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“Where’s the other human?” a deep monstrous voice asked.
Must be a demon.
My heart pounded. We couldn’t get caught. Elizabeth and Clara would be executed on the spot. And the guilt would eat at my soul. Maybe this was a bad idea? I lowered my hand to my boot, ready to take out the dagger.
Light footsteps shuffled.
“It’s me,” Clara’s voice sounded chirpy. “Don’t you recognize me?” A pause. “Oh, silly me. I’m wearing a bonnet. Here. I brought you a cake.”
That answered my question about cake. I imagined her cute smile and handing the plate to the demon.
“I like cake,” the same deep voice said. “I remember you now.”
“Could you let us in? I have to get back to the kitchen.”
When the sound of metal clanked, I sighed with relief. The wheels went over pebbles, then the door closed with another creak.
The fabric lifted. I pushed out and stretched my legs and arms as moans and the clanking sounds of chains filled my ears. We hid inside a tunnel wall before the prisoners came into view.
“We’ll go ahead first.” Clara held a tray of bowls filled with mushy rice. “You look for your friend. You have ten minutes. And meet us at the cart. If you’re not on time, we’ll have to leave without you.”
I gave a curt nod as an answer.
“You go that way.” Elizabeth pointed to the left, then they headed in the opposite direction.
I peeked out, and what I saw gutted me. A female angel with hematite cuffs sat at the corner, her gaze pinned at the ceiling. Her dirty, torn dress rose up her thigh, and one of her breasts hung out. I didn’t want to imagine what she had been through. She had to have heard my boots crunching on the dirt-packed ground, but she didn’t even look.
I moved on to the next cell. An angel with ash-brown hair and tanned skin rocked on a cluster of hay with his knees tucked in, his back toward me. My heart jumped.
“Zander?” I gripped the hematite bars.
The angel raised his head, then his blue eyes beamed in recognition. “Evangeline?”
He rose. Golden blood trickled from wounds across his bare chest. Not Zander, but a fellow Seraphim. My heart took a dive to see him looking like he had been through a battle with no weapon and protection.
“Uri? What happened to your team? I was told you were dead.”
He limped toward me, kicking hay, and his hematite cuffs clanked on the bars when he gripped them. His gaze raked me from head to toe, and last landed on my ruby pendant. Then he glanced over my head, likely looking for the guards.
“We were sent to a village.” He tried not to look at my cleavage and failed. “It should have been an easy kill, but we were ambushed. There were no humans, but instead the demon soldiers awaited us inside the homes. The demons must have killed all the humans before we got there.”
I wanted to shake him. His thought process didn’t make sense. “That’s impossible. The scout that went before you would have known. Who set up the mission?”
He crinkled his nose and tilted his head. “Our superior,” he said slowly as if something clicked in his brain.
Wrong question and wrong answer. There were many superiors in the OA. Let’s try this again.
“Who was your scout?”
He schooled his features, confused. “Why does that matter? What’s done is done. I’ve lost more than half my team. Some are here with me, and the others were … How did you get here?” He scowled and backed away as if I were to blame. “Why are you here? And you’re not bound with hematite.”
I understood his attitude toward me. He’d been outsmarted and lied to. Countless angels had joined Asmodeus. Like me, he didn’t trust anyone.
Straw shuffling, metal clanking, and moans filled my ears as I figured out the right words to tell him. I stole a quick glance down the long stretch of the dungeon and raised my hands to show him I wasn’t there to hurt him.
“I’m going to get you out as soon as I can. But I can’t fight the demons alone. Will you stand with me when the time comes?”
I shouldn’t give him false hope that he would get out, but I had to believe. Hope was all we had left. The only light through the darkness in hand.
