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Do I know what that is?
I don’t. But I allow it to stay with me and my darkness as well.
Chapter29
Barbas
You should have seen him, Lily. He told the council all about your demon slaying and how if you hadn’t pulled one of their members from its host, he wouldn’t have realized their scheme,Malphas says, and if he had a face for me to see, I know the exact grin he’d be wearing.
Because of you,I continue.Because of your strength and unheard of ability, no demon has to reap again. The council had enough energy closeted away that on its release, our plane and yours returned to their natural state of synchronicity. You did so well, Lily.
There’s no immediate response, so we wait, hoping the good news needs time to pull her back to us.
This isn’t working,I say to Malphas.What did you do last time?
I told you; I talked to her.
What about?
I don’t know, Barbas. I waited for a long time, hoping she’d return on her own. When she didn’t, I just began talking. I told her we were worried for her and that I like to hide too.
What does that mean? You like to hide?
It doesn’t matter, Barb. I’m telling you, all I did was talk to her. She has to decide to free herself.
Malphas keeps saying the same thing, but I understand now. He showed her a bit of his own pain.
She doesn’t want praise. She wants our pain,I say, marveling at how long it took me to get there.To know she’s not alone in feeling darkness, unworthiness.
I am exactly the right demon for this job.
I’d break myself open for her again and again, however many times it took until she knew she wasn’t alone.
And I do. I tell her the story of how I came to be in these trials and with these demons.
Lily, there isn’t a human word that quite describes the place I’m from. The blight that is the Pit only breeds misery and destitution. Hopelessness and hunger.
And that hunger is why I am the smallest of all my brothers. Why my horns are thinnest, why I am the weakest.
Demons from the Pit aren’t permitted to enter the trials. We’re made to stay in our slums, told we weren’t worthy to reap.
But I wanted a better life.
So I escaped that hell, running in the dead of night with no shoes, only eating what I could trap or catch.
On reaching Underfell, I soon realized I escaped one hell only to find another. No one wanted me in their city, let alone the trials. No one could imagine someone like me competing, and so every season, when demons lined up in the square for the council to choose the next contenders, they laughed and mocked me. They gave up their rations to throw at my face, so great was their hatred of me and the impoverished place I came from.
But every season I returned, more resolved, more dedicated to winning a place in the society that hated me and having a home in Underfell. No matter how small, how meager the place was, I knew it was better by far than the Pit.
Season after season I was rejected until finally the council decided this season it would be a fun jape to allow me to compete. They wanted me to fail. Rooted for it. Placed bets on how long I would last.
But this was the season Rhygel came of age. The season he was chosen and decided to do things differently—to form a team.
I could never bear to ask why he picked me. Whether out of pity or morality, I didn’t want to know, because I never truly felt I deserved a place on his team.
I take a moment before my ultimate confession allowing myself to feel every bit of the pain that accompanies this story. Not for my own sake, but for Lily’s.
A part of me will always believe I deserve the Pit. That Iamworthless and without value and that Rhygel and Malphas and Typhon should have let me rot like the rest of them wanted.
