Chapter 14
My jaw cracked on a yawn.
Gratia cocked a brow my way, not otherwise pausing in conversation with a few lesser crimsons. I was meant to be feigning interest.
I shook my head, then leaned closer to the group.
The three women leaned away, except for Gratia.
Oops. Making friends, which I had never done, was going to be my potential downfall in this place.
These people couldn’t be won over with a bloodthirsty display, either, so I had to figure out what would win them over because clearly entering their personal space was unwelcome.
Gratia cleared her throat. “I’m going to spend time in the fortress gardens tomorrow morning. Would the three of you care to join?”
A demon’s idea of a garden was not the same as the Earth definition, but the women fell over themselves accepting the invitation.
“I’ll come too,” I said.
The three crimsons exchanged glances.
“Won’t it be lovely?” I smiled at them.
They blanched, and Gratia smirked.
Shit.
I escaped to the throne shortly after. That I considered sitting next to Carmine as an escape outlined just how bad I was at networking.
Carmine didn’t acknowledge me.
“No greeting?” I murmured. “I expected a proposal to buy more power by fucking you at the very least.”
The orange scale pouring me a drink squeaked and hastened away.
Carmine glanced at me, then resumed his unseeing stare across the room while tapping a finger on his armrest.
I sipped my nectar drink and hummed. “The gates, is it?”
He tensed.
The gates indeed. “Everyone was tense in the training hall. Must be a doozy.”
“Not something to discuss here,” he said quietly. In warning.
Bet he didn’t know what “doozy” meant.
I sighed. “Then take a load off, demon king. Don’t worry about something you have no control over.”
Carmine shifted on his throne. “I have control.”
I peered around. “Not from this ballroom you don’t.”
He grunted. “That is perhaps true. But this won’t last long.”
“You’re king, Carmine. Surely you can go wherever you want when you’re attacking other supernatural races.”
“I’m not attacking them,” he surprised me by answering. “Yet.”
I took another sip. “Recon then. I don’t blame you. Magus magic is nothing to sneeze at.”
Carmine’s gaze landed on me, and that seemed to confirm that magus were his first target.
“I have learned that much from knowing you, Syera. And from fighting your family. Your grandmother came close to beating me. If your twin had not been injured in the crash and needed your mother’s attention, then I believe you all may have united to conquer me. ”
“We can only dream,” I replied, shoving back fury.
His focus remained on me. “And if you had not been revealed as my mate, enamai. That filled me with a power unlike I had ever known.”
“How fortunate.” Tygrio was dancing in front of me, and I snorted at the twinkling look in his eye.
Every day he lived was a fucking delight to me.
“Look away from the boy, Syera,” said Carmine. “I’m in no mood for it tonight.”
“You’re in a mood every night. Make that every day and night. This mood is not the bad one.”
Carmine tilted his head. “Explain.”
I looked at him. “This version of you isn’t the bad one. This mood is just a normal stressed and worried and uncertain mood. But you can leave your icy alter ego at home any day.”
The demon king watched me without speaking.
I wrinkled my nose. “Though he doesn’t stare so much.”
“He does,” Carmine said gravely, then faced the dancers once more. They were wasting their pelvises on him tonight. He didn’t notice any of it.
The doors burst open as two armored crimsons strode in. Sota and Steth, who walked a few steps behind in recognition of her lower position.
Sota bent closer to Carmine. “Your Majesty, you asked to be alerted…”
Carmine nodded, then picked up my hand and pressed a kiss to the back. “Sleep well, enamai.”
He rose and strode off, followed by his soldiers.
I rubbed his kiss off my hand, pursing my lips after. Carmine was leaving for the demon gates. Or at least to command the demon gates. Steth—his mother’s favorite—was also occupied at the gates, and Carmine’s mother wasn’t in the fortress.
I’d spoken to Grandfather of this today, and my heart pounded at the swiftness with which fate had delivered me with an opportunity to see the dungeons.
I didn’t need the twinge in my gut to get me moving. The king had left, which meant leaving was fair game. Other demons were already departing for the night, probably ecstatic at the early end to festivities.
I slammed my goblet down and made for the same door Carmine just left through. Nothing amiss. The door led to our personal quarters.
The issue was making it to the dungeons without the servants seeing me—and obviously, the guards.
Though… the servant doors nearest our personal rooms wouldn’t be in use right now. Not while the servants were clearing up the ballroom.
There was nothing for it. No amount of waiting would make this gamble any better. Sure, the royals may go to sleep eventually, but Carmine would also return and hear me creeping out of bed and through the halls.
An orange scale hurried across the end of the hall toward the ballroom. When the coast was clear, I cracked open the nearest servant door and slipped inside.
I crept down, then pressed my ear to the stone at the bottom. I couldn’t hear anyone, but the instant my hands pressed against stone, a warning flared in my gut.
I stopped pushing. Footsteps.
I tried again, but my instincts flared again.
Nearly ten minutes later, a softer tendril finally worked through me. The go-ahead. I slipped outside and hurried to the nearest door.
My gut panged.
Oops, not that one.
I skirted down the hall, testing doors until one warmed under my touch. I slipped inside and drew the door closed after, clapping a hand over my mouth when voices sounded in the hall that I’d just left. Close call didn’t begin to describe that.
Calm, Syera.
But how could I be calm when I hadn’t even expected to get this far? Now I had to face the reality that I was actually going to the dungeons. If I was caught from here on out, there was no going back.
Could I go back anyway?
I braced myself with an inhale. Nope.
The descending stairs were dark—as demons preferred, including me. They were narrower and steeper than those I’d just traversed. I crept down.
And down.
And down some more.
I listened to drips of water and tried to lessen the splash of my boots in the pooling water on the stone steps. Alarmed scuttling warned me of creatures on the walls and on the ceiling, and the increasingly dank smell drew up a vision of stagnant water and algae.
Five years in this place.
I almost turned around for fear of what I’d find of my sister.
The floor leveled out. Somewhat. I picked up pace.
But not long passed before my divination magic flared. I froze. Voices.
My magus magic tugged me forward, and I moved on silent feet, spinning into a branching passage that I hadn’t seen.
“Athi ist kws,” hissed one demon to another. I hate this work.
Demons were a lot like humans sometimes.
A woman replied in Demon, “I like the shadows, but I like bed better.”
They laughed together, and I focused on invisible thoughts as they passed me by.
The guards were changing shifts.
I’d say that luck was with me, but this much luck was impossible. My divination magic was responsible for saving my ass.
I didn’t move until their voices faded above. The next set of guards would arrive shortly.
I opted for speed over caution, feeling confident that my warning system wouldn’t fail me.
How deep is this place?
I couldn’t help but think of my sister, torn apart and locked here for so long, but my thoughts also, unwillingly, drifted to another who had been locked in here for one hundred years.
One. Hundred. Years. In this dripping, moldy, cold place. At the same age as I’d lost my entire family, Carmine had been trapped in this place for a century by my father.
Carmine’s father before that had allowed his son to live beyond birth, convinced by his queen that Carmine could be utilized in that time. On the sidelines, she had helped Carmine to forge plans to survive until the day they would need to kill the king.
When my father entered the scene and killed the king for them, he’d then locked Carmine down here for immortality. Carmine had escaped to conquer him, but not before one hundred years had passed. That was my entire life practically five times over.
No wonder Carmine was deranged. How did any person survive this intact?
I had disorders, and I’d spent most of my life with a loving—albeit gore- and maim-loving—family.
My heart squeezed at the thought of who Carmine might have been without a century in the dungeon.
Would the icy version of him have taken hold? We might have been happy.
Until I’d birthed Adeuto, and then I would’ve had to kill Carmine anyway.
Mother be, I should feel grateful that I hated my mate-intended so much. To kill someone you detested was one thing, but to kill someone you loved.
A mate.
No wonder Carmine’s mother was so unhinged. She hadn’t killed her mate in the end, but she’d spent many years expecting to. Maybe even plotting how to do so.
Their history had been longer and more filled with despair and loss and heartache than I could understand. And I never wished to experience that firsthand.
Magus magic arrested my movement, and I sucked in a breath as instinct froze me.
My ears tuned to the sounds of the dungeon.
No sound other than dripping. I scented the air, then scented the area again with my magic, though I didn’t wish to leave any signs of my passage.
The pools of water would eradicate physical signs, but magical signs would linger in a different way.
The barrier across the passage was so subtle that I stood for a full minute before discovering it. I released a shaking exhale once I did. Mother be.
I’d nearly charged into that.
The barrier was his. Hidden crimson in the dark, climbing in the passageway like a vine, and mere cracks in the rock.
Camouflaged. Lethal. I’d never seen a demon make a barrier, but perhaps I could thank myself for inspiring Carmine to do so.
He’d watched me make barriers time and again, though mine were weak single-affinity barriers compared to those of other magus.
Carmine’s barrier. My magic warned against touching the barrier with my magic or body. Those instincts warned against walking any further, and there was no tug in any other direction.
I considered the gem in my boot that the mother gifted me through Adeuto. Reaching down, I worked the gem free and held it tight in both hands. I got the sense of warmth and reassurance again, but nothing more. I tucked the gem away.
Looked like I’d made it to the end of the road.
My chest rose and fell as I stared down the passage. The prisoners must be close—or just the single prisoner. My twin could be around the corner.
I licked my lips and looked at the barrier. My voice wasn’t frozen. There was no vise around my throat.
“Tempest,” I croaked.
I winced as my voice echoed forward, and no doubt up. The new guards must be on their way down. I had to return to the branching passage to await them going past. So many people relied on me not getting caught.
I was surely pushing fate in the wrong direction.
“Tempest,” I whispered louder. “It’s me. I’m here, and you’re going to be okay.”
It’s me.
Did she recognize my voice? Her voice filled the longing and grieving dreams and nightmares of my heart.
A shuffle and a scrape.
I lifted my head, feeling the desperate honing of my senses on the sound. “Tempest.” Mother be, I wanted to charge through this barrier. I wanted to scream. I wanted to ask so many questions.
“Are you okay?” I sobbed and pressed a hand against my mouth.
Crying? I hadn’t cried over anyone other than Adeuto in years.
Another scrape and shuffle, a clank of chains.
There was someone down there. Those weren’t the sounds of scratching and slithering dungeon critters.
A thin voice rasped, “Not.”
I gasped at the word. Was that her? The voice was female but nothing like I recalled. But she could be sick. Five years in this place… She could be starving and exhausted and torn apart. Unused to talking too. This could be the voice of her demon side.
Or I could be speaking to a complete stranger.
A stranger that Carmine found important enough to lock away. I shook my head as panic crowded me. No. No. There was only one person important enough to lock away. Make that two, but I was mated to him. My twin was the only other threat to his throne.
“I have a plan,” I called. “You’re going to be okay, but there’s a barrier here. I need to figure it out. I’ll be back. I promise you.”
I had no idea how to unlock this barrier without alerting Carmine, but I’d get to Tempest even if I had to tear this fucking realm apart.
A minute passed with no reply. I really had to get out of here.
I turned to leave.
“Sister.” She sounded so frail. So tired.
Tears flowed down my cheeks, and I clenched my shaking hands into fists. “Please hold on.”
With that, I finally obeyed the frantic tugging in my gut to leave. To somehow, despite the fury and desperation in me, turn away from my hurt and trapped twin.
But as I blurred up the passage toward the hidden nook where I’d await the new guards to pass, each step brought me fresh confidence. More and more until I was as strong as the woman who had first entered Tiers.
Stronger, and as focused on her task. She had no time for shame or uncertainty unless they could help her save the people she loved.
Which… perhaps they could.
The work that Carmine had done on me so far was burned away like the curling edges of paper.
Only desperation remained.
More of it than ever.