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“It took fortitude I didn’t think you possessed to stand your ground and speak your mind today, Barbas. I’m glad to see it.”
Before I could reply, or register his remarks truly, he was off, making preparations for the wards around our dormitory.
No demon would ever desecrate the sanctity of the act of possession by defiling another demon’s body while earth-side.
Under normal circumstances.
But the trials were hardly normal circumstances.
I usually set the wards before joining the others in the between, and having Rhygel attend to the task seems strange. Below his station.
And even as I consider that feeling, I know it’s not true.
It’s not below him. I only think so because…
Because of matters I don’t need to think on now.
Instead, I sit in my hard, wooden chair, made of little more than logs and twine, meant to remind us how low we were in the food chain.
But I already knew that.
Growing up in the Pit does that to a demon, so I don’t take the rudimentary furnishings in our dormitory personally. I use this hard, uncomfortable chair specifically as an anchor. A physical reminder for my essence to latch on to when coming through the between.
It works for me. Maybe I should pass the information along to Typhon, I think, releasing the muscles in my core that hold tight to the part of me that isn’t physical. Isn’t of blood and bone.
And just as easily as drawing my next breath, I’m no longer in my body.
I’m nowhere and made of nothing.
The first time I’d gone to the between, I’d considered staying. Staying where I was nothing and nowhere. Just to escape the cruelty of the Pit.
I discard that memory and focus on my goal.
Finding Lily, assessing damage, and hopefully arranging a sort of working truce.
There are only two things a demon can see in the between place. The gates of hell and human souls glowing like fireflies on a summer night. At least, that’s what the book I’d stolen from the only Pittish library said. I don’t know what fireflies are. But I’d know Lily’s soul out of a hundred—no, a thousand—others.
I don’t need to aim toward her, or steer my essence toward hers in any way. I’m pulled to her like the water to the shore. I doubt I could possess another even if I wanted to, so strong is her soul’s tow on mine.
I slide gently into her mind, just far enough to detect whether we’ve caused damage. To my amazement, her psyche remains unmarred, even after forcibly ejecting us.
And I am taken aback. Marveling.
This woman, this human, is the most fascinating creature I’ve ever come across, and in the moments before allowing myself fully into her mind, I vow to learn everything about her, to protect her, and to honor her for as long as I live.
But the instant I attempt to enter her mind fully, pain courses through my essence.
Pain unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, because this pain has no source and no destination. It doesn’t course through my limbs or bones, as I have neither here.
It burns in my mind, in my soul, through every hope and dream I’ve ever had.
Psychic pain.
I withdraw immediately and crash into my body, sweat-soaked, out of breath, and dazed.
Rhygel, still setting the wards, hears my inelegant reentry.
“What’s happened?” he asks, rushing to me.
