“He just wanted her to be her own person,” I said, stubbornly defending him, but… what dreaded bloodline was she talking about?
“Completing the ritual doesn’t make a succubus less of a person,” the High Priestess chided me. “It’s our birthright, and she loses nothing of herself in the process. But I do regret that she is not known to the Mother. We never willingly abandon our own; I too feel pain that one of my sisters is lost to us.”
I shook my head, looking at the specks of light on the walls. “So there’s nothing I can do to track her. Aren’t there any succubi who could search by air?”
The High Priestess spread her hands. “Look at the entirety of Hell. They could spend their entire lives searching and not find so much as a single hair on her head.”
Anger was rising under the surprise of what I’d been told. I’d come all the way here, hoping they’d be willing to go find one of their own, and here I was being told there was absolutely nothing to be done.
“Then why invite me in at all? Why bring me here? You could’ve just told me to abandon all hope at the door.”
She took several steps closer, and one hand rose to close gently around my shoulder. “Because you should not abandon hope. We have too many injured to care for now to waste womanpower on a fruitless search, but you have other means available to you. The Order of the Chain, they follow you, yes?”
I nodded silently. It was impossible to not feel comforted by the High Priestess’s touch, as though she were maternal comfort incarnate, but all I wanted to feel was anger. “Yes. They’ve attached themselves to me, for whatever reason.”
She squeezed a little tighter. “Then it is time for you to commune with them. Our Mother has never felt Vyra’s soul, but you have a strong bond with her: the bond of sisterhood. As Vyra’s unusual family shows you, blood does not determine the strength of the bond. Between you and Lord Azazel, you will have a way to find her.”
I stared up at her, wishing I could read her face through the veil. I hadn’t considered the Chainlings as a means of searching for Vyra.
“As for why you were invited in, it is because of this.” She waved her hand at the ceiling. “You will likely go far. Make note of the lands, and the warnings depicted here. The Mother can’t commune with you, but she requested that I offer this gift of knowledge, for caring for her wayward daughter.”
I nodded jerkily, and the High Priestess sank into the middle of the floor in a graceful lotus position, clearly going into meditation behind her veil.
I walked the walls for over an hour, combing over everything, committing every detail to memory. The names of the kingdoms, where the rivers flowed, where the conclaves of succubi were gathered.
It was the sort of intel not many people would ever see. This map must’ve been centuries in the making, the combined efforts of thousands of succubi on behalf of their communal good, and from some of the warnings written in faint script, many didn’t return from their travels.
Once my head started spinning from the sheer amount of information I’d crammed into it, I finally stopped pacing the walls, pausing with my hand over a black splotch of ink.
Something in me recoiled when I saw my fingers were touching the sphinx statues depicted on the city in Irkalla’s depths. Even though the walls were cool stone, there was an almost slimy sensation about running them over this portion of the map.
The High Priestess was still meditating. I crept around to face her. “Thank you for showing this to me. And for your advice.”
For a moment I thought she was completely tranced out, but her head tilted back. “Thank you for searching, and for healing one of us.”
I might not have gotten what I came for, but at least I had another lead. With the map of Hell fixed in my mind and new hope, I left the High Priestess to her meditation.
Still, the question of Azazel’s dark lineage haunted the back of my mind. Whatever this dreaded bloodline was, it was why people feared him.
And perhaps why he held a monster inside his skin.
7
Melisande
I felt eyes on my back as I rode Capheira back down to the Seventh Circle.
It wasn’t an unusual feeling. After being the center of attention in Belial’s arena for weeks, and then becoming something of an object of curiosity elsewhere, I was definitely used to feeling eyes on me.
But whoever was watching me… it didn’t feel normal or innocent. There was a creeping feeling of malice that made the little hairs on the back of my neck rise, along with the downy feathers along my wings.
I kept myself sitting straight up in Capheira’s saddle, trying to keep my wings from puffing up into a quivering mass, but the sense of malevolence from the unseen watcher was almost palpable. With one wing bound, I couldn’t take to the skies.
I was a sitting duck. Or rather, a duck sitting on a horse with absolutely no defense.
I pretended to look around and survey the damage, but I no longer saw the piles of rubble or raucous celebrations over the bodies of the dead. Instead I was scanning windows and rooftops, the shadows between buildings, looking for anything out of place.
The problem was, everything was out of place right now. Between the clean-up crews, demons were running amok or wandering aimlessly, burning still more effigies alongside the pyres, flying drunkenly across the open sky.
It was impossible to tell in the middle of this upheaval if anyone was stalking me. Whoever they were, they were good at remaining unseen, but it would also be the height of stupidity to start craning my head around on a swivel and looking for them openly.
I spent the whole ride downwards with my hands tense on the reins, half expecting an arrow to rip right through my chest.
By the time I reached the relative safety of the Seventh Circle, I was beginning to wonder if I’d imagined the whole thing. The sense of malice was gone, but I didn’t relax until I’d passed through the gates of my arena and brought Capheira into the stable for her grooming and a treat.
I was dead tired, after all. Maybe I was just imagining things after exhausting my healing magic today and spending another hour on top of that memorizing a mind-bendingly enormous map.
I’d just released Capheira back into the cool waters of her lily pond when a Chainling appeared at my elbow, his hands folded neatly inside his voluminous sleeves.
“Your presence is requested within, Lady Wrath,” he said. He had a reedy sort of voice, and his chain necklace clinked with every movement.
I placed Capheira’s saddle on its rack, my arms trembling with the effort. Every tiny motion seemed to sap me of even more energy. “Right now? What’s happening?”
The Chainling sniffed disapprovingly. “Your guest is awake.”
All of my exhaustion was immediately forgotten. Michael was finally conscious?
I practically sprinted past him, only slowing down because the jolting motion of running hurt my wing, and almost ran into Belial at the arena doors.
He reached out and stopped me, planting his hands on my shoulders. “There you are. I was about to hunt you down.”
I pushed a wayward strand of hair out of my face and looked up into his aquamarine eyes. He looked tired, his arms still dirty with ash up to the shoulders, and several scratches had been ripped right through the front of his shirt.