Page 6

CYRUS

Cyrus jolts awake before dawn. The barracks are silent except for the snorts and snores of sleeping demons. He uncurls himself from his now-habitual place on the floor. At least no one seems to bother him here. It’s right next to the door, though, so every morning the Quartermaster sweeps in to crack the whip—literally and figuratively—and Cyrus is the first face he sees. It seems to put him in a bad mood.

It certainly puts Cyrus in a bad mood.

Yesterday he finally escaped the excavation work, after three gruelling days of carrying stones up the tunnel with the other minor demons. Magnus needed him to review the supply chambers in the Garnet Wing, and despite their mutual enmity, Cyrus is the only one who can actually be trusted to take proper stock. Magnus can’t deny his use, even if it infuriates him. Today he’s still exhausted, but a spark of need drives him to his feet. Waking before Magnus arrives gives him precious time to himself. He won’t squander it.

Cyrus checks his coat reflexively to make sure no one stole the arrow while he slept. Its smooth shaft is warm from his body. Touching it conjures an image of the Hunter—or rather, the Hunter’s fathomless, ruby-eyed gaze. He shudders.

What does Mezor do when he’s not in the King’s company? He’s struck with a sudden, intense hunger to see the Hunter with his guard down. To watch him loosing the arrow, his mighty arms flexing, his jaw tight with concentration.

Cyrus yanks his hand away and shakes his head in irritation. He closes his coat. It’s not him that has these thoughts. It’s his vergis.

All the more reason to hide any trace of it before he sees Mezor again.

He squeezes through the massive wooden door and darts down the corridor, hurrying through the sleeping Court to his goal. Down through the lower levels, past the Obsidian Wing, all the way to the forge.

The gate to the forge is locked, but it’s no great feat to pick the lock open. The forge wakes early—he’ll have to get in and out before anyone arrives. But he’s desperate. It’s been so long he swears he can smell his own scent.

The great fires are banked, but they radiate enough heat to stir longing in him as he passes. He doesn’t pause to bask, much as he craves warmth. The Court is always cold. But he has more urgent needs.

Beyond the forge is a dam that holds back the enormous reservoir, fed by an underground spring. When the forge is running, the dam opens to provide water for the steam hammer. Otherwise the reservoir is still. Cyrus follows the open riverbed from the steam chamber to the foot of the dam, where massive walls tower over him. Hand- and footholds are carved all the way to the top of the wall.

Cyrus plants his foot in the stone and heaves himself upward, but his fingers slip. With a curse and a push he grabs the next hold. The notches are made for demons bigger than him, and days of brutal work have his muscles shrieking in protest. He grits his teeth as sweat beads on the back of his neck. Don’t look down .

Finally he’s able to heave himself onto the top of the wall. He lies flat and sucks back air as the cold stone digs into his ribs. When he catches his breath, he rolls over.

The reservoir itself takes his breath away every time he lays eyes on it. The immense body of water is caged in by walls that seem too flimsy to contain it. The water is perfectly clear as far down as the weak torchlight penetrates.

He wastes no time shucking his clothes.

The cold is a shock. In his nest he has a meagre flask or two of water and a rag to clean with, so this much water is a luxury, even icy to the bone. He hangs on to the retaining wall and ducks under. The water pulses, caressing him. Breath pushes at his throat. He lets himself sink until instinct kicks in and his legs flutter, propelling him back to the surface. Breaching the water, he gulps air.

Cold as it is, it’s not the Hellspring.

Cyrus scrubs himself quickly with the stone he brought, sloughing away grime and sweat. Every swipe brings relief as he scrapes away at least two weeks’ worth of pheromones built up on his skin. He sets the pumice on the ledge and dives under again, watching his dark hair billow in clouds in front of his eyes. Surfacing, he flips his hair off his face with a burst of exhilaration that makes him laugh. The sound bounces off the walls of the reservoir and echoes back with surprising volume. He winces, wiping stray strands of hair from his forehead. No sounds of joy are permitted in Hell. But no one comes through the gate to threaten him.

He stays in the water far longer than he should, letting it cradle and soothe him. Eventually he shuts his eyes and just floats. His thoughts float with him and he lets them drift, forcing himself not to pluck them down and examine them.

There’ll be time for that later.

The clatter of the gate is startling. It ricochets up the walls, followed by voices. Cyrus flails, splashing too loudly. He grabs the wall and holds still. His heart thunders.

No footsteps come toward the reservoir. He clambers out of the water and crouches low as the voices get louder and the rattle-bang of the bellows opening shatters the quiet. Cyrus quickly grabs his shirt and wicks away the water dripping down his chest as best he can. He could have gone down and dried himself in front of the fire. Foolish. He was greedy for more time.

Next—and most important—is the paste. It’s sticky and stinks like tar—he makes it from a combination of such awful things he doesn’t like to think about it. But it covers his scent completely. He holds his breath and opens the small pot. Even without breathing in, it makes his eyes water. He swipes it quickly all over.

In the Court’s abandoned library, Cyrus once found a book whose contents would become his life-blood. It was hidden away in a dark corner, one of the few books left on the shelves. When he read it, he went cold all over. Then hot. Then he despaired.

The book talked about vergis and primus as special rarities, explaining in lurid detail how pheromones drew them together from far away, how they would meet and the primus’s presence would trigger the vergis’s heat. It went on to vividly describe the exact result of that heat—how the primus’s cock would knot up so he could fill the vergis with his seed and keep him plugged, and the ecstasy that endured through the whole ordeal.

Of course, it failed to address how torturous a heat was to a vergis when he was all alone.

The contents are seared into his mind. Especially the diagram showing all the places that produce the vergis pheromones that could attract a primus.

He rubs sticky gel everywhere that was circled in the book, ignoring the wrongness that swells over him as he does. His body always hates this—his vergis hates it. His logical mind knows it’s necessary. Neck, jaw, down his chest, under his arms. Face flaming, he goes further. The crook of his groin. The tender spot behind his balls. No one is sniffing him there , but the book said his erogenous zones produce the strongest pheromones. Cyrus doesn’t take any chances.

When he’s covered everything, he pulls his clothes back on over damp skin layer by layer. Undershirt, overshirt, uniform shirt, vest, coat, until he’s tightly buttoned against the world. The relief of being clean and safe again outweighs the awful discomfort of the scent blocker.

The voices from below rise, and he remembers he has to sneak out past the forge demons somehow. He crouches. Two of them are making their way back to open the dam. They’d only have to look up to see him silhouetted against the torchlight.

The demons each take one side of the crank. In sync, they turn the crank and the dam gate groans. Water bursts into the alluvial bed with a roar. They lock the crank in place, but they don’t head back to the forge.

Leave , Cyrus urges them.

Instead, they huddle together with a furtiveness that sparks his curiosity. His senses perk up and he shuffles closer. Years of honing his instinct have left him closely attuned to what a conspiracy looks like.

“When’s the mountain patrol coming in, huh?” growls one. “I’m sick of eating gruel. Maybe Leuther should’ve thought about that before he ousted the King. Without the Hunter we’re stuck eating garbage.”

“Gruel is what we got. Whatever the patrol brings down, a third of it goes to the Grey Company until we have enough to make the march,” the second demon replies evenly. “That’s what we agreed.”

Cyrus twitches.

The Grey Company?

“A third,” the first demon scoffs. “So Leuther can divvy the rest up between his cronies and leave us to starve? The mountain patrol pledged allyship to us— we should at least get to enjoy the spoils they bring back.”

The second demon snorts. “Spoils, sure. I’d rather have gruel than bitter Hell-meat. It’s making us all sick.”

“Least we’ll have better meat when we make it to Earth,” the first grumbles.

Cyrus waits until they leave, then climbs down after them.

The Grey Company is a long-standing rumour bandied around the lower levels—he’d always thought the traitorous General Leuther was behind it. Hoarding food is an offence punishable by death. Leuther, like the King himself, wouldn’t hesitate to execute those who dared. But Cyrus is the one who counts the stores—surely he would have noticed food going missing.

Five or six demons attend the forge already and blacksmithing hammers ring loud against the boom of the bellows. Steam whines as the main forge hammer wakes. There’s no escape the way he came. He turns, heading to the backside of the forge.

Behind the forge, a massive pile of coal from backs onto the wall. Heat from the fire blasts out the back vents. Get too close, and he might burn. He grimaces. But soon someone will come to check the reservoir levels and find him standing like an idiot.

The pile is steep and slippery, rocks tumbling under his hands and feet. He scrambles across the slope, sure the crackle of the coal under his boots is obvious to anyone with ears.

No one comes, though.

Finally the slope bends down and deposits him on the other side. He hurries for the gate, cleaving to the shadows, and slips out before anyone spots him.

To his dismay, the heat and the sweat nearly melted away his scent blocker. In a shadowy spot, he stops to smear more on his neck and wrists, the smell making his stomach churn anxiously. His vergis is more agitated than usual, making it hard to focus as he rifles through the papers in the storerooms.

He’s always made copies of the ledgers out of habit—one for the Quartermaster, who reported the contents to the King. One for the Hollow King himself, to ensure the Quartermaster’s loyalty.

Not that it did the King much good in the end, Cyrus thinks darkly as he reshuffles the pages.

He reads them in reverse order, heart pounding as he quickly flips through them. Has the Grey Company stolen from the stores under his nose this whole time?

No . The discrepancy catches his eye. It’s around the time of the coup, before Leuther implemented rationing. Once Leuther shut the Hunter out from the Court, there were no fresh kills. Their permanent stores began to drain. Cyrus assumed the low numbers were because of the Hunter’s absence, as had the Quartermaster himself, evidently. Now that he’s looking, the difference is obvious.

Someone has been stealing food.

If the Grey Company is planning to march—an exodus from Hell—they need the supplies.

Normally a revelation like this would send him straight to the throne room to whisper in the King’s ear. But the King told him to report to Mezor.

His pulse kicks.

That means he has to see the Hunter alone.