Page 83 of The Deer and the Dragon
He bit down, a muscle ticking in his jaw as he began to drive like the proverbial bat out of hell.
“Fauna!” I gripped the shoulders of the two front seats and leaned forward.
She whipped around, true anger in her face as she said, “You would have been fine! If you had died in that apartment, you would have resumed your mortal loop. Twenty-six years from now you could have been adifferentidiot. But your precious Caliban couldn’t leave good enough alone. Apparently, whatever you were going through was too terrible for him to allow you to endure. Gods and goddesses, has he only ever let you die healthy and of old age? No wonder you’re caught in a mortal loop refusing to learn any lessons. Personally, I would have let you die.”
“You don’t mean that…” I struggled to breathe. Only an hour before, she’d held my hand in the palace and said she loved me. I’d begun to believe we were truly friends. I mouthed her name again, the question a wordless plea as tears threatened me. The gray streets blurred, both from the wall of emotion and the speed with which Azrames wove through traffic. Our twenty-minute drive would easily be finished in six.
“Five, Marlow! Tier five!”
Azrames reacted so suddenly that he almost jerked the vehicle into a horned demon on a motorcycle. His gray knuckles turned white with his grip, muscles tensing. My stomach lurched against the g-force as he pushed his foot on the gas pedal, cutting the six-minute drive into four.
I shook my head, eyes wide as I said, “I don’t understand…”
“Five means whoever you are, whatever you are, come right the fuck now and I’ll do whatever you want.”
I lurched with the car as Azrames took a hairpin corner. I gripped the seats in front of me as I let my eyes do the begging, pleading with her for answers.
“Anything!” she practically shrieked. “It means Silas can ask foranything! He wants Caliban to rip his soul out and serve it up on a platter? He wants unlimited access to come and go to Hell’s palace? He wants the King to choose between surrender or the death of his son? It is within Silas’s right to ask! And he got the favor from the fucking Prince of Hell! This isn’t just bad for him, Marlow. This is bad forallof the realms! Think of what it means for the Nordes! The Greeks! The Egyptians! The—” She gasped, balling her fingers in her hair. “Every kingdom will be thrust into chaos if Silas calls in this barter. Marlow, do you hear what I’m saying? This is really. Fucking. Bad.”
The tendons on Azrames’s neck flexed as he said, “That’s it. Heaven wins.” He swung into the parking spot, little more than a blur as he moved. He’d sprinted to open Fauna’s door before she could even leap from her seat.
“And?” I gasped, tumbling from the back. “What do we do? How do we help?”
She spun on me, jabbing a finger into my sternum as she burned. “Silas wantsyou. It’s the only thing he’s harped on since meeting you. It’s why he showed up at your apartment. It’s why he involved your mother,” she said. “As far as we know, he hasn’t called in the favor. In fact…” She calmed herself, forcing a long breath in, then pushing it out. Shemade her fists unclench as she relaxed her face from the uncharacteristic panic and fury that had burned through her. “As far as we know…he hasn’t told anyone what cards he holds.”
I looked between her and Az.
“And what about the other pantheon?” I asked.
Azrames stiffened. “What other pantheon? Heaven doesn’t have any allies.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Fauna. “The King’s intel could have been wrong. He seems to believe other gods are at play.”
“Then…” Azrames’s posture changed. “Whoever it is, they may have bought us some time.”
None of this made sense. “How?”
Azrames clarified with low intensity. “Silas can’t have told anyone in Heaven that he has the power to end the war, or it would have happened already. Hell would be swarming with angels. Clearly, their king knows you’re the Prince’s human, but that seems to be it. Silas must have reported his fight, explained who you were, and gotten his orders from there. If anyone knew about the deal…things would be very, very different.”
I swallowed. “Could he ask for me? As the favor?”
“Only if you had bonded yourself. He could have asked for Caliban to hand over your bond, and the Prince would have had to comply. Heaven would own you right now,” answered Fauna.
“And?” My eyebrows had climbed so high that I was positive they’d disappeared into my hairline. “What do I do? How do I fix this?”
She gripped my shoulders, looking between me and the sølje still pinned to my chest. “You get to Silas first.”
We were in Azrames’s apartment within a moment, the luxury of his space feeling ominous as the backdrop of Fauna’s fervor. I’d never seen her move with such intensity. She zigzagged through the apartment like a deer bolting inthe forest. I had to stop her from tearing the designer bodice from her chest, as it looked like she was seconds away from shredding thousands of dollars in fashion in her haste. She left her clothes in a rumpled pile at my feet as she stepped into the comfortable, harem-style pants she’d worn the first night we’d met. Her heather-gray shirt, cropped like the others, had a Nordic rune in the center, antlers intersecting it through the middle. Fauna yanked another shirt and pair of pants off hangers and chucked them at me.
“Wear these,” she commanded, then left me to my own devices as I shimmied out of my jumpsuit and unclipped the broach.
I stepped out in curious, skin-tight leggings that seemed to have been made from rust, forest, and gold. I’d never owned anything that could have been described as steampunk, but no other word came to mind as I blinked at the buttons that ran along the seams on the outside of the pants, contrasted against the indecently thin, white shirt she’d thrust on me. I understood a nymph’s incentive to champion thefree the tittiesmovement, but I wasn’t sure unbound D cups were the most suitable attire for seeking an audience with an angel. I looked down at the perfectly black tattoo, the only mark on my otherwise exposed flesh, and felt my chest tighten.
It was the sigil that had turned me into Alice as I free-fell into Wonderland.
Except with Alice, after she’d returned home, she’d been able to pretend it was all a dream. I was marked in more ways than one. There’d be no coming back from this. I shook the thoughts from my mind like eliminating cobwebs, ridding myself of old patterns of thought as I abandoned the bedroom.
“Is Az coming with us?” I asked, watching her tear things from his shelves as she appeared to chaotically search for something.
