I lay down and held the note to my heart. I had my family now. I had my friends. Together we could do this. Together we could make miracles.
SIXTEEN
HADRIEL
After removing us from Finley’s dungeon, the guards brought us to the next floor up. One of the robed, moldy creatures shoved me, but I was too shocked to verbally retaliate.
“Was that for real? Did you recognize them too?” I whispered to Leala, and the guard shoved me again. Turning to him, I said, “My darling, you can’t look tough when shoving a man wearing a maid’s outfit. It simply isn’t possible. There is no toughness within the absurd. Just let it happen. It would be much easier that way.”
I must’ve confused him, or made entirely too much sense, because the next shove was halfhearted.
“I thought they were all dead,” Leala murmured as we walked down the center of a wide grouping of cells, most of them containing people sitting in the middle of their individual cells or leaning against the side. They watched us walk by, not one face I recognized.
We turned a corner and continued on to another block of cells. There were quite a few more prisoners in this area than in the one below.
“Hmm, yes,” Leala said after a guard gave her a particularly hard shove. “How about you give me a spank to go with it?”
I glanced back at the demon, who looked confused and wary. Her kink seemed to make even the most vicious of creatures uncomfortable. Clearly we wouldn’t be fitting into this establishment, which was crazy, since their kind had made us what we were. Well…maybe not made, but certainly brought it out in us.
“So did I,” I replied. “So did everyone. The master is going to just love finding out that his people have been kept here like this for so long.”
“It’s probably better he doesn’t know. He couldn’t have done anything to save them. Not without damning us all.”
“Too true.”
We passed a woman sitting in the middle of her cell with her legs crossed and her arms resting on her knees. Her eyes flicked open, revealing a lovely and slightly startling indigo stare. I’d never seen eyes that color.
I stumbled and then paused, transfixed for reasons I couldn’t explain. She watched me as Leala walked on and my guard debated whether this was a fine time to ignore my maid’s outfit and shove me as he figured he should.
I waited for her to say something. It felt like I needed for her to say something.
She took my measure before looking to the guard. Her expression didn’t change, but suddenly it felt like she understood my whole situation—why I was here and the role I needed to play.
She closed her eyes again, and I felt released.
I sucked in a breath and started walking right before the guard moved to shove me. He hit air and then stumbled forward, bumping into my back.
“See?” I told him. “That’s why you don’t try to shove people like me. You just end up looking like an idiot.”
“You need to get that smart mouth whipped off you,” the officer growled.
“Probably. But someone will probably end up fucking it instead. I give great head.”
The guard sucked in a startled breath.
What was with this place? Did they not know the sex demons who’d been holed up in our kingdom all this time? Because chatter like that shouldn’t be a shock to anyone around these parts.
“Woman. Here.” The officer with Leala stepped to the side and opened a cell, a dingy sort of affair with a bit of straw spread across the floor and a bucket in the corner.
“Oh lovely, Leala. What a fine setup.” I smiled at her in goodbye as they led me a little farther down the cell block, to a tiny chamber on the other side—rough stone with bars in the front. “And a fine establishment for me, too. Lucky, lucky.”
The door clanged shut, and I had a moment of intense claustrophobia, squeezing my chest and curdling my stomach. I breathed deeply, trying to quell the panic, when I heard, “It’ll get easier.”
A man stood at the corner of his cell opposite me, leaning against the rough stone siding and the bars.
He saw me looking and nodded. “The first time that door slams is the hardest. It feels like your whole world is ending. But it gets easier. Eventually you look forward to coming back here. It beats the alternative.”
“I know what the alternative is, trust me, and I don’t think this beats it.” I walked in a circle, feeling the walls. Then the bars, stopping at the lock.
“I don’t want to scare you, but even if you’ve heard what the alternative is, it’s much different when you’re experiencing it.”
It turned out he was entirely right. Just not in the way he thought.