Nel slipped a hand over her chest as she inched away from the woman with short and curly black hair. As her neck left the groove in the pool’s edge, the woman continued sliding along the little ledge in the water. Nel stopped, realizing that she wouldn’t have any peace so long as the other woman was here.
And it had been going so well too.
Shooting a glance at the woman’s chest through the crystal clear water, Nel caught sight of the small eyeball placed between her breasts.
An Elysium Nun. As Nel expected after their brief interaction the previous night. She might have even been told as much, but she was somewhat out of it until she woke up this morning. Most of her memories of escaping were hazy to some degree.
Hopefully, her memories of being under Sawyer’s care would go hazy in time.
Nel wasn’t counting on it.
Unlike the eyeballs rapidly darting about–looking hither and thither at every little thing–in Nel’s body, the other nun’s eye sat still in her chest. It stared dead ahead with a look that wouldn’t be out-of-place on Lady Ylva.
Nel let out a soft sigh of relief. The girl had no potential to become an augur. She wasn’t about to be Nel’s replacement. Since she had been rescued, Nel felt safe to assume that Ylva still wanted her.
The frown she had put on as the other nun slipped into the water deepened. Ylva wasn’t the one to rescue her.
“So,” the other nun said.
Nel started. She had been staring–frowning at the other woman’s chest for a few minutes. Clearing her throat, Nel looked up to meet the nun’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” Nel said. She cringed at herself. Now it looked like she was apologizing for staring at the other woman. Clearing her throat again, she quickly added on, “I didn’t quite catch your name.”
“Alicia, though Lady Ylva calls me Ali.”
“Nel.”
The soft trickle of water from one of the gargoyles was the only sound following her simple statement. Before the situation could get any more awkward, Nel held out her hand for a handshake. So long as they were going to be Lady Ylva’s underlings, she could at least try to be cordial to the–
Nel went stiff as a board as Alicia’s arms wrapped around her and pulled her into a tight hug. She held on until Nel gave her two very mechanical pats with her good arm on the nun’s back.
“Please,” Nel said quietly as Alicia pulled away, “don’t hug me again.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, sounding almost genuine until she giggled. “It’s the eyes, isn’t it? I never interacted with augurs much before. Well,” she giggled again, “except two that I had to terminate. But they don’t count.” She waved her hand off to one side like she was laughing off a joke.
Nel found herself inching away again. Maybe if she went slow enough then the other girl wouldn’t move closer. “Are you… alright?”
“Perfect,” she said with intensity. “In fact, I got to be useful to Lady Ylva today. She had me help that abomination they’ve got locked up in one of the other buildings.”
Nel kept her face as still as she could. Eva scared her more than Ylva did most of the time. She had been trying very hard not to think of her as an abomination even in her own thoughts. For a moment, she wondered what Alicia would do if she knew that Eva practically ran the place.
She thought better of it. Something was very wrong with the other nun. Better to keep her interactions to a minimum.
Her stomach sank like a cannonball in water as a few words made their way through the haze of her memories. Arachne had wanted Nel to fix Eva. There was a sudden dryness in her mouth as she worried she wouldn’t have a spine after her next encounter with the volatile spider-demon.
That creature scared her more than Eva.
Hopefully they would be too happy with Eva being back to pay her much mind.
As she was thinking, Genoa walked into her sight through the door behind Alicia.
She did not look happy.
Genoa marched right up to the edge of the bath, soiling the crystal clear water with dirt and grime that came loose off of her combat boots. She started her glare at Nel. After a moment, it turned to Alicia.
Who had a vapid smile on her face as she waved back.
By the time Genoa returned her attentions to Nel, she had pulled her knees to her chest with her one good arm wrapped around them. Her other arm floated uselessly in the water.
“Are you finished with your bubble-bath, Your Highness?” She spoke with a sneer on her face. A very nasty sneer.
Nel ducked her head down, but couldn’t break eye contact.
“Shall I fetch you a spot of tea and crumpets? Perhaps you would like me to tuck you into bed and read you a nice story.”
Genoa cracked her knuckles one at a time. Each pop sent a tremor up Nel’s spine.
It did more to the nun next to Nel. As Genoa’s knuckles cracked, Alicia flinched and twitched as if each one caused a small seizure.
“Or perhaps you would like to get out of the damn bath and find my daughter. That is why we bothered to rescue your worthless ass.”
“Now, now,” Alicia said with a quiver in her voice. “There’s no need to get–”
For a moment, Nel thought Genoa was going to plant her boot into the other girl’s face. In the end, she only turned her glare on Alicia.
It still caused Alicia to cower back in what was perhaps the first real emotion Nel had seen on her face.
“My daughter has been trapped in literal Hell for the past two weeks.” Genoa spoke in an unnatural calm that was somehow scarier than anything else she had said. “If you are not out of this bath in thirty seconds, I will start breaking things. Whatever that necromancer did to you and your arm will be like a light massage in comparison. Do you understand me?”
That woman has been spending entirely too much time around Arachne, Nel thought with a poorly suppressed shudder. She nodded anyway and rose to her feet. She didn’t even bother moving to the stairs, instead choosing to climb over the edge where she was.
Her mouth came close to betraying her. She couldn’t see across planes of existence and almost told Genoa as much. The only thing that stopped her–aside from the copious pain that would undoubtedly follow such a statement–was that she could see the outside world from Lady Ylva’s domain.
Given that she was relatively certain that they technically were in Hell just by being inside her domain, maybe looking through the rest of Hell wouldn’t be an issue. Unless all the other domains were protected with powerful anti-augur wards.
Nel bit her lip as she followed Genoa out of the room.
This must be what it is like to be handed a shovel and told to dig your own grave.
She just hoped that Lady Ylva would be kind enough to dig her back out.
Chapter 016
Eva tossed the now slightly damp towel over her shoulder, not caring in the slightest where it actually landed.
She exited the showers completely in the nude. Arachne followed her out at her heels.
Devon still sat, snoring in his chair. For a moment, she considered waking him. After glancing at the large bruise on his forehead, Eva decided he looked tired enough to leave alone. Besides, he managed to sleep through all the noise of the showers.
Never had she felt so alive.
She stopped and stretched in her common room. The jolt of pain in her lower back went completely ignored. She was far too pleased with everything to care.
Well, Eva thought with a brief glance at the ceiling, almost everything.
It was nice being out of that nightmare and back with Arachne in the real world, her injury was healing slowly yet steadily, and Sawyer’s days were numbered.
Zagan just had to put a damper on it.