Page 98 of Demon with Benefits
A sudden memory of crawling through the tunnels in Paimon’s lair with Lily struck her, and she was hit with such a strong pang of longing for her sister that the emotion choked her. Her eyes filled with tears, and she gasped for air.
“Oh, fuck, help me,” she whispered, not quite sure who she was speaking to. “I need help. I’m so fucked.Please, help me.”
The despair rose higher, and she longed to give into it. She wanted to just drop to the floor and cry herself into oblivion until someone came and saved her.
But no one was coming.
No one knew where she was except Meph, and he wasn’t going to help her. Lily couldn’t save her. Meph’s brothers weren’t coming either. Iris was on her own, and dissolving into a sobbing ball of misery wasn’t going to help in any way. It was up to her to save herself.
So she took a deep breath and swallowed her emotions.
It was a skill she’d developed over a decade of ignoring her grief. She would close her eyes, inhale, exhale, and then swallow hard, and when she opened her eyes again, the emotion would be gone.
It wasn’t the healthiest way to deal with sadness, but it was a useful skill for moments like this. When her eyes opened again, the hopelessness was gone, and there was only focus.
Okay, so there was also nausea, dizziness, brain fog, pain, and intense fatigue. But at least she wasn’t crying on top of all that shit.
Iris surveyed the window with renewed determination and then started to climb. As she stuck her toes into the cracks in the stone, she gave thanks that when Valefor had grabbed her, she’d been wearing her slippers. The supple leather soles gripped the stone and aided her balance as she climbed up the wall. She wasn’t a rock climber by any means, but she had good balance.
When they were kids, Lily had done piano and sewing lessons, and Iris had done taekwondo and gymnastics. They’d always been different, even then. They’d always envied each other too. Iris had wished she was more artistic; Lily had wished she was athletic.
God, they were stupid. Lily was perfect, and Iris... She needed to learn to embrace her strengths. What was the point of living life wishing for something you would never have?
Being who she was gave her the will to make it to the top of the wall, even with her head throbbing as it was. Her fingers grasped the ledge on the bottom of the window, and she moved her feet up to a higher toehold.
Still not high enough to see, she reached one hand forward until she could grasp the other side of the ledge outside.Yes.There was no glass to block the frame. She placed her other hand beside her first, positioned her feet, and then pulled herself high enough to see over the edge.
And her heart sank.
Bars.There were bars over the window. And worse, she wasn’t in a basement as she’d hoped. She was high up, high enough that all she saw was a dull red sky. It wasn’t bright, but it wasn’t dark either, and there appeared to be no sign of a sun or moon or any sort of stellar activity.
That answers that, then.The red sky reminded her of diffused photography lighting. It was sublimely creepy because it cast no shadows. It just glowed.
She hauled herself a little higher up to get a better look. By her estimation, she was about ten floors up. Below, there was a perimeter wall built on cracked, dead soil. Craggy mountains with steep cliffs loomed beyond it, but she couldn’t see what was on either side because the castle blocked the view.
She never thought she’d look at anything in Hell and see it as salvation, but that was exactly what she thought when she looked at those rocky cliffs. If she could just get out of here and past the wall, she was sure there’d be a hundred good hiding places up there.
As long as she didn’t walk into the cave of some monster, that was.
“I’m so fucked,” she murmured.
Her arms were starting to shake from holding herself up, and her toes could only cling to the wall for so long. And the harder she worked, the faster her heart beat, and the more her head pounded.
But she was still in her right mind enough to correct herself. “I am not fucked. I just need to find Meph. I’ll get Meph, and we’ll get out of this together.”
That was her big plan.
How she was going to convince a ravenous monster to help her escape was a different story, but she’d cross that bridge when she came to it. She wasn’t forgetting her earlier realization, and she clung to that hope for now.
Before her legs gave out, she grasped one of the bars of the window and tested its strength.
It moved.
Only slightly, but when she stared at the crack in the stone where it was inserted, she could see the mortar was crumbling. She transferred her weight and tried the second bar, and the same thing happened.
“I can work with this.”
She spent another minute wiggling one of the bars, and when a chip of mortar came loose, she used it to break off another chip, and another. Eventually her arms were shaking, and her vision was going black, and she was pretty sure she was going to pass out and fall if she didn’t get down.
