Page 44 of Hell Sent

But then her lips twisted into a scowl. Contempt emanated from her. She drew the sword at her hip. Without hesitating, she lifted it high and then drove it through Atara’s chest.

Atara didn’t even try to fight. She looked Basmeth in the eye, just like when they’d fed, and her arms stayed limp at her sides, and Azreth couldn’t help but think she’d expected this outcome all along. She had been so lost to her obsession that she had submitted herself to Basmeth’s judgment anyway, as if the consequences no longer mattered. She had lost all rationality and all sense of self-preservation.

Basmeth ripped the sword from her body, letting loose a gush of viscous blood, and Atara tipped over and collapsed in the sand.

Pain and misery suffused the air like the scent of a decaying corpse: rank, awful, addictive. Azreth knew when the life fully left Atara’s body, because the scent of her emotions faded. And yet, the pain in the air remained. It changed, growing deeper, blacker. Azreth had thought the feelings were Atara’s, but perhaps they were Basmeth’s, too.

Basmeth spun to face Azreth, her face a mask of fury. “Is there something you wish to say?” she snarled, pointing the bloodied sword at him. She took a step toward him, but he spotted a slight tremor in her raised arm. “Do you think I will not do the same to you? To anyone? Do you doubt me?”

“No.”

He looked at Atara’s small, limp body behind Basmeth, and hatred filled him. He was disgusted by her smallness, weakness, and foolishness. It wasn’t right for someone to be so pathetic. Everything about her was upsetting.

The grief in the air was turning sour on the back of his tongue. He felt sick. He was unwell. Their pain was rubbing off on him somehow.

A horrible thought came to him—the madness was catching after all. It was the only explanation for this disturbing, overwrought sensation, like a sudden knot of tension in his body.

He could not let himself become like Atara. That was the worst fate imaginable.

He backed away. Then he turned and ran.

Love was for mortals. Demons couldn’t have these feelings.

Nineteen

Azreth was enthralled.

He tried to put Raiya out of his mind, and that made it worse, because he found that it was impossible.

Wherever he was alone, he felt the lack of her. When he closed his eyes, he saw her in his mind. When it was quiet, he heard echoes of her voice, like an ocean in a shell. When the cultists approached him, he wished she were there to deftly disengage them. When he watched the city streets from the roof, he saw small, chirping birds, windows covered by latticework, and mothers carrying bundled babies; he could not observe anything in the mortal world without remembering the first time she’d helped him understand it.

Even his own misery was cause to miss her. He liked that whenever he was bothered, she would take his hand soothingly and tell him that all was well. He wanted that. It was pathetic.

As he wandered the halls that night, he imagined her in her bed in the sleeping quarters below. Was she thinking of him? If she was, she was probably thinking of how unkind and cold and dangerous he was. Why did it pain him to think about that?

It was all wrong. He shouldn’t have been worrying about her abandoning him—it should have been the opposite. He needed to separate himself from her before it was too late. He had to stop this.

It was likely that he seemed a little desperate as he flung open the door to the living quarters, awakening everyone inside.

“Get out,” he said to the cultists, who were groggily looking up from their beds.

“What?” one of them asked, rubbing his eyes.

“Get out,” he growled. The cultists seemed to take note of his mood. They got up and quickly left.

He turned to Raiya. She was looking up at him confusedly, still covered by her blanket. Her hair was mussed and her eyes were heavy-lidded. She was beautiful.

He was going to tell her he was leaving, and that she would have to find someone else to protect her from Nirlan. He would go as far away as he could, to the other end of Heilune, so that he couldn’t change his mind later and find his way back to her. He’d find some other mortal to feed from, and he’d find another way to cleanse his body of Nirlan’s binding. Above all, he needed to be free.

He went to sit on the edge of her bed.

“Azreth?”she asked.

“I must speak to you.”

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“I cannot wait.”

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