Chapter 4 #2
Touching him like this was unbearable, especially with the sylk. I pressed my lips together as my hip brushed his for the hundredth time. He was doing it on purpose.
We entered the main banquet room through a stone archway twice Carmine’s height, and all crimson eyes turned to us, along with the yellow gazes of servants. I smiled at the glowering crimsons’ reactions. They really weren’t pleased with the five-hour delay in their dinner.
Laughter burst from my curved lips. My mother would have enjoyed this moment—Tempest and Grandmother too. All Corentines came with a dark sense of humor. I laughed harder, then wiped a few tears of laughter away, too, feeling the way Carmine’s fist tightened and loosened under my fingers.
They were just so damned pissed off, and I didn’t give a shit right now.
I would eventually, because I might need these powerful demons one day.
But for now, I’d enjoy their fury. I didn’t exactly have fond memories of warm friendships in the royal fortress.
Carmine had been my only friend. None of the crimsons had accepted me or ventured to extend a welcoming hand.
Part of that was their culture. Demons were capable of friendship in their own way, and they formed strong bonds with those they respected.
To be considered for friendship, demons had to be sure of the other’s ability not to be easily betrayed.
In essence, a demon trusted someone who was wary, distrustful, and clever in sensing out potential subterfuge.
If a demon felt they couldn’t take advantage of you, then you were friendship material.
If at some point in the friendship they could take advantage, then they likely would.
Cold by human standards, perhaps, and yet, the mindset was built on self-respect and capability in a ruthless way.
If only I’d understood that five years ago.
Carmine waited until my laughter was under control, then led me between the long tables and up to the raised platform where the royal family and select few ate. He stopped me by the seat next to his throne, and I blew out a breath. There went my hopes of sitting with the commoners.
I glanced at the iron restraints on the armrests of the seat and looked up at Carmine after. His answering smile was all teeth, and he would truly enjoy restraining me if I caused further issues.
“Sit, enamai,” he said.
“Woof,” I answered, knowing the dog reference would go over his head. I sat, and sylk chafed at my legs. The dress was loose, and I couldn’t say that I relished the movement or weight of my boobs underneath it.
I peered out at the seething crimsons, smirking again.
“Begin,” Carmine stated in a bored tone. Then he sat in the thorned monstrosity of a throne beside me. The throne sat higher than my seat, and the vicious barbs covering the backs and sides meant that my chair was six feet from him. Maybe I could pretend he wasn’t there.
And maybe he would do the same for me. I mean, he’d dragged his mate-intended to dinner, who had ditched him three years ago, after she had chosen to defy his order to attend tonight. I wasn’t the only one putting my ego aside here. He had sat here for five hours simmering in humiliation.
I laughed again, earning fresh glares from the closest and most powerful crimsons.
The piled plates covering the tables were miles better than anything I’d eaten in three years, and I could feel that the food was stone-cold.
With hisses and grumbles the crimsons settled into their ruined meal, throwing furious looks my way now and again as if they didn’t eat like this every night.
I chuckled again. I really wasn’t going to make friends tonight.
Then again, this could be the perfect way to make demon friends.
I hadn’t ever had one, so despite five years in this realm, I was a friendship virgin.
Even in the Earth realm, the only friend I’d had was my twin.
Maybe I would have had other magus friends if Mother had raised us in a coven.
But I could easily understand why she’d decided against that after banging the last demon king, my father. The magic of magus and demons was designed to eat away at the other. We were entirely opposite. My twin and I shouldn’t have existed.
“You find it humorous to make one hundred dignitaries and royals wait for dinner?” Gratia asked from her brother’s left.
I didn’t bother to look at her, enjoying the glares too much. “I didn’t make them wait. Carmine did. But I find it very funny, yes.”
Silence.
“My mother is out hunting,” Carmine said after a beat. Like me, he hadn’t touched a morsel of the delicious food.
Sylk brushed over my nipples, and I shifted on the chair. “I don’t care where your mother is.”
Gratia sucked in a breath.
Carmine didn’t say a word.
My skin itched. I’d released smoke prior to my return, but this damned dress was agitating me.
A demon’s blood was poisonous even to the demon it resided in.
Smoke release was a pressure release for the poisonous effects.
When demons came into their power at sixteen, they smoked constantly in an effort to vent the poison from their bodies, while demons as old as Carmine only had to do so on occasion, being desensitized to the poisonous effects.
The idea was to release less and less over years and decades, but to do so without weakening yourself too much.
A demon who desensitized to the poison of their blood became stronger.
They developed more scales, and demon scales were very hard to penetrate.
A demon covered in scales, especially scales of crimson or purple—or black like me—was difficult to kill.
As a demon’s power grew, that demon would also take on a more human appearance.
Which was an ancient design meant to allow us to walk among humans and other supernaturals to feed off their pain.
Carmine could banish his scales entirely, though a human would need to be out of their mind to look at him and believe the guy was human.
“Release it,” Carmine snapped, bringing silence to the entire hall. Crimson eyes were on us, and interest gleamed in them. A bit of entertainment with their cold dinner.
While trapped for one hundred years in the dungeons, Carmine purposefully weakened himself by keeping his smoke inside. That was how he’d become strong so impossibly fast.
He hated when I didn’t release mine, and I’d assumed that it poked at old dungeon scars. But the choice to release smoke, or to weaken myself by not doing so, was my choice and my choice alone.
“You mind your smoke, and I’ll mind mine.”
His hand clamped down on mine, and he didn’t seem to mind the sharp thorns of his throne embedded into his arm one bit. “Stop fidgeting in that damn dress, Syera, and release it.”
Gratia paused with her wine goblet halfway to her painted lips.
I blew out a breath, recalling my decision to forfeit my ego. You need to play Tiers.
First meeting his furious gaze, I released the tiniest wisp of black smoke. Just enough. No more. Carmine whipped his hand into the haze I’d released. He rubbed his fingers together as my smoke licked over his flesh.
My smoke didn’t hurt him. His smoke didn’t hurt me either. Part of the ritual we’d started.
He lowered his hand, and though he didn’t smile, triumph smoldered in his eyes.
I was well aware of the steps we’d taken in the ritual—first touch, the first kiss, and sex.
Those steps couldn’t be reversed, and everyone knew which steps we had already taken, but apparently Carmine still wanted to gloat.
I broke from his appraisal and returned the stares of the crowd until they got back to eating their cold food. I shifted on the seat, gasping at the brush of sylk over my stomach. I gripped the armrests.
As the demons finished eating, they watched their king for the signal that dinner was over.
Their king?
He hadn’t stopped watching me since the smoke release. If I looked at him, would he look at his minions, and would they look at me? How many times could we go back and forth?
I pressed my legs together, feeling the arch of my chest as I tried to escape the sylk caressing my back.
Fury started to burn in my stomach. Lust often turned to fury, I’d learned. Usually training was the only antidote. Well, the only antidote I would entertain.
“Your grandfather has not been seen in three years,” Carmine said, and I was powerless to stop the arching of my neck, which exposed the skin there for his touch.
I didn’t answer, focusing on breathing through the torture.
“How did you find him?” the demon king asked.
I didn’t answer.
“If I find him, Syera, I will kill him.”
The comment served as a warning, and I looked at Carmine after.
He was literally telling me that if he saw my grandfather again, he would need to kill him.
I’d assumed as much, but why was Carmine warning me?
If he could warn me to protect my grandfather, then couldn’t he decide to let my grandfather live?
I shook my head. This part of him had puzzled me more and more before my escape.
This part of him—the part that appeared to want to be better—had driven up my hopes time and again.
I’d believed that I could change him. Or help him over all his dungeon trauma.
I’d felt that maybe I could fix him. And wasn’t that the cliché trope in every failed romance?
That hope had kept me in this fortress for far longer than I wanted to admit.
“You kill everyone that defies you,” I replied. “I don’t understand why you feel the need to warn me of that.”
I felt Gratia’s intense focus again.
“Then you understand enough,” Carmine cryptically answered. “How did you find him?”
There was no point denying my grandfather’s involvement. “Via the usual channels of finding a person.”