Page 51 of The Damned (Coven of Bones #3)

B EE L ZE B U B

Margot had paid her price to Wrath and passed her test when she defended herself and me against the souls who’d tried to kill us, and Satanus was all too happy to give her permission to leave his circle when we collected my scythe from him.

The portal from Wrath to Heresy was thankfully close to the manor at Wrath, and the way Margot continued to look over her shoulder as we left the manor in our rearview set me on edge.

“Everything okay?” I asked, keeping my hand at the small of her back.

I’d kept my scythe in my hand since retrieving it from Satanus, unwilling to lose the time it would take to release it if danger struck.

We’d both come so close to death, and it grated on me that Satanus was the only reason either of us was alive.

Margot hadn’t run, hadn’t left me after I’d fallen. While I wanted to be furious with her for not putting her own safety above everything else, for not respecting my wishes and getting somewhere safe, I couldn’t help the way my chest warmed with the reality of it.

She would have rather died than leave me. In the face of that, I didn’t need her to speak the words to know exactly how she felt. Margot was mine just as much as I was hers.

“Of course,” she said, smiling at me as she leaned into my side.

I’d expected her to seek distance between us, but instead she seemed content to remain as close to me as possible.

She’d barely looked at Satanus when we asked for his blessing to pass through, and I couldn’t help the sinking suspicion that there had been more to their interaction than Margot wanted me to know.

Whatever he’d said to her had wounded her, but Margot’s self-hatred meant that there were so many sore spots he could have poked to achieve that effect.

The cemetery appeared out of the plains just beyond the fires.

The massive statue at the front served as a force of impending doom.

The scythe that was the twin to mine curved over the archway at the front, threatening to cleave the unworthy in half.

Margot hesitated as we approached, mystified by the granite stonework that somehow looked soft and fluid.

The demon holding the scythe had leathery wings like mine, their broad width spread out behind him.

His third eye, resting in the center of his forehead and larger than his other two, stared down at those who approached his arch.

His blue eyes were the color of the ocean, his face so similar to mine that Margot looked between us in confusion.

Guiding her through the archway, she winced as she stepped through the boundary that the portal had brought closer than the actual fringes of Wrath were.

The cemetery expanded out before us, surrounding us as the portal back vanished from view.

The ground we walked on was soft, absorbing us so slowly that we sank bit by bit as we stood.

I pushed Margot forward, keeping her moving through the watery graves of Heresy, where those who violated the balance came to rest. The cemetery had been filled far more quickly recently, thanks to the Covenant’s twisted edicts.

Any who were not buried properly, whose magic could not be returned to the part of the Source that had gifted them with it, came here.

Those who had been shut in a box, the burials that horrified Willow so deeply, had all come to rest in this place.

While there was suffering in the other circles, there was also kinship.

There was a sense of belonging and rightness, whereas the souls doomed to this place had been separated from the very thing that had defined their lives.

Over time they lost all sense of identity, all memory of who they had once been.

So many blamed the devil for the punishments of Hell, for the structure and the simple fact that it was where the souls who were condemned came to suffer, not stopping to think about the fact that He was just as much a victim of this place as they were.

That we’d all been put here to enact His will, with absolutely no say in how it all came to be.

The circles had been formed, the demons and archdemons who ruled them drawn from the very earth and magic that God had put here out of spite against the Source.

Hell was a cage, but it wasn’t made for the souls he sent here to suffer.

It was made for Her.

Margot’s hand stretched up to cover her mouth, seeing the freshly laid dirt covering each of the graves where a witch resided.

Where someone had been led astray and suffered an eternity for it.

She moved to the freshest grave, the dirt still loose and not yet packed by the waters that stretched over this land during the night hours, drowning the souls within their graves.

She leaned forward, her feet sinking into the earth beneath her as she struggled to read the name on the grave.

“We should keep moving,” I said, calling to her from the safest part of the path between the tombstones.

She nodded, but her eyes widened as she reached forward, wiping the dirt from the name on the granite.

She took the first step away, putting distance between herself and the tombstone.

She screamed as a skeletal hand burst out of the dirt, grasping her ankle and yanking her down into the mud.

The dirt in the grave shifted as I took a step toward her, but Margot held up a hand and shook her head, turning over on the earth and getting to her feet.

Susannah Madizza’s skeleton climbed out of the grave, her bony fingers digging into the earth as she rasped for breath.

Dirt fell free from her jaw, dripping down through her bones to land at her feet.

She’d turned yellow with age since her true death, since the moment Lucifer had decided this would be her final resting place.

After what she’d done to Willow and all that she would have done if He hadn’t interfered, she would never know peace.

“Margot,” I said, my voice a warning as Susannah stretched across the distance, reaching for her.

“Margot,” Susannah repeated, tapping her finger bones together as she fidgeted with her hand. Her voice was rough and raspy, but she took a step toward Margot as if she might drag her into the grave with her.

My songbird took a step back, moving away from Susannah’s grave with an instinctive knowing that took my breath away.

She could feel the magic surrounding the grave, the boundary that Susannah would not be able to pass, I realized.

I stepped up beside her, wrapping my arms around her and leaning forward to rest my chin on top of her head.

“They’re here because of you,” Margot said to Susannah, emotion clogging her throat. She’d been one of the witches who had been so misguided, so led astray by the witch they’d trusted to teach them the ways of balance and lead them down the path to the Source.

Susannah’s head shifted up to me, her blank eye sockets seeming to peer through me. “You revolted against the matches I chose, but let this creature touch you willingly? Your womb is worth more than a demon, girl.”

“Yet you agreed to let him touch me,” Margot said, and that statement sank into me.

Rage churned in my gut. The implication that there had been greater knowledge about what Itan had done was new information for me.

Margot raised her chin, stepping up to the magical boundary.

She placed her hand against it, grinning at Susannah ferally when she did the same.

Their hands all but touched, separated only by the magic that kept Susannah trapped.

“You made me a prisoner in my own life. It gives me peace to know that you will finally know that fate,” she said, stepping away from the grave.

She reached for me.

“Margot!” Susannah screamed after her as we walked away, continuing on our journey to the manor of Heresy.

And the brother that waited for me there.