Page 93 of Hell's Prisoner
Ididmatter. I mattered to Laila, and Sam, and Micah, and Nathaniel, and hopefully to God too.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered into the empty cell as I closed my eyes. It was the last thought I had before sleep claimed me.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Laila
The darkness wascomplete and smothering. I held my breath, trying to hear or feel my surroundings, but there was nothing in the impenetrable black.
My heart pounded against my ribs uncomfortably hard, the wild beat distracting and feeding the tendrils of fear snaking through me.
I reached down to my thigh where I kept my dagger but felt nothing other than the fabric of my pants. I didn’t have my dagger or my sight, and I wasn’t sure if I had my hearing either. The helplessness of my situation felt like a noose tightening around my neck. Anything could come at me and I had no way to defend myself, to even see it coming.
When Prince Beautiful had told me this journey would be painful, I had tried to expect anything, but I hadn’t expected this. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that I stood on a landing somewhere on a staircase that led down deep under Lucifer’s palace.
I’d been walking down stairs for what had to be days at least. They had looked unassuming when I’d first been brought to the stairwell. They were simple black stone, even and not particularly steep. There were no doors or alcoves for anyone or anything to jump out from. There were no clues as to what horrors awaited, though I’d known it couldn’t truly be as simple as walking down a dozen flights of stairs.
I hadn’t been wrong.
The first vision had thrust me into a three-foot-by-three-foot box with clear walls. There was no roof and a drain was set in the floor. It was hard to see what was beyond the walls—the lighting was dim and I seemed to be standing in the middle of a spotlight—but I could see the shadowy shapes of people all around me. I hadn’t noticed the thin chain wound around my ankle and connected to the floor at first. It was so delicate, like the chain of a necklace, that it was easy to miss. I hadn’t known it was there until the water started bubbling up from the drain, filling the box with alarming speed. Then I’d become very aware of the chain that held me to the floor. It hadn’t looked like it should be hard to break, but it hadn’t given even a little when I’d tugged on it.
Looking back, I should have realized the drowning box was an illusion. Not only was I suddenly transported there from the stairwell in Lucifer’s palace, but I was an angel incapable of being drowned. Sure, it wasn’t fun to transition from breathing air to water, but both had oxygen. Except in that moment, I hadn’t been an angel. I’d been trapped in a vision where I didn’t make the rules. And as the water had closed over my head and my burning lungs gave in to the need to breathe, I’d choked and black spots had danced across my vision. My limbs had grown sluggish as my strength had waned.
It didn’t matter that it should have been impossible—I’d believed it was my reality. It was like a nightmare that feels so real you don’t realize you’re asleep.
I’d had no idea it wasn’t real until I blacked out and found myself standing back in the stairwell.
The tortures had continued as I made my way down step after step. I was drowned, beaten, chained, and mocked. Every time I got out of a vision, it was harder to take another step down, to face the next horror that waited for me. There were many occasions I’d wanted to just curl up on the stairs and never move again.
The fact that I knew I was in a vision right now was odd. And concerning. Was it possible that the darkness was real? There were no windows in the stairwell, so extinguishing the lights was all it would take to render me blind. I knew there were parts of Hell that were completely without light. I’d walked through one such hallway when Roth had first brought me to the cavern where I’d lost my wings.
But if this wasn’t a vision, what had happened to my dagger?
I ran my hands over my body frantically, feeling for anything else that was different. My clothes all felt the same as the clothes I’d taken from the trunk in the bedroom upstairs. The only thing that was different was that my dagger was gone.
Icy fear spread through me. I reached out blindly, feeling for the walls of the stairwell. My palms were met with nothing but empty air, but without my sight, I was too afraid to move in any direction to try to find the wall. One wrong step and I could easily fall down the stone stairs.
I closed my eyes even though it made no difference and took a deep breath.All in,I reminded myself. Joriel needed me to be strong enough to do this, and I had to believe that I could be.
Hold on to your faith.
I took another steadying breath. I didn’t have to be strong enough on my own. I just had to trust that God would catch me when I fell.
Opening my eyes, I stood still and waited in the dark silence. It was disconcerting, but there wasn’t anything I could do to change the situation. I just had to fight the panic that kept trying to creep into my mind.
What felt like hours later, the light returned, the sound of my breathing suddenly seeming loud. I blinked in the brightness of the stairwell. There was a wall close enough that I could easily touch it if I reached out, and the dagger was strapped to my thigh. Ithadbeen a vision.
I ran my fingers over the smooth marble of the wall, allowing a couple of seconds to collect myself before taking the next step. I had to keep moving. Every second I spent here was a second Joriel was alone in Lucifer’s prison… if he was lucky.
A wave of nausea rolled through me. I didn’t want to think about Jorielnotbeing alone in the heart of Hell.
I pressed a hand flat against the cool wall and kept putting one foot in front of the other. There was nothing I could do to help him from here. The only thing I could do was keep moving.
* * *
The hands tightenedtheir hold on my arms, the demons preparing for my attempts to fight them before I even sawhim.
Joriel looked worse than I’d ever seen. He was shirtless, showing off a patchwork of injuries spanning his chest, some of them still oozing black blood. A red-skinned demon held his arms above where his wrists were secured together behind his back.
