Page 4 of Strongest Souls

“We are trapped.” Julie says without turning around.

If she has lost hope, will mine soon follow?

No, I will hold the hope for all of us. She gave me hope and believed in me and now I have to do the same for her. “Sit for a little bit. We can solve this.”

She turns her back to the bars made of monster bones. “Can we? How am I going to climb the spire when I don’t like heights? How are we even going to reach the spire? Even if we break out of here, we have at least two guards to worry about. And we don’t understand why the queen wants me. Knew me.” Tears slide down her face. “I thought we could do this, but maybe I was wrong, and all of this has been for nothing.”

Theo walks over to her, bone in hand. I rock forward, ready to get up and go to her defense, but he puts his arm around her, careful to keep his claws away from her delicate skin. “You gave me something to do. I literally found myself. Even failing is something in this place.”

“You should eat me and be done with it,” she sobs.

I had the same thought, so I can’t hold that against her. But I want to. Rage slides beneath my skin, tempting me to yell at her. She’s the leader, the one who held us together. She lost Michael and got us trapped. Or were we blindly following her because we desperately needed something, someone, to believe in because we knew we were too corrupted?

But when an angel loses her wings, what is she?

Just a flawed, broken person like the rest of us. She’s no different. She just hasn’t had the time to reveal her breaks and develop new scars. I rub my thumb over a red line on my leg. I don’t remember what I did to deserve it. In reality, probably nothing, but my father always had an excuse.

“I’m not going to eat you, no matter how hungry I become. And I am hungry.” There is a purr in his voice that is both alluring and terrifying. He holds both monstrous and human desires. While he holds her, and I can’t see his face, I almost think him human, except for the unhealthy gray color of his skin.

“You can eat my tail,” I say as a joke. My tail serves no purpose except to remind me of what I was. It's an ugly naked thing.

He turns to look at me. He doesn’t need to say anything, yet I know he is sizing up the meal. “I don’t know if that will help or make it worse. And I don’t want to become big again.”

I open my mouth, then catch the words before I speak. Does he think this is his chance with Julie? His chance to fuck her and change and become more human?

She goes stiff in his arms, and he lets her go, but I notice his talons click together like they always do when he is annoyed. Ah, I bet he wishes we had never erased the deal. This could be counted as stopping for the night.

I’m not sure I want to risk sex again. I am human and I don’t need more changes—what if they make me less human? What I need are pants. Proper food. Now the idea is lodged in my head. I want to leave this place and go home wherever, and whatever, that might look like.

“Then what do we do?” she asks as she wipes a tear off her cheek.

“We do not need to see the queen to climb the spire. Of that, I am sure. But there are enormous monsters at the base of the spire,” Theo says.

“How big?” I ask, not because I really want to know, but because it seems like something Julie would ask if she was being more Julie-like. I have not seen this crying, hopeless version before.

She is brave and fearless. What if having sex with monsters has broken her in places we can’t see? Changed her in ways she doesn’t yet realize?

I noticed my first few changes, and carefully noted them in the book, but after the first few, they became less obvious. Or I cared less.

“Bigger than the two guards.” Theo swings the bone as though testing the weight of it. “They are there to feast and fight.”

“Then how do we even reach the spire?”

He pauses and tilts his head. “There is a walkway. Being here is awakening new memories. I don’t know how they fit together though. Something is different this time.”

“Different how?” Julie asks and for a heartbeat I see the glimmer of the girl that she was when Michael first brought her home. The thought stabs my heart and twists even as I smile.

“I don’t know.” Theo shakes his head. “Why trap us? Why not just eat us? Or throw us to the guards for practice.”

“Why does she have guards? You were drawn to Michael and me because we worked together. You said it was something you hadn’t seen in Under.” But he’s right, something isn’t adding up, not that I am an expert in Under or the monsters that live in the center.

Theo is silent for several heartbeats.

“What is it?” Julie presses.

“A memory that’s just out of reach. But living in the cave with Michael and Joe, that felt familiar. It felt like home. Was I a guard here?”

I can’t answer that because I didn’t even expect there to be guards. I don’t know what I expected, perhaps a queen sitting on a throne all on her own. But that doesn’t make sense. If she was on her own, she could easily be attacked and ripped off her throne. “Do you think the queen is fucking them?”

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