Chapter 5
I sat on the leather couch and stared at the painting of the monster and his reflection that I hated, though I didn’t see it at all this morning. My thoughts were on the person who was locked up miles under my feet in the stony peak. My sister was withering away in a dungeon.
Since I’d discovered the truth, my mind had conjured every nightmare of how she might have been treated in that time. My twin. Locked in a demon dungeon for five years.
Carmine had done that to her, knowing what Tempest meant to me. When he’d confessed to murdering my family, he had purposefully omitted that part. If Carmine had wanted to earn my favor again, releasing Tempest was the perfect way to do so, and yet he’d never done that either.
What did he plan to do with her? Why must she be locked away?
This was when my magus side tried to make sense of everything using magus rules.
Maguskind believed in the mother, a higher power who delivered our power and pulled the strings on a universal level.
I believed in her still, and I also wished that she’d mated me to an accountant, or perhaps mated my mother to an accountant.
Then my family would still be alive, and Tempest wouldn’t be in a dungeon.
Every moment I sat on this couch was a betrayal to my twin, mother, and grandmother. There had to be a way back into Tiers, but two hours in this spot hadn’t revealed that, other than the idea to use the mating ritual against Carmine.
Except that would be against myself too. There were reasons that I didn’t wish to tie more strongly to him.
Tempest, I could really use you right now.
Was that the answer? I needed Tempest.
If I could access my sister’s demon, then she could guide me with that weaving magic she had always used to form her convoluted plans. I had intuition, yes, but only in the moment.
Beyond buttering Carmine up, I had nothing. Nothing to force his hand, and begging for it wouldn’t work either.
Without her magus side, could Tempest still weave her magic in the series of knots and braids that helped her decipher everything? Only the demon part of her remained, and I couldn’t guess what state she was in. I could only imagine having my magus ripped away. Did a person exist after that?
I dragged a hand over my face and dropped it as the door opened.
Gratia.
“Syera, are you prepared for battle?” she asked.
The first time I’d heard that question, my mouth had dried.
After several weeks here at sixteen, I’d realized that was the demon version of “How are you?”.
The question could be an insult when insinuating a demon wasn’t prepared for battle.
To be unprepared for battle was about the worst thing a demon could be.
Carmine’s sister had asked the question in a pleasant enough manner just now.
While I could still see her burning dislike, I could also see any number of other aspects I’d been too young to notice about her.
I saw the grace she’d been trained to have.
I saw her power and privilege in her slight smirk.
I saw intelligence and cunning as she scanned the room, and I saw uncertainty too.
Buried deeper—nearly as deeply as my sister was buried underfoot.
Gratia didn’t know what my presence meant.
She didn’t know what my presence meant for her brother, nor her family.
She didn’t know who I was any longer, and what might’ve happened to make me that way.
To Gratia, those unanswered questions had made her uncertain indeed.
Gratia, I’d put together after leaving this prison, lived and served to protect her family.
She was the loyal sister of a demon king.
If he was protected, then she and any family or mate she gained one day, would be protected too.
He was her survival, and in true demon fashion, she would help to ensure that remained the case always.
Carmine’s sister did not like what I was making her feel. Oddly, Gratia must have liked the sixteen-year-old version of me much more.
For me now, liking her was neither here nor there. I noted that she was like her mother, but less abrasive—by her mother’s design. One came at you with a poisoned dagger, and the other came at you with a poisoned smile.
Gratia smiled as if on cue. “Has a nismus got your tongue?”
My heart pounded with her choice of idiom. The mention of the white-scaled nismus that prowled the outer desert plains of the realm was too close to home. “I find myself in agreement with Carmine.”
Gratia wasn’t stupid. She sensed the trap. “Oh?”
“A fast conversation is a good one. What do you want?”
The female demon was used to dealing with her brother, but I saw a glimmer in her eyes. “Why are you here?”
“Because I love your brother.”
She grinned, and I had genuinely amused her. Along with myself.
“You loved my brother once. In your weak human way. But not now.”
“I’ve never been human.”
“You behave like a human. You are human.”
I cocked a brow. “There are any number of supernatural creatures in the Earth realm, Gratia, as you know. Most of us live more like humans than demons.”
“I know they are human because they behave like humans.”
Pretty sure humans didn’t transform into wolves, like Luthers, or drink blood like Vissimo.
Or trap you in truth, like fairies. Let alone cast charms as a magus might.
“You know very little, Gratia, and that is why you put all Earth realm creatures in a box, because you don’t wish to show your ignorance and appear weak. ”
Wisps of crimson smoke curled off her skin.
Gratia was a powerful demoness in her own right.
Crimson scales covered one-third of her body.
She hadn’t grown much in power since I’d last seen her, though, which indicated a level of laziness or complacency.
The duty of protecting her younger brother was drummed into her, yet she had spent most of her life—even while Carmine was locked away—in the royal fortress.
She understood conflict, and had never worked very much for anything.
I’d thought her powerful beyond measure, but now I saw that she lacked the drive of someone who’d endured hardship.
Carmine had endured that hardship. So had I.
Without a similar test, Gratia would remain the least of herself and not the most powerful.
She was still Carmine’s sister, which wasn’t a bad deal in the calculating eyes of this realm.
Gratia circled the back of the couch, and I resumed my stare at the painting, ignoring her. Carmine would be pissed if she hurt me, and I was more than capable of protecting myself.
“The human got claws,” she murmured.
“Would you like to see them?”
“I saw them last night. Embedded in my brother’s arm, if memory serves. You intend to kill my brother.”
It took everything in me not to tense. She’d gone to the heart of the matter. “Am I so transparent?”
“But no,” she mused as if I hadn’t spoken. “That would be suicide. You are mated.”
“Half-mated,” I said despite myself. My grandfather had survived the death of my grandmother, and I was hoping that being half-mated would make all the difference to my survival when I cut off Carmine’s head.
But if Carmine’s death caused my own, then yes, I intended to take my own life.
Gratia had disregarded my murderous motive because she couldn’t fathom why I’d give my life.
I had two someones to give my life for.
She trailed a crimson fingernail over the back of the couch. “Is it painful, dear sister?”
“Being half-mated? I’ve had worse.”
The demoness paused at that. “I almost believe you.”
Worse was realizing the person you loved had lied to you from the start and killed everyone you loved. That was pain.
My lips curved. “You should. And you, Gratia. Are you prepared for battle?”
“As always.”
I did believe she thought that to be true.
Gratia moved to the cold fireplace and faced me. “Mother will return in two days.”
“Joy.”
Confusion flickered in her eyes. Another word that didn’t exist in the demon dictionary.
“You make fun because you do not like her,” Carmine’s sister correctly deduced.
Did anyone like Carmine’s mother? She’d formed her reputation on being hated.
Demons didn’t like her, and so part of them loved her.
Depended on her. Believed in her. If a demon looked at Carmine wrong, they’d have his mother to deal with.
She was the unrelenting, vicious-to-the-core protector of her son and her line.
In short, his mother was fucking scary. Three years hadn’t been enough time to downplay her terror.
As mothers-in-law went, I’d pulled the very, very short straw.
Gratia raised a hand to the fireplace mantel, and her sylk dress—modest by demon standards and more like lingerie by human standards—slithered across her crimson scales. She’d worn sylk to fuck with me after last night’s banquet.
“Carmine says that you wish to reenter Tiers,” she said.
“I do.”
Gratia looked at me. “Which means you need or want something. Desperately.”
“I’d say that’s a given.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What could you need or want that being with Carmine can’t get you? He would give you nearly anything. He would have done so when you were a weak human too. Now that you might be worthy, you could name your price, and he would pay it.”
She had answered her own question with the “nearly anything.”
My price was one he would never pay, because if he wanted to pay it, he would have freed Tempest already to win my favor.
Perhaps he didn’t wish for my favor any longer—there was always that. But demons served their own interests nearly always. Carmine was no different. Whether by lust or by deeper feeling for me, I believed he would have freed Tempest already if he was ever going to.
I approached Gratia, and the demoness tensed. With good reason. I was more powerful than her now. If I wanted, and with considerable effort, I could kill her. Carmine wouldn’t hurt me, though he may punish me severely.
“You must have been so disappointed when Carmine returned from the Earth realm with me.” I snorted after.
Because after several years’ distance from the turmoil of that time, I could appreciate how that would’ve appeared.
The demon king had returned with a half-drowned, wide-eyed magus-demon, who spoke and behaved like a human and had no clue about demons.
My demon magic gave me inherent knowledge of nearly everything here, but the influx of that power at sixteen when combined with my grief had delayed my smoke and knowledge.
But Carmine had never shown any trace of embarrassment in that first year, or the year after.
I was woman enough to give him credit for that. And woman enough to laugh at the irony of everything that had happened.
Gratia’s red eyes lit with amusement. “Disappointed is an understatement. Yet Carmine told us to bide our time. He reminded us a blade is forged. He said that you possessed everything needed to become the most lethal weapon in this realm. I seem to recollect wishing to laugh every time he reminded us of that.”
I was sure she had. “If that’s all, it’s been a pleasure.”
“I can see what he meant now,” she said to my back.
Hell just froze over. Gratia complimented me. I glanced back. “Shall we be friends then?”
“That is something that remains to be seen.”
“If only my memory wasn’t quite so good,” I replied.
She’d humiliated me more than once during my time here.
When the other crimsons had seen how Gratia had treated me, they had felt comfortable doing the same.
Carmine was the ruler. His mother was the protector.
Gratia held the strings of the royals in the fortress.
I had always held the strings wherever I went, so the experience I’d had here at sixteen was very much a first.
Gratia shrugged a shoulder. “I did wonder if I might be your blacksmith for a time. The forger of your blade. Alas.”
I tilted my head, thinking back to the string of months when she’d tormented me.
“You want to play Tiers,” she said, and unlike her brother, I could see Gratia didn’t particularly care why I wanted to play the game.
She’d been trained for one purpose, and per her reasoning, I couldn’t pose a threat to her brother because that would pose a threat to myself.
Anything I desperately wanted was insignificant.
What I could do was strengthen her brother by completing the mating ritual with him, and if I’d become a lethal blade in the meantime, then even better.
Gratia wanted to get me on board.
I paused. “And what can you offer me?”
“Knowledge.”
Knowledge was a powerful thing. Knowledge of my twin in the dungeons had made me enter Tiers despite the dangers, after all. Knowledge could change a person’s life. “I’m listening, but not for much longer.”
“My brother cannot deny anything which makes the realm or his position at its head more powerful,” she stated. “If you wish to play Tiers, then this is what you must convince him of, or he will never allow you back in. Nothing else will work.”
Not even my hot bod?
“You can have that one for free,” she said, walking back the way she’d come. “Considering our history.”
I hummed. “Only four more to go then.”
She stopped. “Four more?”
“Knowledge or a… boon… for every time you acted the blacksmith, as you like to call it.” I smiled sweetly. “You know, considering our history.”
Once out of her sight, I rested a hand against the wall, my mind heavy with the knowledge she’d imparted. Because she was right. I’d never once seen Carmine do anything other than what best served the realm’s interest. Be that cold murder, lies, cruelty, or theft.
The area under my ribs pulsed, and I nodded to my intuition. “I know.”
Gratia just gave me the ticket to return to Tiers.
I just had to figure out how to redeem it.