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“Help you? I am here to stop you.”
“No, please, I know, but if you help us we can get out—and you can come with us.”
“There is no getting out,” she snapped. “I have orders, and I am going to carry them out.”
“Wait, wait! There is a way out! I can open the portal.”
“You can’t.”
“I can. I still have Light in me—I can open Abaddon’s portal and get us all out of here! That’s why I’m here.”
“You can’t,” she repeated. “There is no portal.”
“There… what?”
“Abaddon had the portal sealed. There’s no way out.”
I’d heard the words, but it took a long moment to understand them. I felt like my head had been plunged into deep, freezing water and all sound around me muffled. I could only hear my heartbeat, pounding away inside my skull.
The portal had been sealed.
Of course.
I had led them all to their deaths.
A sickening crunch brought me back to the throne room. Gadriel heard it too and turned her head to look. Missolis had knocked down one of the attacking demons and run her sword through his chest, he grunted as the blade pierced his body, then gargled on his own blood. Missolis roared at him, twisting the blade in his chest and yelling at Etari and Kainon to fight on—oblivious to how hopeless the situation was. Oblivious to the conversation I was having with this demon, and the gravity of it.
And then, stars. An explosion of small lights suddenly burst in front of my eyes. Before I knew it, the world tipped over and I fell to the floor, the back of my head pounding with the hit it had just received. I wasn’t even able to stick my hands out to protect myself as I went down.
There was a ringing in my ears.
My vision was blurry.
I could see Missolis—at least, I thought it was her—I wanted to shout at her, to call for help, but I couldn’t make the words. I saw other demons come rushing in from the temple room, but I couldn’t tell if they were friend or foe until one pulled out a sword and pointed it toward the rebels.
I had severely overestimated my impact on Gadriel. I thought that seeing me, the real me, would somehow bring back the angel in her, remind her of who she was before she was Hekata, but I’d been foolish. I shouldn’t have turned my back on her.
The demons swarmed Missolis and the others, disarming them and tying their hands behind their backs. At sword point they marched the rebels past me and into the temple room. A moment later, Gadriel—or rather Hekata—bound my hands and pulled me off the ground. By the time I’d recovered my senses, I was being pushed through the door into the temple room; just in time to watch the pilgrims we’d followed in disrobe and reveal the armor they had been wearing underneath.
All this time, the pilgrims had been soldiers. Abaddon’s soldiers.
How had they known?
Two more demons carried Malachi into the temple room, his head lolled back and the arrow he had been shot with still stuck out from his chest. They brushed angrily past me to get him into the center of the room and tossed him into the throng of rebels who fell over themselves trying to catch him. This earned them raucous, roaring laughter from the demons who had just captured them.
Including Gadriel.
“Don’t do this,” I said to her, though I was sure I was slurring my words.
“Don’t do what, angel?” she asked. “Dutifully serve our Overlord?”
“This isn’t you. The Gadriel I know would never do anything like this.”
“My name is not Gadriel. The angel you knew was left at the bottom of the Pit. Move.”
“Where are you taking us?”
“You’ll see. Now move!”
