Page 9 of Hell Hath No Fury (Tear Down Heaven #4)

“ Ew! ” the still-watching princess cried, recoiling in horror. “What’d you do that for? Now your carving’s ruined! All that sticky hair is never coming off.”

Adrian certainly hoped not. The reason he’d requested a seed from the white pine in particular, aside from their very sticky sap, was because white pines were the most common tree in Massachusetts.

There were over a million of them growing in the Blackwood’s main forest, which made their sap a powerful connector to his home just as the fur he’d collected was a powerful connector to his cat.

By chaining those connections together, Adrian hoped to reconnect himself back to the roots of his witchcraft, because while he was currently cut off from his grove thanks to Gilgamesh’s seal, Boston wasn’t.

He was still an active member of the Blackwood coven with a deep connection to the forest’s web, and since Boston was connected to Adrian through oaths even older than the ones he’d sworn to become a witch, that meant Adrian was still connected to the Great Blackwood as well. He just had to use a different path.

It already seemed to be working. He could feel the sticky mash of sap, fur, and wood heating up inside his hand.

The warmth was tiny compared to what he felt when he plunged his fingers into the loamy soil of his own grove, but it was still the closest to home he’d felt since he’d arrived.

Even the sticky film the pine sap made on his skin was beautifully nostalgic, and Adrian clung to it as hard as he could, pressing the flat of his thumb against the cat’s sharp-carved nose until the wooden point broke the skin.

The moment his new white blood touched the sap-and-fur-covered effigy, the tiny connection Adrian had felt exploded into something he could actually use.

It still wasn’t enough to cross the enormous gap between the lands of the living and the dead, but this was a bone-witch charm that was designed to be used on dead things anyway, so that didn’t matter.

All he needed was a link to the Great Forest that connected all things (provided by his fur-and-sap-covered wooden cat), magic (supplied by quintessence), and bones.

That last one required no substitutions.

The worktable in front of him was covered with the shiny black fragments of the Queen of Pride’s broken crown.

Horns didn’t technically count as part of the skeletal system, but the nice part about bone witchcraft was that its spells weren’t picky.

Any body part would work in a pinch, so Adrian reached hard through his connection to Boston’s connection to the Blackwood and gave the spell a push of quintessence.

The whole worktable rattled in response.

The princess rattled as well, her bone feet clacking against the marble floor as she jumped away in surprise.

She jumped back a second later, her carved face lighting up as she stared at the broken pieces of horn, clearly expecting them to lift themselves off the table and start snapping back together, but that wasn’t what this spell did.

Adrian had no interest in repairing a stolen crown so his tyrant father could solidify his power.

This spell only used the horns as a jumping-off point to look for Adrian’s real objective.

Bex.

Once again, it was a link to a link to a link.

Since the Crown Princess had emptied all of Adrian’s pockets and he hadn’t seen Bex in person in over a month, he didn’t have anything of hers to use as the focus for a finding spell.

These horns, however, belonged to her sister, and since Ishtar’s daughters had all famously come from the same goddess, Adrian was hoping he could kludge it.

The bone-witch spell helped with that as well.

Typical Witch of the Flesh finding charms like the one he’d used to locate Bex on the ferry had narrow focuses because they were meant to pinpoint the specific location of a living person.

Bone-witch finding spells, on the other hand, were designed to locate corpses, which could be scattered all over the place.

Because they had to find so many parts, corpse-finding spells used much broader specifications.

It wasn’t uncommon for them to turn up items that were only vaguely connected to the deceased, such as the bones of relatives.

Weeding out the false positives was usually the most tedious part of using the spell.

This time, though, the errors were what Adrian was counting on, because the Queen of Pride had famously died during Gilgamesh’s conquest of the Riverlands.

That meant her bones were likely still scattered outside the White City, so any blips Adrian found within the walls had to be Bex.

The real Bex, not the unhinged doll Gilgamesh had assigned to be his jailer.

Just thinking about it made his heart pound beneath his distant forest. Adrian hadn’t seen what happened to Bex after his father dragged him away, but he was certain Heaven hadn’t let her escape.

He was also certain she wasn’t dead because he hadn’t fixed the Queen of Pride’s horns yet.

He’d only promised to do it to save Bex’s life, which made her Gilgamesh’s best leverage, and even when Adrian had only known him as Malik, his father had never been the sort to throw away leverage.

Bex had to be alive, and since Gilgamesh wouldn’t be dumb enough to send her home, she had to be imprisoned somewhere in Heaven or the Hells.

So long as he knew those two facts, Adrian had everything he needed to find her.

His options after that were less certain, but Adrian was determined to figure it out because this whole mess was his fault.

He was the one who’d stupidly fallen for his father’s tricks and left Bex to fend for herself while he chased shortcuts.

If he’d been less impatient, if he’d listened to Boston, if he’d made even one better choice, everything would be different.

This whole disaster was his doing, but Adrian was going to make it right if it killed him.

He’d find Bex’s location, figure out how to get to her, and then the two of them would come up with an escape after he told her how sorry he was.

He was already imagining what he’d say when the sap-and-fur-covered cat he’d been clutching suddenly leaped out of his hands.

Adrian jumped. That was a bigger reaction than he’d expected. Corpse-finding spells were usually lethargic, but his little wooden cat was rattling across the marble worktable like a haunted chess piece.

“What’s it doing?” asked the princess, who was much closer than he’d realized.

Adrian didn’t know. He’d never seen a reaction like this before, but his hopes were now sky-high.

When he grabbed the cat to feel the results for himself, though, the sensation that came back wasn’t the distant connection of a sister or even the powerful bones of a queen.

The corpse-finding spell was excited because the body he’d commanded it to locate was alive .

Now that he was clutching the sticky charm, Adrian could actually feel the target moving like a fish at the end of a line somewhere below his current location.

Not “down on Earth” below. Physically below, as in under the ground beneath the palace.

Adrian went perfectly still, his new mirrored eyes going wider and wider as the full implications of what he was feeling hit him. The Queen of Pride wasn’t dead. She was alive. Alive and moving around somewhere below him.

She had to be in the Hells, his scrambling brain realized.

It was the only location that made sense.

Now that he thought about it, Adrian had never seen a daughter of Ishtar that actually stayed dead, so her still being alive actually made sense as well.

He’d just never considered the possibility before because the Queen of Pride was always depicted as being super-crushed-under-Gilgamesh’s-foot dead, which was just plain gullible in hindsight.

Gilgamesh lied about everything. Why wouldn’t he lie about this?

Especially since the story of him destroying the Queen of Pride was so much better for his image than a hornless queen still kicking around five thousand years after her supposed demise?

No, it made total sense that she was alive.

It also changed everything, because that signal wasn’t just for a hand.

The tug Adrian was feeling through his charm was for an entire living, moving body.

The only thing it felt like she was missing was her horns, which were right here in front of him.

Adrian had literally been ordered to fix them, which meant that unlike Bex’s horns, which were Gilgamesh-only-knew-where, he could actually give these back to her.

He could repair the horns just like he’d been ordered, but instead of handing them to Gilgamesh, he could find the Queen of Pride and put them back on her head .

If he could manage that, they’d have a new queen in the fight, one who hadn’t been ground down over five thousand years of constant fighting.

He’d be putting a new weapon back on the field!

One who could help him rescue Bex and get them all out of here!

“You look happy,” the princess said as Adrian’s face split into his biggest smile since arriving here. “Did you figure out what you’re going to do?”

“I figured out everything,” Adrian said, clutching the dancing cat in his fist as he ran over to the workroom’s writing table to grab a piece of parchment.

He scribbled out a long list using the table’s golden fountain pen, then turned and shoved the paper at the princess, who’d never stopped hovering behind him.

“I need you to get me these materials.”

“Of course,” the fake Bex said. “Helping you is why I’m here. When do you need all this by?”

“As soon as possible,” Adrian said, looking into her golden eyes as he flashed his most charming smile.

“I think it’s time I took your advice and started acting like a prince.

If you can gather all of that for me within the hour, I’ll have the Queen of Pride’s horns fixed before you know it, and then the two of us can take them to Gilgamesh together. ”

He was choking on his own shamelessness by the time he finished, but it worked like a charm. In the space of those two sentences, his princess went from sullen and suspicious to smiling so wide he was worried that her face would crack.

“I’ll gather it all, my prince!” she cried, her golden eyes flicking back and forth as she read the list he’d given her. “Some of these are pretty restricted, but I’ll make the quartermasters hand them over. Wait for me while I find a servant!”

“I’ll be right here,” Adrian promised, tucking the still-dancing cat statue into his coat’s front pocket. “This is the start of a new leaf for us. I hope you’ll give it your all.”

It didn’t seem physically possible, but the princess’s smile got even bigger.

She leaped forward next, crushing Adrian in a brutal hug before dashing out the door like a shot.

The joy of finally getting the affection she craved must’ve addled her magically-programmed mind, because the princess actually left the door hanging open behind her.

It was the first time Adrian had seen her make a mistake like that, but he didn’t take advantage of it.

Getting caught doing something suspicious now would undermine the act he’d just gagged himself to put on.

He’d already made his move. Now he just had to play it through, so instead of bolting for the door she’d just left open, Adrian walked over to his breakfast tray and poured himself a cup of coffee from the gold carafe, fortifying his brain with caffeine for the massive puzzle of the queen’s shattered horns waiting on the table behind him.

And at the bottom of his pocket, the finding spell kept buzzing like a trapped hornet, its sharp-carved cat nose pointing like an arrow at a spot way, way down and far to the west, beyond the walls of the palace.