Page 37 of Under the Iron Sky

She checked the cell again, again, screaming in frustration when she found nothing. There was no way out.

All air seemed to vanish from the dungeon.

Soraya combed through her pockets, then the inside of her armored jacket, icy fear clawing higher and higher up her throat as she realized that Ikarus had taken everything. All the hidden daggers and bombs and guns. Even her bracers, her one connection to her own people. He’d taken it all.

She began pacing her cell, hands flying into her hair—

And froze when the tips of her fingers brushed against cool metal. The needle she used to keep her twist in place.

Hope blossoming quicker than she cared to stop it, Soraya quickly pulled it out, golden curls falling down her back, and held the thin forked piece of metal up to the torchlight.

“If he dies, then she dies.”

There’d be no killing this Demon. Escape was her only option, and she could do some real damage with these spiked ends if she got close enough.

So, sinking into a crouch in a dark corner, Soraya fixed her gaze on the door to her cell, her only weapon concealed in the arm of her jacket, and waited for the Demon to come to her.

11

The bastard didn’t come back.

Time crept by at a glacial pace. Minutes bled into hours while Soraya held her vigil. She assumed it was some sort of interrogation technique to keep her on edge, flay her nerves to the point of exhaustion while she anxiously waited for him to return so that when he eventually did, she’d be too tired to fight back and therefore be so much easier to pry open.

The joke was on him. Soraya had no intention of letting him break her.

It must’ve been a good fifteen hours before the hairs on the back of her neck rose unexpectedly, prompting her eyes to snap to the top of the staircase on the other side of the dungeon. She couldn’t see him but he was there all right, hovering in the shadows just out of sight as though he had a foot in this world and the one beyond.

She’d managed to get some sleep leaning against the wall, but her joints were stiff as she slowly rose to her feet. She made herself glare into the shadows, doing her best to wrangle her speeding heart into a steadier rhythm. Terror might’ve been clawing through her, but he didn’t need to know that.

“Are you going to come out, or just stand there looking stupid?”

Nothing.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” she called again, a little more bite in her voice. “You are Ramapheal’s prized dog, aren’t you? Surely there’s a better use of your time than terrorizing me.”

Soraya could’ve sworn those shadows scoffed in answer before they shifted. She took a deep breath through her nose, readying herself, and curled her fingers tight around the needle still hidden in her jacket.

Nothing could have prepared her for the horned figure that stepped forward.

The Demon was covered in blood. It was on his armored shoulders, his gauntlets, dripping down the crimson moon carved into the front of his chest plate. The stench of it was enough to make her stomach roil.

“Whose blood is that?” She quickly strangled it into submission, but an edge of fear crept into her voice.

The Demon slowly cocked his head in a movement so predatory Soraya’s breath hitched. “Would you like a list?” He started walking toward her. “It’s hard to say, I don’t remember all their names. I am the Ancient One’s prized dog after all, aren’t I? I have a lot of rather important tasks.”

Try as she might, Soraya couldn’t stop the slight tremble in her knees when he stopped on the other side of the cell bars. “You’re a fucking monster.”

A deep scoff fluttered from that grotesque helmet. “I believe the word you’re looking for is ‘Demon,’” he said, voice as hard and cold as iron, then grasped his helmet by a horn and yanked it off.

There weren’t words to describe the face beneath. She doubted there was a word in any tongue that’d capture him accurately. She supposed some might say he was beautiful, in the same way one might marvel at a black hole before they were sucked into its orbit and crushed into nothing.

She guessed he was around her age, with short silver hair and skin as pale as cold cut marble. His features were thin and angular: straight nose, high cheekbones, and a jawline that looked like it bit back when struck.

She’d thought his eyes looked like the Iron Sky before, but standing this close, without cold wind ripping at her face and seconds away from plummeting to her death, they looked more like opals that’d been sanded down so many times they’d lost their shine. Dull and lifeless, except for the thin slice of gold in his right eye that lined up perfectly with the streak of missing hair in his eyebrow, as though whatever dark God that’d made him had grown jealous of their own creation and slashed him in a fit of rage—like that could make him any less than what he was.

A monster.

A Demon.