However, she hadn’t seen Mytaz coming. She’d experienced countless visions of mundane things and others that helped us in battle, but she hadn’t seen her demise. But then, I didn’t know a single visionary demon who had foreseen their death and avoided it.
“I hope to be as pretty as you one day,” she’d say as I braided her hair.
I always kissed her forehead as I replied, “You’re already prettier.”
“We’ll be friends forever, won’t we, Bale?”
“Forever and ever,” I promised.
I’d always done my best to protect her because I knew she wasn’t as vicious as me. She would have been better off living in the Forest of Prurience with the tree nymphs than fighting every day against Lucifer. She was a far more tender being than me, and I was determined not to see her broken.
Then, one day, her life was extinguished, and it broke a part of me forever.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Bale
“Bale?”
I blinked as I realized Wrath was talking to me. Tearing myself away from the past, I focused on him. I couldn’t do anything more for Fiora, but once we found a way out of this place, I would return to remove her from this hideous place. I didn’t know what I’d do with her after; I couldn’t destroy her, and I couldn’t keep her, but I definitely couldnotallow her to remain here.
“What is it?” I asked.
His troubled gaze unnerved me more than when he was looking at me with hunger. His desire I understood; it was his instinctual reaction to his Chosen, but this tenderness was everything Wrath wasnotsupposed to be.
This man was a monster, a horseman; he was not supposed to be kind. The whole possibility of him having an ounce of kindness was throwing me off balance more than if he’d punched me in the face. I could take a punch and react to it. I didn’t know how to respond to this.
“Eldorata. It’s in a lake,” he said.
It took me a couple of seconds to recall I’d asked him how they discovered Eldorata. “It’s in a lake?”
There was that damn dimply smile again. “Yes. It’s an island of rock in the middle of the lake, and the entrance is there.”
“How did you discover it?”
“Death found it.”
“In the middle of a lake?”
“He can float.”
I’d almost forgotten that unsettling bit of information about the creepiest horseman. “We never would have discovered you there. Unless one of the angels spotted it while flying over.”
“I know.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I have no intention of returning to it after all this is over.”
“So, when you took me out of the forest, you swam out to Eldorata with me?”
“Do I look like I swim?”
“You look like you do many things,” I said honestly. “And most of them aren’t good.”
When he laughed, I was so astounded by the sound that it took me a couple of seconds to realize I enjoyed the joyous tone of it. His laugh came deep from his belly and was entirely out of place in this golden place. However, I found myself grinning like an idiot in response to his laughter.
When he looked at me again, I forced myself to stop smiling, but it was too late, he’d seen it.
