were able to get everyone out before the cave flooded entirely. ”

That was good to hear, but Bex still clenched her fists. “What about my demons?” she demanded. “What about wrath?”

She knew it was going to be bad when Lys dropped their eyes. “That’s the worst news,” they said quietly. “What Gilgamesh did to them in there caused heavy casualties. The demons by the doors were exhausted and worked to the bone, but they were still able to move. The ones in the back, though…”

They didn’t have to finish. Bex already knew. She’d seen her people when they came out of Limbo, how exhausted and starved they always were. The idea of Gilgamesh forcing those same demons to work until they collapsed made her black blood boil, but she understood exactly how it had happened.

“How many survived?”

“Hard to say,” Lys replied, looking up at the spiral of figures climbing the stairs above them. “We’d need Drox to get an actual headcount, but Iggs thinks it’s around forty thousand.”

Bex’s stomach dropped to her feet. Forty thousand.

That was twice the number of demons she’d led at the Anchor, but only forty percent of the hundred thousand wrath demons Drox had always told her were in Limbo.

If Iggs’s number was accurate, then sixty percent of her people, the demons Ishtar had created her to protect, were gone.

Worked to death by Heaven’s selfish, arrogant, murdering tyrant .

“I’ll kill him,” Bex snarled, causing Lys to leap back into the air as her flames roared up like an inferno. “ I’ll kill him! ”

“That’s what we’re counting on,” Lys said as they fluttered back down. “We’re all hoping you turn Gilgamesh and his entire Heaven to a pile of ash, but we’ve got more immediate problems right now, so I need you to stop flaming and listen.”

That was a lot to ask, but Lys never made requests like that without damn good reason. Bex was too full of rage and grief to put herself all the way out, but she managed to tone it down to a low burn, which Lys must’ve deemed good enough.

“Desh’s key team has only unlocked about half of the demons upstairs,” they told her in a quiet voice.

“The Middle Hells have the opposite problem from the Lower. There’s actually a lot more demons up there than we expected, and at the rate the water’s coming in, I’m worried we’re not going to get them all out of their shackles in time. ”

They both looked down at the flood Adrian’s broom was hovering over, which had gone up several feet just during the time they’d been talking.

“How long do you think we’ve got?”

“I don’t know,” Lys said. “Volumetric rate calculations aren’t exactly my strong suit, and the Middle Hells are pretty freaking big.

Given how fast the water’s coming up now that it’s filled the Lower Hells, though, I’d say we need to hurry.

” They flicked their amber eyes to the naked, bloody bodies of the unconscious queens covering Bran’s wings.

“I don’t suppose any of them would be willing to help us crack some chains. ”

“I’m sure they would if we can wake them up,” Bex said, pulling her wet, filthy hair out of its ruined ponytail. “Keep working on unlocking as many demons as you can. I’ll see if I can’t get us more help.”

Lys nodded and took off, their wings flapping unevenly to spare their injured shoulder. When Bex was certain they weren’t going to fall out of the sky, she quickly braided her hair to keep it out of her face and dropped down next to Adrian, who was still on his knees.

“Do you think you can wake up my sisters?”

“Maybe,” he replied in a distracted voice, never taking his mirrored eyes off the coat he was rubbing like a towel over his broom’s back.

“But I can’t look at them right now. I have to get Bran dry before his grass gets too waterlogged and falls apart.

” He started rubbing harder. “He’s been an absolute saint flying us around this entire time, but he’s in real danger if I can’t get the damp off him. ”

“Would heat help?” Bex asked.

Adrian looked at her with a beaming expression of relief. “Yes, please!” he said, bounding back to his feet. “A low burn, if you can. The water hasn’t seeped down to his core yet, so if we can get his outer layers dry, we should be all right.”

Bex nodded and closed her eyes, happy to have something simple to focus on as she raised her fire by fractions.

Producing radiant, steady heat turned out to be a lot harder than violent flames, but she owed Adrian’s broom big-time, so Bex gave it her all, gripping her anger in a tight, controlled ball until the air was so hot and dry it crackled.

“Perfect,” Adrian said as he put his coat—which Bex’s heat had also instantly dried—back on.

His witch hat was more challenging. Being drenched had left it wrinkled and droopy.

Adrian tried to reshape the point with his fingers, but it was hopeless.

After a minute of fruitless fiddling, he shoved the hat into his enchanted pockets with a scowl and moved on to examining Bex’s sleeping sisters.

“Their wounds are healed,” he reported, wiping the dried black blood off their naked bodies with a healer’s gentle indifference. “But they’re not responding to reflex tests.”

“What does that mean?” Bex asked, crouching several inches away so she wouldn’t accidentally bake him with her new radiator mode.

“It means they’re in a coma, and I don’t know why,” her witch answered grimly, sitting back on his heels.

“Physically, they seem fine. Their severed wrists have all healed cleanly, and there’s no sign of head trauma from their missing horns, but their pupils aren’t contracting when exposed to light, and they’re not exhibiting a pain response when I pinch them.

That could mean damage to the nervous system, or it could be something magical. I simply don’t know.”

That wasn’t good, but, “They’re breathing, though, right?”

“Oh yes,” Adrian assured her. “Like I said, their bodies seem perfectly healthy. There’s just no one inside. Or at least no one who’s responding to what I can do on the back of a broom.”

Bex’s shoulders slumped. Saving her sisters should have been the biggest triumph of her lives, but while she was happy they were with her and alive, this situation was rapidly starting to feel more like failure than success.

Even without their crowns and swords, five queens was a force to be reckoned with, but five comatose bodies that had to be protected was a liability Bex couldn’t afford at the moment.

“I’m going to go see if Leander’s having more luck with Mara,” she said as she rose back to her feet. “Are you good on drying?”

Adrian reached down to stick his finger into Bran’s wing. “I think so,” he said after much feeling around. “I’ll have to rebristle him when this is over, but it doesn’t seem like he’s in danger of falling apart anymore.”

The broom did feel steadier now, which was an enormous relief.

Between the rising flood, her comatose sisters, and learning Gilgamesh had killed sixty percent of her demons before she’d even known he had them, the feeling that they were about to lose everything was hitting Bex hard.

If she let herself think too long about any of it, she’d crumble, but Bex had been on the losing side for most of her life.

She’d learned long ago to focus on the positives, like how Adrian’s beloved broom was okay, her sisters weren’t dead, and how there were still forty thousand wrath demons who were alive and needed her help.

So long as she stayed focused on the things she could do, Bex was able to push all the other tragedies to the background. It was a desperate sort of coping, but it kept her together as she leaped off the back of the broom to go find Leander.

She spotted him on the stairs halfway up to the Middle Hells, huddled in a nook between the pipes where he wouldn’t get crushed by the stampede of evacuating demons.

He must’ve teleported straight there because he was still dripping with filthy water, and his bare feet were black with sin muck.

He looked more like a drowned rat than a prince of Gilgamesh, but his mirrored eyes were focused and determined when Bex touched his shoulder.

“She’s still lost,” he said before she could ask, turning his body slightly so Bex could see the Queen of Sorrow’s sleeping face where he’d tucked it against his chest.

“Once,” he whispered, “when we were on Earth where it’s harder for Gilgamesh to spy, Mara told me what she remembered of losing her crown.

She’d been betrayed by the Queen of War, but Gilgamesh was still perfecting the art of making princesses, so there was a gap between when War defeated her and when they took her horns. ”

He reached down to brush the wet hair away from Mara’s closed eyes.

“She used to have wings as well. Big, beautiful ones that let her soar over the Riverlands. War cut those off first to keep her grounded until they were ready to steal her crown. After that, the only thing she remembered was falling.”

“That’s how it was for me too,” Bex said. “I had someone with me when I fell, though. She’s the one who helped me come back to myself.”

“Could she help Mara as well?” the prince asked desperately.

“I can ask her,” Bex offered with a smile, reaching out to grab one of the passing void demons.

“Excuse me,” she said in her best Riverlander. “Can you tell me where your queen is?”

The man responded with a look so scathing that Bex winced.

Nemini had told her several times now that she hadn’t been a beloved queen, but Bex had thought she was just being self-deprecating.

Now, though, she was wondering if her sister hadn’t been telling the bald truth because this man looked ready to spit on her just for asking.

“The Tyrant of Pride is upstairs,” he replied sourly as he looked Bex up and down. “What are you supposed to be?”

That question was fair since she wasn’t burning right now and still didn’t have her horns.

The void-turned-pride demons knew her only by her fire, not her face.

He probably thought she was just a human with weirdly glowing eyes.

Add in the part where she was standing next to a filthy, mad-looking prince clutching a seemingly dead body, and Bex wasn’t offended in the slightest when the man started backing away.

“I’ll find her myself, thanks,” she said, nudging the demon back into the crowd before walking to the edge to wave at Adrian.

He flew his broom up to meet her at once, dodging the clouds of flapping demons to hover Bran’s wing right next to the step Bex was standing on.

“What do you need?” he asked as she hopped over the gap.

“I think we all need to go up and see Nemini,” Bex said as she reached back to pull the distracted Leander onto the broom with them. “She’s the resident queen now, so let’s go see what she can do.”

Adrian looked skeptical, but he nodded and tapped his foot, sending the nine of them—seven hornless queens and two princes—up the middle of the stairwell toward the white tower.

And not far below, the flood kept rising.