Chapter 3
The cacophony of the crowd returned to my senses as a portal appeared before me. The Crave Arena shook with the force of their clamor. The closest demons half hung over the balustrade in an attempt to witness this rare display from their king.
He’d entered the Crave Arena. They’d seen him lose control.
I felt damn good about that. I could’ve been queen in the history tomes, but I’d settle for “the woman that pissed off the king that one time” just fine.
“Would you like to walk through the portal by yourself?” Carmine asked in a silken voice.
“Are you going to drag me around for old times’ sake?
” I murmured. He’d dragged me around for two years.
To be fair to him, I’d been very draggable after losing my entire family and discovering I wasn’t a weak magus of paltry divination magic, but a strong demon too.
This mega-hot guy had appeared to pledge his everlasting adoration, and he’d had a realm at his fingertips.
No one could hurt me when I was with him, and to a scared child, that had meant everything.
What was I meant to do? Most people of sixteen years would be hard pushed to figure out Earth by themselves, let alone the demon world.
So I’d clung to him and the security he'd offered, and Carmine had loved every second of that. I’d truly felt crazy about him, above and beyond the lust created by the mating ritual.
His voice was less than a whisper, yet when he spoke, it was as though someone had muted the crowd. “Don’t tempt me, Syera. There is nothing I like better.”
“You could try,” I replied, sinking my fingertips into the arm he had clamped around my waist. I extended my black talons into his skin for good measure. “That would embarrass you far more than me.”
I faced him, and neither of us backed away. I tilted my chin.
He watched my defiance with no visible emotion. “Embarrass is the wrong word, enamai. I love the sound of your screams, and so long has passed since they have rung in my ears.”
Cold Carmine was still here.
A chill always settled over my soul when he was around.
I’d tried to separate this cold version of him from the rest for so long.
So foolishly long before I’d given up. I’d realized that carving the ice out of him would be like carving the magus out of me.
An impossibility. “What a shame you’ll never hear them again. ”
I couldn’t stay facing him in such proximity.
I turned again to the floating portal, deliberating and kicking myself.
I’d really believed the rules would stop him from interfering.
He was such a stickler for them, and Tiers was an age-old tradition for our kind.
If Carmine didn’t let me play, his subjects would be angry about the breach of rules.
But no one would challenge his decision.
My greater concern wasn’t walking through this portal. It was that Carmine may not let me continue playing the game.
That wasn’t an option.
After failing to keep me from the checkpoint, Carmine also needed to assert his dominance and power for those watching.
He could have his fucking power. I knew what real power was now, and only I could take that from myself.
I walked toward the portal, then glanced back. “Hurry up, Carmine. I haven’t got all day.”
His snarl was cut off as I stepped through the sulfur portal typical of demon magic—not at all like the magus portals I’d grown up around.
I glared at the black graphite walls of a place I’d hoped to never see again. The royal fortress. A cold, humorless, and empty place where cold, humorless, and empty people lived.
He’d opened the portal to his living room.
One of them, and his favorite. He tended to occupy this place in the late hours after the parties and festivities and banquets when he’d sip a smoky whiskey and stare into the fire like a mysterious hot guy.
I used to love watching him do that. Now I preferred to believe that as he stared into the fire, a monkey crashed symbols together inside his head.
The smell of sulfur dissipated, yet I didn’t face Carmine, though he must be behind me. Dealing with him in the presence of thousands was far easier than in this cloying quiet.
I took a breath, focusing on my goal.
Keep your mind on all his lies.
“Why did you enter Tiers?” he asked, still yet to move.
“Why that question and not others?” I wrinkled my nose at the single piece of art over the fire. In the painting, a monster plunged a fiery blade into his reflection, and in the doing, plunged the blade into himself. Always hated that.
“Because all other questions lead to that, and you answered my only other question.”
About thinking of my escape while I screwed him into oblivion? “You always did like to save time.” He’d hated my human rambling. Though later I’d learned he didn’t hate it at all; he’d hated the content of my rambling, which had been about missing my family and what I’d do if they were alive.
I guessed guilt was a bitch like that.
He circled the room until we were face-to-face.
Even if he didn’t hate me immediately after my escape, hate had formed in him after years of using his hand to keep the worst of the mating ritual at bay.
He’d failed time and again to find real satisfaction, like me, and as he’d hated me, he’d also dreamed night after night of sinking between my legs.
Mating rituals were a messed-up thing.
The only difference between us was that I’d hated him before escaping.
Cold Carmine disappeared as we gazed at each other. Time had always disappeared in his company. I used to think that meant we were meant for each other.
“You’ve changed, Syera,” he said, tilting his head. “You have changed so much.”
From his downward gaze, I got that he didn’t just refer to my shining personality.
I was curvier, and my breasts were larger.
My grandmother and mother had taught me how to fight while alive, but now I was a fighter.
I was honed muscle, a warrior. As for the burning smolder in his eyes that told me Carmine would like nothing better than to shove me against a graphite surface and work out some of that hate physically, I couldn’t care less about the seductiveness of my new body.
My body was a weapon and a tool, and it would be a weapon and a tool until I died.
I’d learned how much I was physically and emotionally capable of, and the extent of those limits had shocked me. There was nothing I wouldn’t do to achieve my ends.
He forced his gray gaze back to mine. “Why did you enter Tiers?”
Should I tell him that I intended to kill him? “To win.”
“What trouble are you in? Who has a hold over you? Do they have something you need? Has someone touched or harmed you?”
“Only you, Carmine.”
Walking past him, I rounded the couch and swept my focus over the living room that took minimalist fortress to the extreme. “You don’t redecorate much.”
“That would be the job of my queen,” he answered. His eyes tracked my every step. “Syera, you know that I will not allow you to escape a second time.”
My stomach lurched. Because, no, he wouldn’t. Yet I’d given up false freedom for the chance at true freedom, and in doing so risked losing any semblance of the word. “You do you.”
“You do you,” he echoed, then frowned. “A humanism?”
I ignored his question and faced him. “I’ll need to enter the Crave Arena each week to fight. I’d prefer to stay in the Pinnacles, so the other contestants don’t put more of a target on my head. I’m sure we can reach a compromise.”
“Compromise,” he repeated.
Even I paused at that. Did I really use that word with a demon? I might as well ask Carmine to be level-headed while I was at it.
“Yes, compromise.” I placed my hands on my hips. “Where I get some of what I want, and where you get some of what you want.”
A tension rippled through his Viking-like frame. That had been my first thought of him when I’d woken in the demon realm—that he was an ancient Viking. The ink symbols on his torso, and the loose fighting garb that he tended to wear that gathered tight at the waist and ankles.
Carmine crossed the cool, black floor, a hunter’s intent in his movements. I watched his approach.
He hissed, “What I want, Syera?”
I didn’t answer. He was close to crossing into unpredictable cold territory.
Carmine’s hands twitched by his sides as if they itched to wrap around my throat. “What I want is to have my mate’s thighs wrapped around me. I want to make her scream. I want to hurt her the way she hurt me when she left three years ago.”
He roared the words in my face, panting hard.
“Control yourself,” I answered in icy tones.
Carmine blinked.
Gripping his wrist, I shoved his hand off my throat, only possible because I’d shocked the hell out of him. “I will never complete the mating ritual with you, Carmine. You will never enter my body again with me willing.”
“I would not enter you any other way,” he said savagely.
On that front, I believed him. I’d been the one seducing him from sixteen years old, not the other way around. He didn’t touch me for two years despite my best efforts.
“Then I can stay here in the royal fortress and fight in Tiers each week.” I shrugged a shoulder. “But you should never forget we will never be what we were. We are just strangers locked in the same curse now.”
He stilled, and my brows drew together at the intensity of his reaction.
Mother be, his body was designed for mine. Giving in would be so easy.
And I’d never forgive myself.
“You speak of me like I’m a monster,” he said.
“Carmine, don’t be coy. You pride yourself on being just that.”
He turned away. “I loved you, enamai. What did I do other than protect you?”