Chapter 9
“Mama back tomorrow?”
There was a specific type of pain reserved for mothers.
The type of pain you felt when you weren’t providing enough for your child’s heart.
Would Adeuto remember my absences as I played Tiers?
Would our connection fade when his innocent adoration for me faded and he became an adult in his own right?
His pain was my pain.
I wanted to be here with him every moment, and that I couldn’t—that I had to deal with his father—made me hate Carmine more. I blamed him in the same way other demons in Tiers did, because if Carmine was suddenly gone, then all of my problems would disappear.
If I’d never met Carmine, though, I never would have fallen pregnant.
Even after hearing the truth of my family’s murder, I may not have found the strength to leave if I hadn’t discovered my pregnancy.
Demon pregnancies were rare, so Carmine had never suspected the truth.
We had only been sleeping together for a few months, after all.
Usually such things took decades and centuries.
Demon pregnancies were faster than human ones, too, and far more intense. If not for my grandfather, I might not have made it. But he’d brought me to the desert, to this place where he’d hidden when Carmine first granted him mercy.
My grandfather had known how to hide me. To hide us.
I’d given birth in this shack and screamed Adeuto into being. And he’d become my world. With him came so much joy and love. With him came more fear than I had known was possible.
“I will be back tomorrow, my little love,” I said. I kissed his forehead and breathed him in. “I love you so much.”
Adeuto held a finger next to his eye, then to his heart, then pointed at me.
I smiled. “Thank you. Now, to sleep.”
“The sun comes up, and I get out of bed,” he told me seriously.
“That’s right. If it’s dark, stay in bed. You’re such a big boy now,” I answered just as seriously. I stole one last kiss and swallowed down the urge to climb into bed beside him and ignore everything I’d started.
I pulled the curtain across his small bed and walked outside, sitting on one of the two flat rocks I’d lugged here from about a mile away.
“Are you prepared for battle?” my grandfather asked, gutting a Svoli. We’d had dinner, but life out here meant little rest. If you weren’t eating, then you were thinking or preparing for the next meal.
I sighed. “Less so than usual.”
“He gets under your skin. Have you returned to his bed?”
Demon grandfathers were a little different. Then again, my magus grandmother might’ve asked the same question. Or she just would have killed Carmine for me. I was sure she’d tried her best to do so before her end. “No, and I won’t.”
“The boy’s life depends on that.” The blue demon grunted.
The blue demon who had landed a crimson mate and helped to create a son of extreme power, and then somehow survived his mate’s death too.
“I know.” His warning sharpened my mind. I’d needed the reminder of my purpose tonight.
He lowered his dagger. “Do you?”
I glared. “Do I know that Carmine would murder his son? Yes, I fucking know.”
There were animals that did the same, but in this realm, demon kings killed any threat to their throne, including their own sons.
Some kings let their sons live until the age of sixteen—as in Carmine’s case—until demon power surfaced.
Others killed their sons immediately. The only way sons managed to ascend the throne at all was if they received help, usually from their mothers.
Even if I believed Carmine capable of controlling that icy monster of his—which I didn’t—I was a mother, and the potential of harm coming to my child was enough to never risk Carmine learning of his son.
And that was why Carmine had to die.
So my son wouldn’t.
That was the only way out of this. That was why I would never change my mind about Carmine. Because what I felt for Adeuto could not be matched. Not ever.
My grandfather tossed the meager strips of meat into the pot over the in-ground fire, then he opened a portal and tossed the innards through. “I see that.”
“A mating ritual can be broken. Why did you never tell me?”
Blue scales covered nearly every part of his body.
My grandfather was a demon through and through, and I could only be thankful that his loincloth was more like a Tarzan skirt.
Otherwise, the only difference between my grandfather and other demons was that he had lived a rather different life to most.
“You needed the king’s protection, and I could not be sure that you wouldn’t break the ritual on your bad nights.”
I nodded, moving past the betrayal of his omission. Maybe I was more demon than I thought because his admission didn’t hurt me. My grandfather didn’t owe me anything, and he’d done right because I would have taken the way out if I’d had the option and knowledge. “How is it done?”
“You trust yourself?”
“I do.”
“Mating coats the iron casing around your heart. Because of that, your soul recognizes the mating as part of you. Get between the coating and your iron, and your soul will recognize the mating as a foreign force. It will annihilate the ritual for you.”
The magus in me had expected an elaborate charm or thrice-woven barrier. Maybe a trip to the ghosts of my ancestors. Sometimes I loved how straightforward demons were. “The effect?”
“You will be out of action for anywhere from a day to a month. The power you have gained from the mating ritual so far will be lost. You will never be able to mate with the king again.”
I considered all of that. “Is breaking a ritual common?”
“If mates do not remain together out of strong feeling, then they remain together for power. No, breaking a ritual is not common.” He set to mashing up the brains of the Svoli, then paused after. “Your grandmother remained with me for power.”
I didn’t say I was sorry. My grandfather would have no clue what I meant. “I didn’t know.”
“Her love for your father, our son, was real. I knew she would give her life. And so, at the right time, I ensured that I would live on by breaking our mating in the manner I described.”
I couldn’t detect any guilt in his words, and the amazing thing about my kind was that demons really didn’t feel guilt very often or at all.
They did what they were capable of doing and didn’t apologize for it.
Maybe I struggled to agree with their choices sometimes, but part of me could appreciate the simplicity of their ways.
Use the knife or be stabbed by the knife.
“You told me you were unconscious for weeks.”
“I was. Two and a half weeks. You will be out for longer.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because you loved the demon king. My mate never loved me, and I never loved her.”
My grandmother and grandfather had shared one love, though, their son. My grandfather had sorely felt the loss of his child, and he might hate Carmine even more than me. I could only hate Carmine that much if he hurt Adeuto.
Now, my grandfather loved my son as he had loved his own.
I’d learned that my grandfather existed half in fantasy.
In the fantasy, Adeuto was his real son, and they were both safe from the burden and blood spilling that came with immense power.
Because of that, my grandfather feared nothing more than history repeating itself.
It was why I didn’t fear leaving each day.
He knew Carmine had to die for Adeuto to live.
Then my grandfather’s fantasy could live on too.
I was the only one capable of making that happen, so my grandfather needed me, and therefore I could trust him. A thriving example of a healthy demon relationship.
Beyond that, though, I believed there was something real between us.
I was his granddaughter, and that meant something to him.
There was a relief in his blue gaze when he looked at me.
Unlike Adeuto, Carmine would never hunt me.
Not now I was his mate-intended. Though if I hadn’t been, then he would have killed me like the threat to the throne I was. As my twin had discovered.
How different might life have been if I had birthed a girl?
My grandfather would have told me how to break the mating ritual years ago, and I might have carved out a life here that wasn’t always overshadowed by fear of the future.
A girl’s smoke would erupt like all demons coming into their own, but hers wouldn’t be a death sentence.
Carmine might have learned of her, but he wouldn’t have any reason to kill our daughter. Females did not rule the demon realm.
“How was Adeuto today?”
“Spilled everything given to him. Cried half the day. Laughed the rest of it. Typical child.”
I smiled, but a mother’s pain permeated my chest. I might have just had my last conversation with my son. Winning Tiers tomorrow wasn’t assured, especially with the assumption that all the contestants in the Pinnacle would unite against me.
Even if I made it through Tiers tomorrow, would Carmine let me portal away from the fortress? I didn’t want Adeuto to be a child who remembered his mother’s empty promise. “Does he miss me?”
“Yes.”
Guilt crushed me. Oh to be a full-blooded demon.
My grandfather draped the Svoli skin over a rock. “Missing you is inevitable. He has no doubt of your love for him. He will live because of what you do today and the next.”
As I was painfully aware. I stood. “Please make sure he eats his vegetables.”
“I’m his grandfather. I’ll do what I want.”
I’d tried. “Do you need anything?”
“No, granddaughter. Begone. Show no mercy in Tiers tomorrow, and if you get a chance to kill the slug who rules us, do so slowly and painfully.”
Just a few kind words of encouragement from a grandfather to his granddaughter. I opened a portal to one of my hideaway points. “I’ll do my best.”
Three portals, a dunking in a river, and a change of clothes later, and I stepped through into my room again.
I sat on the bed and stared at the stone wall of my chamber, my thoughts with my sleeping child who now seemed five worlds away.
I wanted to give up.
I wanted to bide my time with my son and bear witness to his every smile. I wanted to raise him and protect him as I only trusted myself to do.
Like any mother, I couldn’t do it all.
But what I could do was win Tiers and request my twin’s demon be freed from the dungeons.
I could help her escape to the Earth realm to warn the other supernaturals about the gates and Carmine’s plans to conquer them.
I could allow the powerful rulers of the Vissimo, Luthers, and magus to do the lion’s share of weakening Carmine before I stepped forward to kill him for good.
That was what I could do.
That was what I must do for my son.