Page 101 of Hell-Bound

He approached her fearfully, hands outstretched and shaking.

“I must help him, Renata. You cannot know how much I desire to help my lord! It is all that matters.”

Ren felt her stomach drop. “I…I haven’t found it yet, Leo.”

A single tear dripped down Leo’s face, and he hung his head, dejected.

It was then that Ren realized that this wasn’t the incorporeal version of Leo. He was standing with her in The Hells.

“What are you doing here? I thought it was too dangerous for you.”

“I…I had to come. I can’t afford to fail this test, Renata. But the temptation.” His voice cracked. “Is burdening my soul.”

Her chest clenched. The pain in this adult man’s face was so visceral.

A sharp breeze cut off Ren’s words of comfort, so strong that she heard the bottles rattle from downstairs and a curse from Fred.

“No…I…” Leo sputtered, “I must go.”

He spared one more look at Ren before he ambled swiftly down the stairs, robes billowing in the lessening breeze.

“Come in, Renata. We need to speak,” the kindly voice said from inside her room.

Ren swallowed the discomfort in her throat and walked purposefully to her door, pushing it softly open.

Inside, the Lord of The Heavens was sitting on her bed.

“You’ve been gone,” he said with a small smile, “I washoping you would have brought Vutar’ka Zhartun.”

Ren’s throat bobbed. “My lord, there seems to be a problem with my contract and I—”

He raised a soft hand and stood.

“Renata. I was hoping that my insistence was enough to impart to you the enormity of what I’ve requested. It seems to me that you still do not grasp its importance and what you stand to lose.”

Ren looked down at her booted feet, trying to look repentant but remembering Azur’s insistence that this god should never find the tome.

“It is for this reason that I have come to you. I know you stray, my child. You have been taken in by my brother’s manipulation. I cannot fully blame you for this. He is a powerful god in his own right, and his tactics, while vile, are brilliant in their mastery.”

His blue eyes darkened.

“I have collected another memory. This one, though, will not remind you of the beauty you have lost but the pain you have wrought and the reason you must find the tome and find redemption.”

Ren shivered.

“Lord, I do not wish to see these memories. I must believe that Renata surrendered them for a reason.”

Nainaur tilted his head pityingly.

“Child, I was not asking for your consent,” he said before raising his hand and flinging her from the room.

This transportation, unlike the others, was violent and sent her reeling through time and space. When she reached the other side into the memory, she felt like her insides had been jumbled around.

The image before her only compounded her shock. In her wake lay hundreds—thousands of Fae bodies. To her horror, the majority of them were unarmed civilians. She heaved and retched, the meager meals coming up as her body convulsed.

She stood in the middle of a destroyed town. Flames licked the sides of crumbling wooden structures and the agonizing cries of the injured saturated the air. They weren’t just dead—they were butchered. The white sheen of Fae blood staining the roughened stone and coating every inhabitant as they feebly tried to save the dead and dying.

She ran to the closest figure who still looked alive, reaching for them to try to do something—anything to help. But there was nothing to reach for. This was a memory. The past could not be changed.