“Gin is gone,” Tessa said, her face gloomy. “They took her.”
They must have done that while I’d been drowning under the magic of Venom, because I hadn’t noticed it at all.
“I will get you both out of here,” I promised Tessa.
The glass doors to the dungeon slid open with a whisper. Four soldiers marched in. One of them carried Gin. As the soldiers drew closer, as I got a better look at my sister, my heart locked up. Pain paralyzed me. But as the soldiers set Gin’s lifeless body on a table in the middle of the room, the floodgates of my agony tore open, and I screamed out. My sister was dead.
27
Immortal Mortality
As the soldiers left, a soft voice cut through my agony. “Gin isn’t really dead,” Tessa said. “She will rise again.”
Hope stuttered in my chest. When I could breathe again, I asked, “How?”
“Gin is a Phoenix, an immortal with the power to be reborn,” Tessa explained. “She can’t be killed, no matter how hard she’s hit. Well, at least if there is a way to kill her, the dark angel hasn’t found it yet.”
Relief rushed through my body, even as anger pooled up deep inside of me. Soulslayer had hurt my sisters.
“He put you in the battle arena,” I said quietly.
“Yes.”
Soulslayer had told me he wouldn’t make them fight if I did, but I wasn’t surprised that he’d broken that promise. He was a sadistic beast.
“Sonja unlocked our memories to unlock our magic.” Tessa’s tone was dark. She sounded more mature, like she’d grown up a lot since the festival in Purgatory. Her chirpy girlishness was gone.
I looked away from Gin’s lifeless body. It hurt to see her like that.
“And your magic?” I asked Tessa.
“I’m a djinn.”
“Like a genie?”
“Not quite. Djinn are part of the same branch of magic as genies, our wish-granting brethren, but djinn have interdimensional jumping powers. On a smaller scale, we can teleport short distances. We can also reach into the interdimensional ether and summon creatures from other realms.”
“I’ve never come across magic like yours or Gin’s.”
“Gin and I came from other worlds, just like the gods and demons.”
So Damiel had been right.
“What are the constraints of your interdimensional magic?” I asked Tessa.
“In theory, it ignores all protection wards and barrier spells.”
The demons could use Tessa’s power to enter the Earth, to bypass the gods’ wards and bring in their armies with them. They could use it to teleport monsters beyond the wall into human cities. The results would be catastrophic, and the demons would certainly be more than willing to step in and save the Earth—at the cost of humanity’s absolute allegiance.
And Gin’s magic was just as dangerous in the wrong hands. Even gods and demons could be killed, but a phoenix was always reborn. I imagined armies of constantly reviving soldiers, ones who could jump around the battlefield and jump between realms. The perfect army.
“Can you use your magic to get us and Gin out of here?” I asked Tessa.
“Hellfire captured me when I was very young. I never learned to make interdimensional jumps, only the small ones.”
“Can you get out of your cell?”
Tessa held up her hands, showing me the pair of matching metallic cuffs locked around her wrists. Green magic slid over the cuffs like a layer of fog, lighting up the runes engraved into the metal.
“No, Soulslayer put these on me to block my jumping magic,” she said, frowning at the beautiful cuffs. “They have settings to block different levels of jumps. The lower the setting, the further I can jump. Whenever I’m in my cell, he sets them to block all jumps, but sometimes he tones them down in the battle arena. The first time he put me and Gin in there, I realized the bracelets weren’t blocking my short-range jumps. I thought I’d gotten lucky, that the dark angel had forgotten to set them properly.”
“The angels don’t forget things. Soulslayer did it for a reason.”
“I was using my short-range jumps to evade a beast when my magic suddenly stopped working. If not for Gin, the beast would have killed me then. In the next battle, my magic was working again. Sometimes on, sometimes off, always unpredictable.”
“He was toying with you,” I said, my anger simmering beneath the surface.
“Yes.”
I formed two fists and pulled against my chains. The metal groaned.
“He killed Gin over and over again, in so many different and grotesque ways.” Tessa’s face paled. She looked liked she’d be ill. “He wanted to see if she would still come back to life.”
“How many times did Soulslayer’s arena kill Gin?”
“Fifty. Maybe more.”
Acid churned and rose in my empty stomach, but I had to keep my wits about me. So I swallowed my disgust and struggled to clear my mind.
“I tried to save her, but I wasn’t always fast enough to jump away. And the bracelets were blocking my magic half the time.” Tessa’s shoulders slumped, her words heavy with guilt.
“It’s not your fault,” I told her.
A tear slid down her cheek.
“Look at me, Tessa.”
She wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands and met my gaze.
“You did everything you could,” I said. “This isn’t your fault. It’s Soulslayer’s.”
“When the dark angel captured you, he was so busy torturing you that he left me and Gin alone for a while. We heard your screams.” Her voice shook. “Sometimes he came here to taunt us with your pain. He enjoyed hurting you, Leda.”
“Forget about that now. The past is in the past. This ends now. We’re getting out of here.”
“How?” She sounded desperate.
“I will think of something. I promise. I’m going to get you out of here. And I’m going to make Soulslayer pay for hurting you and Gin,” I added.
“Don’t worry about us, Leda. We’ll be fine. We’ve endured much more.” Her eyes hardened with determination.
I didn’t ask Tessa about what had happened all those years ago when she and Gin had been held by the warlords—or about their months in the jungle.
“They pitted us against monsters and soldiers,” Tessa said, guessing where my mind was. “We did what we had to do to survive.”
They’d done what they had to do to survive—at such a young age. Seeing the look in Tessa’s eyes, I understood why Calli had asked Zane to wipe their memories. She must have seen that same look back then. Children deserved a chance at a normal childhood, a chance at innocence. They shouldn’t have to kill in order to survive.
On the table, Gin woke up screaming in agony as flames erupted all across her body, bathing her in fire.
Tessa looked away. “It hurts every time she is reborn in fire.”
The flames slowly died down, then they went out. Gin lay on the table, shaking. Her clothes were ashes all around her. The soldiers hadn’t bothered to chain her up. She looked so weak that she couldn’t move.
The glass doors parted, and Soulslayer glided into the room as smooth as honey. He grabbed Gin off the table, casually threw her over his shoulder, then dropped her into her cell. The magic barrier went up. Gin was still spasming, her naked body shaking on the floor. The dark angel didn’t even throw her some clothes or a blanket.
“Stop,” I growled.
He turned to look at me.
“This isn’t the end,” I said in a low snarl.
He just watched me, a bored expression on his face.
“For what you’ve done to my sisters, I will tear you apart piece by piece, watching you die in agony as your resolve crumbles and your soul shatters into a million pieces.”
He clicked his tongue. “Temper, temper.”
I heaved against my chains. The links snapped. As I worked on freeing my legs, the dark angel calmly walked over to me and hit a button on the wall. A Magitech barrier slid over my body, encasing it like a translucent cocoon. It held me so tightly that I could feel the magic singeing my eyebrows. Soulslayer considered me, his face arrogant.