Page 72 of Hell Hath No Fury (Tear Down Heaven #4)
That order seemed way too late, but—to Bex’s shock—the whistle of the arrows cut off like a switch.
The arrows themselves clattered harmlessly to the floor a second later, leaving Bex gaping before she understood.
This was War’s power. Just as Bex had full control over the fires of Wrath, the Princess of War—or, more specifically, the queen hiding inside her—had total dominion over her army’s weapons.
Not only was she able to stop arrows in mid-flight, she could even order them back into her soldiers’ quivers, which was what she did next.
Bex actually felt her magic tucking the spent arrows away, cleaning the battlefield until no evidence was left that a single shot had ever been fired at the youngest Prince of Gilgamesh, who was suddenly standing in front of Bex like a shield.
“ Adrian! ” Bex hissed, her heart pounding as she realized what had almost happened, how close he’d come to death. “What are you doing ?”
“Helping you like I said,” Adrian replied as he spread his arms wider. “Don’t worry. She can’t hurt me.”
Bex wasn’t sure about that. The princess had looked hateful before, but she was practically spitting with it now.
“Prince Adrian,” she growled, her white feet clacking like steel shots as she stomped down the stairs. “Step aside! This is none of your concern.”
Adrian lifted his chin and stayed right where he was, and the princess’s mismatched eyes—one carved gold, one mirrored silver—narrowed to slits.
“I will not stay my hand again,” she warned, snapping her carved white fingers at her demons to reload their bows. “Your status as a prince grants many privileges, but your illustrious father has no patience for traitorous sons who scorn his generous gifts and side with his enemies.”
“If he has no patience for traitors, why does he tolerate you?” Adrian asked in a voice that echoed up the stairwell.
“You’re the biggest traitor in history. You sold your people into slavery and tore the horns off your own sister’s head”—he gestured over his shoulder at Bex—“all to please a human who treats you like a servant.” He lifted his chin higher still.
“I’m no demon, but even I can see that Bex is ten times the queen you are whether she has her horns or not. ”
“Then you are an ignorant child who understands nothing ,” the Princess of War snarled, peeling her carved lips back to show the sharp, white teeth beneath.
“You have no idea what I’ve suffered at the gods’ hands, nor could you!
No mortal except Gilgamesh himself can ever comprehend what they did to me.
What she did to me!” She stabbed her white-gloved finger at Bex, who winced.
“My sister has been Ishtar’s dog since her very first birth.
She stood by and watched while our ‘sacred’ mother kicked me into a pit.
I am completely justified in everything I’ve done to her! ”
“But not what you did to us,” said a deep, angry voice.
Bex jumped. She’d been so scared for Adrian—also touched, but mostly terrified—she hadn’t even noticed Kirok coming out of the melted tunnel until he walked past her.
The war demon marched straight into the fortress like the general he was, pushing Adrian gently to the side to take the witch’s place in front of Bex.
“Kirokaltos,” the Princess of War said, looking down her delicate white nose with a sneer. “Step back.”
Bex wasn’t a war demon, but even she shuddered at the force of the command behind those words, which made it all the more impressive when Kirok said, “No.”
The moment he spoke the defiant word, the invisible patterns Adrian’s mother had painted onto his bronze skin began to sizzle.
Bex could actually see the metal melting all over his neck, shoulders, and chest. It must have been incredibly painful, but the war demon held his ground, ignoring the witchcraft burning through his armored flesh as he stared defiantly at his queen.
“You abandoned us,” he snarled, his words shaking not from pain, but from centuries of pent-up fury. “You chose a mortal king, a human , over your own people!”
“I never asked for people,” the Princess of War told him sourly. “You were forced upon me, an unwanted burden thrust onto my back, and not even for a noble cause. Ishtar made demons to be bottom-feeders, scavengers who ate the poison off her precious humans.”
“And yet you serve a human.”
“ I serve my king !” War roared, shaking the Hells with her divine voice.
“I serve the great Gilgamesh, conqueror of Paradise and slayer of gods ! We were raised to see Ishtar as our merciful mother, but the moment I complained that her practices were killing me, she cast me aside. My own creator buried me in a pit so she wouldn’t have to listen to my screams, and my sisters helped!
Not one of them showed me a crumb of mercy, but King Gilgamesh heard my cries.
He alone came to find me in that wretched hole.
He alone pulled me out and promised to make me whole again.
He earned my loyalty that day, and I am proud to call him my king! ”
“We know,” Kirok growled. The poison had burned deep gouges into his flesh by this point, and his legs were starting to buckle from the pain. When Bex reached out to steady him, though, he pushed her away, staggering toward his sneering queen instead.
“All war demons know where your loyalty lies,” he said as he dragged his hoofed feet across the fortress’s black-stained stone.
“We’ve passed the story of your betrayal down for generations, whispered in secret from parent to child so that we would never forget how eagerly our queen sold us into slavery.
How she used her divine sisters’ sympathy to sneak behind them and rip off their horns so she could deliver Ishtar’s crowns to her precious mortal king. We remember! ”
His shout echoed through the chamber, and all the war demons packed into the battlements began to nod.
“We remember,” Kirok said again, stooping toward the ground so he could use his lower pair of arms to keep pushing himself forward when his legs grew too weak to carry him, but also so that he would not kneel.
Even after the poison fully paralyzed his lower half, he did not allow his knees to touch the ground.
“It’s true that you had no choice when Ishtar made us your subjects,” he told his queen.
“But every decision you’ve made since is on your shoulders.
You sold us into slavery for your own benefit.
You let our homeland burn. You commanded us to kill our fellow demons and stain our hands with treason so that you could please your new human master.
” He stabbed his upper right hand at her face.
“You did all these things yourself, Dalanea, and I will not be subject to your grievances anymore!”
The whole tower gasped when he said the Queen of War’s true name.
Just forming the syllables was enough to send black blood pouring from his bronze mouth, but Kirok was past the point of pain.
He locked his useless legs and forced himself upright to stand in front of her once more, and even though the princess was still physically above him on the stairs, the expression on Kirok’s face made it clear that he was the one looking down.
“Ishtar made you our queen,” he rasped through his torn throat, “but I say you are unworthy of that name. There is only one queen who has ever fought for the people of War, and that is the Queen of Wrath.”
He jerked his arm backward, slinging an arc of his black blood across the floor at Bex’s feet.
“She has done more for us in three months than you’ve done in five thousand years!
” he roared. “She forgave our ancient treason and welcomed us to join her fight for freedom. Even after you cut off her hand and stole her crown, she got herself damned to the Hells your king built to be our prison. Gilgamesh calls her a coward and claims she ran away, but she is the only daughter of Ishtar who never turned her back on us! Her loyalty and devotion are why I am alive to stand before you now. I am proud to die defending her, but prouder still to do it defying you .”
“If you’re so proud of it,” War snarled, holding out an arm that was already covered in her divine weapon’s armored plates, “then go ahead and die !”
The sword exploded into her hand as she finished.
Bex barely had time to recognize Havok’s deadly black blade before the princess flung it at Kirok.
It was the same move she’d used to spear Bex out of the sky a week ago, and now as then, her shot found its mark.
Bex didn’t even have time to shout a warning before the giant sword was buried to the hilt in Kirok’s chest.
“ Kirok! ” she screamed, running to his side even though she knew it was already too late.
Kirok was a war demon in his prime. If circumstances had been different, he might have been able to stand back up, but his bronze body was already crippled by the witch’s curse, and his opponent was a queen.
Not even Ishtar’s gift of regeneration could hold him together as the Princess of War called her sword back to her hand, leaving Kirok to topple and break like an overripe fruit on the tower’s already bloodstained floor.
The fortress fell utterly silent. It was so quiet, Bex could hear the soft drip, drip, drip of Kirok’s blood falling from the Princess of War’s sword as she lowered it to her side.
The sound echoed in her suddenly empty head like a pounding hammer, and then her flames roared up so hot and bright that even she was blinded.
“You killed him.”
“Of course,” the Princess of War said, narrowing her mismatched eyes against the raging inferno Bex had become. “Such is the fate of all demons who defy their—”