raised an eyebrow, more concerned with running his hands through the long black hair tumbling down his back.
I bared my teeth at him, but he just smirked in response.
Lucifer would rather die… but I couldn’t allow it to happen. Not with the soul-bond broken and a chance in sight.
The Spear of Light tumbled out of my fingers and hit the ground with a hollow clang, sending out a blaze of light before it went still and silent.
I held up my hands, letting out a breath.
This wasn’t my final defeat, but they didn’t know that. I let the knowledge comfort me despite my gritted teeth and the despair taking root in my heart.
The demon on Lucifer’s back pulled the dagger away, letting his face drop back into the ashes. I felt the spear point recede from my side, leaving behind a radiating pain and the wetness of my cooling blood.
Rough hands gripped my arms, pulling them behind me back. I refused to look away from Lucifer as they tied me with rough ropes, tying my wings down, binding my wrists and ankles together, even though I felt Satan watching me.
He didn’t deserve the attention he craved. I was here for Lucifer, and him only.
The other Irkallans were giving Lucifer the same treatment, moving his limp body around as they tied him. They all gave the Spear a wide berth, but marched me out to the edge of the precipice, forcing me away from Lucifer.
Satan gripped my chin, forcing my face upwards. “All that fight for nothing,” he said, using Nergal’s melodious voice. “I hope you hold onto it.”
I’d known that Satan was the one speaking through Lucifer. I was the one who’d caused him all this frustration, forcing him to run and hide… and he wanted me to fight so he could keep tormenting me.
As long as I was in his grasp, he’d make me his songbird. The screams of my torture would be his music.
I kept my expression dead. He wanted a fight? He wouldn’t get one from me. It went against everything I was, but I was determined to deprive him of the one thing he wanted the most.
Satan’s frown confirmed my suspicions. He gripped my chin hard, almost enough to make me cry out, then shook my head and released me. I would’ve stumbled off the edge of the cliff if the Irkallan demons didn’t have a tight grip on my ropes.
“Lead us home,” he ordered, turning his back on me. One of his dark wings slapped my face as he passed, leaving a stinging mark behind.
The Irkallan holding my ropes pushed me forward. I turned my head to find Lucifer, to make sure he was fine, but another stinging slap hit the other side of my face.
Blinking tears away, hellbent on not even giving them that, I started walking.
“Drink.”
The keeper I’d come to know as Damuzid shoved a glass bottle in my face, lifting it to my lips with a scowl.
The water was light brown and gritty, and tasted bitter, but it was the most delicious thing I’d ever tasted after days of walking.
And I didn’t want it. I wanted nothing that they offered me. I turned my face away, and Damuzid gripped my jaw, forcing my mouth open and pouring the water in.
I coughed and spluttered. Damuzid slapped me. I felt the stinging red imprint of his hand on my face, but felt oddly numb to it at the same time.
By now, my cheeks and jaw had to be yellow and purple with bruises. Satan allowed them to slap me, but no more.
Bruises healed fast, he said. Slicing into my skin would take longer to heal, and he wanted me to last for a very, very long time.
It’d taken all my willpower not to spit in his face when he said that.
“Sit down and rest while you can. We have a way to go.” Damuzid pushed me to my knees.
I fell to them gratefully. My thighs ached from the exertion of not falling off the side of a mountain. With no hands or wings to keep my balance, descending from the Irkallan mountains had not been easy.
I’d fallen more times than I could count, scraping my knees bloody, twisting my ankles on treacherous rocks, and once smashing my face into a boulder when I slipped. The wound on my forehead felt clotted and dirty. None of them had offered to clean the grit out of the cut.