Page 74 of Hell Hath No Fury (Tear Down Heaven #4)

All the war demons were like that. Adrian wasn’t sure when the change had happened, but no one was panicking or scrambling for safety anymore. The entire army was just standing at the bottom of the tower like bronze statues, waiting to see who would triumph.

“I think we might be too not-demon to interfere with this,” Adrian said, clutching his familiar to his shoulder as he inched them back into the shelter of the melted tunnel. “Bex can handle herself. Let’s just stay here and wait for her to win.”

“Are you sure she will?” Boston whispered nervously.

“No,” Adrian confessed with a worried look at Bex’s swordless hands. Then his eyes moved to her opponent, and he smiled. “But the Queen of War’s the one who looks afraid.”

“Blackwood protect us,” his familiar muttered, curling into a ball on his witch’s shoulder as the daughters of Paradise’s most violent god crashed like comets above them.

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

At the same moment, on the other side of the almost-entirely-flooded Middle Hells, Lys was flying harder than they’d ever flown in their life.

They’d been skeptical of Iggs’s plan the first time he described it, but the detonation had gone off without a hitch.

The moment the trigger teams hit their buttons, the long lines of C-4 they’d pressed into the gouged stone had exploded with flashes of white light and a deafening crash.

When Lys’s overloaded senses finally recovered, the dirty ceiling that used to be the only sky they’d known when they’d lived here as a child was falling.

Building-sized chunks of stone were still crashing into the black floodwater that filled the gigantic bowl of the five combined Middle Hells when Iggs’s voice roared over the comm.

“Lys, you’re up!” he yelled through the speaker in Lys’s ear.

“On it,” Lys replied, gritting their teeth against the pain in their still-bleeding shoulder as they spread their wings and flew up through the hole Iggs’s explosives had just made for them.

“Ramp team!” they bellowed, waving the metal flashlight they’d taken from Bex’s backpack like a guiding torch through the still-falling dust. “Grab your chains, and let’s go!”

An answering cry rose from hundreds of throats as winged demons of every sort launched off the ridge path at the top of the cliffside slave towns, the only part of the Middle Hells that was still above water.

Each of them was carrying a long rope of black chain.

It was the same chain the warlocks had used to hold them down, but Desh’s team had reworked it, weaving the black chains together into a net big enough to cover the entire hole Iggs’s teams had just blasted in the ceiling.

One end of the net was already bolted to the rock at the top of the cliff.

The other end was in the winged demons’ hands as they flew up, following the beam of Lys’s flashlight into the Hell above them.

Lys would’ve been carrying a chain, too, if the stupid prince hadn’t stuck his stupid sword through their stupid shoulder.

Since their arm still couldn’t bear weight, they’d had to settle for being the torchbearer.

This still put them out in front, though, which was exactly where Lys wanted to be.

They’d waited their entire life for this moment.

Nothing short of death was going to stop them from being on the frontline as they exploded through the haze of smoke and rock dust into the firelit darkness of the Hell of War.

Lys had seen the Upper Hells several times on their way to be sold to this or that warlock, but only from the inside of the fortified tower.

They’d never seen beyond the stairwell’s walls into the actual Hell of War, which looked a lot shabbier than expected.

Lys had always pictured the Upper Hells as a place where bootlicking war demons lived lavish lives as Heaven’s pampered guard dogs, but it didn’t look that different from the Hell they’d just left.

It was still a big, dirty cavern with a flooded work floor covered in chains that were now dangling like ripped threads through the giant hole Iggs had just blown.

The dangling chains were all empty, thank Ishtar.

Traitors or not, even Lys’s bloodlust didn’t extend to slaughtering other demons.

Fortunately, it looked like Kirok had been right about the Upper Hells being overtaxed.

There wasn’t a demon to be seen on the work floor, and the slave houses—another shantytown of shallow, depressing holes carved into cliffs just like the one in the Middle Hells below—were dark and quiet.

It was all quiet. Lys had come up here ready to fight the bronze dogs of Gilgamesh, but everything they saw made the war demons look just as exploited and downtrodden as the slaves who lived below.

They were still trying to wrap their head around that when the wave of flying demons carrying chains caught up with them.

The deep roar of hundreds of beating wings knocked Lys out of their gawking.

Just like their first Bex had taught them, Lys pushed all the questions out of their head and focused on the mission, ignoring the pain shooting across their back as they pumped their own wings harder to get back to the front of the pack.

“Lock your chains to the slave lines!” they yelled when they got there, pointing at the half of the sin-collection floor that wasn’t currently crumbling into the flooded Hell below.

“Those bolts were made to hold war demons, so they should be strong enough for us. We’ve still got a big crowd to move, though, so make sure to tie your lines off at least three feet apart to spread the weight. Go! Go! Go! ”

The horde of flying demons obeyed, darting away from Lys in a fan formation to attach their chains—and the metal net trailing behind them—to the bolts that were set deep in the Hell of War’s floor.

When Lys was certain everyone was doing what they were supposed to, they landed in the ankle-deep waterfall pouring over the edge of the Upper Hells’ flooded slave floor and tapped their comm.

“Nemini?”

“Yes?”

The voice spoke in their ear and behind them at the same time, causing Lys to jump into the air before they realized what was happening.

“I’m starting to think you do that on purpose,” they growled, whirling around to land in front of Nemini.

The former void demon met the glare with her usual blank stare. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, right,” Lys said as they reached up to adjust the bloody bandage the panicked jump had just dislodged. “Playing dumb is unbefitting of a queen, you know.”

Nemini shrugged. “You wanted to talk to me?”

“You should’ve been talking to me, ” Lys snapped.

“The wing team is tying off the net as we speak. That means Desh and Iggs’s attack group will be running up here any second.

You were supposed to be up here finding all the guards they needed to subdue before we start evacuating the noncombatants, so why haven’t you called in? ”

“Because I haven’t found anyone who qualifies as a threat yet,” Nemini replied, reaching out to point at something over Lys’s shoulder.

Lys whirled around with the sin-iron dagger ready in their hand.

There was nothing to stab, though, because Nemini was right.

About twenty feet behind them, well away from the giant hole Iggs’s explosives had just put in the floor, a large crowd of war demons was kneeling with their hands raised.

There were two other figures lying in the water at their feet: a Heavenly warlock with a red stain on his white robes and a war demon wearing the ornate golden armor of a trusted guard.

That last one was still kicking, squirming beneath the weight of the towering female who was holding him down.

She ducked her horns when she saw Lys staring, planting both her bronze knees on the struggling guard’s back so she could lift all four of her arms in surrender.

“Are you servants of the True Queen?” she asked.

“I serve the Queen of Wrath, Ishtar’s Sword and last champion of Paradise,” Lys replied proudly, flipping their dagger into a knife-fighter’s grip to get the most leverage out of their one remaining good arm.

But while those should have been the fightingest of fighting words, the war demon just nodded like Lys had answered correctly.

“What are you doing?” the guard on the ground bellowed when he saw the woman’s head move. “Their queen is a traitor! We were ordered to stand guard and protect Gilgamesh’s Hells! The Queen of War will kill you for this!”

“She’s going to do that no matter how we act,” the female war demon said, reaching down to remove the guard’s helmet so she could cuff him on the head.

“But I for one am tired of guarding my own prison, and I’m sick to death of taking orders from this trash.

” She kicked the bloody warlock with her hoofed foot.

“That explosion just killed the human who’s been our tormentor for a century, which means the servants of Wrath have already done more for us than our queen ever has.

I’m not going to repay such kindness with the treachery our queen has made us famous for. ”

“Then you’re a traitor as well!” the guard yelled, thrashing on the wet ground. “The queen will make you crawl on your belly like a worm!”

“So, no different than normal, then,” the woman replied with a chuckle, kicking the guard in the face to shut him up before turning back to Lys and Nemini.

“Our queen has forbidden us from aiding you,” she explained as she lowered her horns again.

“But she didn’t explicitly order us to attack, so until she comes down here to say otherwise, neither I nor any of mine will get in your way.

You can rest your wounded there.” She pointed at one of the metal walkways the warlocks had used to move above the flooded slave floor before Iggs had punched a hole and let all the water out.

“We’ve got plenty of space since Gilgamesh ordered everyone but the old and weak into the forges. ”

“Thank you,” Lys said cautiously, lowering their sin-iron knife. When the old woman didn’t move and no other war demons leaped out of the shadows to take advantage of the distraction, Lys reached up to tap their comm.

“Ramp’s in position,” they reported, glancing at the line of winged demons standing with their arms up to signal that their chains were secured. “No hostiles, so come on up.”

“Wait, no hostiles?” Iggs’s astonished voice replied in their ear. “Isn’t the Hell of War hostile by definition?”

“They’re still children of the Riverlands,” Lys said, glancing at the scowling face of the old war-demon woman with a smile. “If they don’t want any, I’m not going to bring it. Bex would want us to get along, so stop stalling and get our people up here before they’re forced to swim.”

That wasn’t entirely a joke. Thanks to the waves kicked up by the falling ceiling, the floodwaters were already sloshing over the last bit of high ground left in the Middle Hells.

The top of the cliffs was narrow, too, which had forced the enormous crowd of evacuating demons to spread out into a miles-long line.

Combine that with the fact that almost everyone was moving slower than normal due to sin-toxin overdose, and they were in a pretty terrible situation, but Lys was determined not to fail.

Bex had sacrificed herself to buy them this chance.

Lys was going to get her demons to safety even if they had to fly every single one of them up here on their own wings.

“Do you want me to go check on her?” Nemini offered.

Lys shook their head. “I haven’t become such a bad soldier that I’m going to ignore a direct order from my queen,” they said as they slid the sin-iron dagger back into its sheath below their wing.

“You’re your own queen now, so I guess you can do what you want, but I’m going to stay and do the job Bex entrusted to me. ”

“Are you sure?” Nemini asked, tilting her snake-covered head. “It sounds like a scary fight.”

It did. Now that Nemini mentioned it, Lys could hear crashes echoing through the Upper Hells.

It sounded like someone was being slammed into a wall over and over again.

As always, Lys’s brain went straight to Bex.

Not the queen she’d grown into, but the bright-eyed little girl who used to ride on their shoulders and listen intently while Lys did their best to teach her everything a queen should know.

Lys’s instinct had always been to gut anyone who hurt their little firespark, but part of being in the Queen of Wrath’s service was learning to let those feelings go.

“My queen gave me a job,” Lys repeated as they turned away from the horrible sounds.

“I already let my personal feelings get in her way once. I won’t do it again.

I will have faith and see my duty through.

That way, when Bex survives, as I know she will, I’ll be able to hold my head high and tell her I succeeded in my charge. ”

Those were old, familiar words. Lys had said different versions of that exact same speech dozens of times over Bex’s last four lives, usually to Nemini.

It was probably wrong to say them to her again now that she was herself a queen, but that didn’t stop Lys from doing it or Nemini from nodding at the end the same way she always did.

“I’ll go help Iggs with the evacuation, then,” she said. “You stay here and make sure the net doesn’t slip.”

“Will do,” Lys promised as Nemini disappeared, leaving Lys standing alone at the top of the chain ramp the demons of the Hells had woven out of their own bonds. The bottom half was already full of freed slaves sprinting toward safety with Iggs leading the charge.

Lys grinned when they saw him. They leaped into the air next, waving their flashlight and shouting at the top of their lungs for everyone to get up the ramp and move immediately to the back so they wouldn’t clog the way for the people behind them.

And far in the distance, through the acrid smoke of the War Hell’s ever-burning forges, the roar of the queens’ fight grew louder.