PROMISE

CHAPTER 25

Lilith led them into a hall that branched from the chamber, her feet unnaturally silent against the carpeted floor. After a pair of turns into adjacent halls, Lilith slowed to walk beside him.

"So," Lilith said, sounding casual. "Your talk with Hume seemed completely normal."

Hain said nothing, his mind too focused on the poison brew stewing inside him.

"Which I'm glad for," Lilith went on. "Because, you know, I'd have hated for him to have said something that made you angry." She paused. "But I can tell from the totally not-angry scowl on your face that you two got along really well."

Hain sighed–a heavy, ragged sound. Lilith glanced sidelong at him.

"What did he say to upset you?" Lilith's voice seemed to tiptoe around the words.

"It's not him. Or, not just him." Hain stopped abruptly. "It's everything, Lilith. Everything."

Lilith stopped. "I don't know if we have enough time to talk about 'everything'. We might need to sleep before we finish. Or maybe even eat."

"I mean, everything here." Hain felt the confusion and sheer impossibility of the last few days welling up in him. "Doors appearing from nothing. Buildings bigger than mountains." He pointed up to the recessed holes of light overhead. "Heaven and Hell, even the lights don't make sense. They're not skylights, and they're not torches, or oil, or anything else I've ever seen. It's like they took a piece of the sun, and stuffed it into a hole."

"The lights are–well, I don't know. They're complicated."

Hain pinched the bridge of his nose. "How can light be complicated? It's light. Light should just be light."

"What do you want me to tell you? There's no easy answer that will make sense."

"Forget the lights," he said, throwing his arms up. "Look at the stones in the walls." He rapped a knuckle against the stone. "Have you ever seen stone work like this in Echo?"

"I can't say I've put a lot of thought into how people stack rocks."

"Can you explain how they got this much white stone into the middle of the Godless?"

She shrugged. "The ground?"

Hain planted the ball of his palm against his forehead. "Of course. How did I not think of rocks coming from the ground?"

"What an idiot I am for not knowing where the raw building materials in this building came from." Lilith folded her arms over her chest. "Couldn't there be a quarry somewhere that you don't know about?"

"Oh, sure! Why not?" Hain's sarcasm ballooned into the hall. "Of course there would be a hidden quarry, inside the hidden city, inside the haunted forest full of Cats that aren't actually Cats, and shadow creatures, and giant killer spider-things that stab you in the leg when you run away. Why not?" Hain felt his chest go tight as his anger reached a crescendo. "And not only that, but your friend back there knows about our plans to get Sam."

Lilith's eyes went wide. "And now your attitude makes much more sense."

"Glad you see understand," he hissed. "Why would you tell him?"

"Because I didn't have a choice," she said, as though this should have been obvious. "Sanger was helping me keep your presence here a secret, but then you got it in your brain to try and escape. After that, someone saw you and reported it to Hume. I had to tell him something."

Hain felt her words blunt the edge of his anger, but he rode the momentum of his feelings all the same.

"And so I guess you know Hume wants me to go Sierra?"