She was still as a statue, peering into the oily, pitch-black water.
“Don’t touch it,” Azazel said quietly. His voice was the only sound in this place. Not even the wind blew. “Don’t drink it.”
“It doesn’t look like anything I’d want in my mouth,” she said, then flushed at the implication of her words and glanced up at me.
I would’ve made a joke about my little friend’s mouth, but something chose that exact moment to rise out of the water, a pale, ridged spine breaking the oily surface before vanishing again without so much as a ripple.
Melisande stiffened, and reached out to grab Lucifer’s arm. “Was that a person?”
“Seems likely,” he said, raising his eyes towards the middle of the river, and I followed his gaze.
Several human hands extended from the river like they were pleading for help, only to be dragged under again by an invisible current.
“Stay away from the edge.” I gripped her shoulder, and she took several paces back. My muscles loosened a little once she was out of immediate harm’s way.
People said the spirits trapped in the Styx couldn’t climb out, but I wasn’t taking chances. I’d seen weirder shit than that happen in Dis.
Melisande gazed out at the river for a moment longer, her face pale, before turning her back on it. The violet of her hair was vibrant against the gray expanse before us, like a flower blooming in the most unlikely of places.
“Do we need to cross it to get to the City of Sight?”
Lucifer broke away and gathered the horses’ leads. “No, we wouldn’t want to be on the far bank. Acheron is on that side.” He gave Azazel a meaningful look. “The Styx itself should provide some defense, if things come to that.”
Melisande’s hand fell to the hilt of her dagger. “Are we expecting to be attacked?”
A strange feeling coiled in my stomach: trepidation at seeing the city where I’d been born, an odd relief that I’d have no choice. I’d always known I would have to face it again one day.
Better to do it in the company of someone I loved.
“There’s a good chance, friend,” I said, taking Titan’s lead. “They’re supposedly confined, but hunting parties have made it out from under the dome before.”
Melisande fell in at my side as we began to follow the Styx, keeping a healthy distance from the river and any loose outcroppings of earth.
This wasn’t the way I’d wanted to introduce her to my kind. She thought she’d seen the worst in Yraceli, but the captive Nephilim was nothing more than a rabid dog.
It was the intelligent ones we needed to be wary of, the ones who’d escaped Acheron and would hunt the roads crisscrossing the Underworld.
“Keep your eyes open for traps or anything out of place,” Azazel said, moving beside in his ghostly form.
Pebbles crunched underfoot as we walked, following a trail beaten into the ground. The Styx was an omnipresent companion, winding in and out, but never out of our sight.
Melisande laid her hand on my forearm as we walked. “If you had the chance, would you ask the sibyls for your past or your future?” It was obvious what she meant.
I wrestled with the question. There was one mystery about my life that burned me: the need to know who had sired me.
Who had condemned me to having snow-white wings that were sawn from my back like they were a crime.
And why he hadn’t come back for either of us.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I want to know, but will having the answer make my hate any lesser? I don’t think so… and finding out that he just didn’t care at all would be worse than thinking he’d hated us. Either way, the moment I knew his name, there would only be one thing to do.”
“Revenge,” she said quietly.
I nodded. “Revenge. Whether it was out of spite or indifference, he cost my mother her life. He cost me my wings. Whoever he was, I would make him pay.” I glanced down at her, at the fan of lashes over her pale gold eyes. “As for my future… that one I already know. It’s wherever you are.”
Her taut features split into an open smile, outshining the obscured sun. “And mine is with you. With all of you.”
She slid her fingers in mine, linking us together.
Still, the temptation gnawed at me, refusing to leave my mind.
If a sibyl could give me all the answers, would I want them?
Three days later, all idle questions fell to the wayside when we climbed a hill. Melisande’s gaze was darker, more shuttered than ever, but her eyes widened at the sight below us.
The Styx rippled down a fall of boulders, continuing on in the distance. The hills of Dis’s territory gave way to flat plainland, but Acheron was impossible to miss.
My heart clenched at the sight.
“How?” was all she could ask. “How is this possible?”
“Magic,” Azazel said, stopping at her shoulder.
The city of Acheron was entirely enclosed in a dome of magical energy. The ten thousand towers looked like they were enclosed in a soap bubble that was half-sunk into the ground, and unlike the relatively clear air outside, the inside of the dome was dark with fog and steam.
I’d been so young when I’d left, I didn’t have many clear memories outside of the towers. But looking at it now, the leviathan size of the city was awe-inspiring, flavored with fear.
Some of the worst of Hell lived inside that dome, and they knew ways out.
“From here on out, we move in silence,” I said, keeping my voice pitched low. “Azazel, if you could-”
The Watcher understood. He lifted Melisande on her horse, and for once, she didn’t protest being manhandled, even jokingly.
Lucifer’s hand rested on his sword, and his gaze had become cold as he surveyed the plains and the enclosed city.
I climbed on Titan, remaining between Melisande and the
