Chapter 15 #2
I cocked a brow. “They don’t. Normally.”
I clapped my hands a few times, and when that failed, I cast out my magic in warning. “You’re really not going to move? It’s like you want to be eaten.”
From ten feet away I could see that the beast wasn’t an old one, and not young either. A female nismus, pregnant. “So what, you want my help?”
She stamped her hooves that were flatter than a horse’s to help navigate the sand.
“Stay here,” I murmured.
“Where are you going?” he whispered.
I lifted a shoulder. “To see what she wants.”
I approached the nismus, keeping my magic at the ready. The creature lowered her head at my approach and then extended a powerful leg. Uh. “What do you want?”
The creature lifted her head and gazed at me. After bowing…
This was a new one for me. White scales had always stayed out of our way. Still, she didn’t seem inclined to attack either. Was she in labor? Had pregnancy robbed her of her senses? I could relate to that.
“Come on,” I called over my shoulder. “She doesn’t mean us any harm.”
I kept Adeuto in front of me on the way back, sensing that the creature followed us from a distance.
When we got back, Adeuto climbed up the ladder to peer over the top of the dune. “Mama, she’s still out there.”
“She can’t hurt us.”
She could, and she could really hurt a three-year-old demon. If I’d considered leaving before, then that choice was long gone. This shack would crumble under a few of her stamps and a magical charge or two.
I descaled the rte and tenderized the meat, then set Adeuto to the task of rolling the flesh in Hythre leaves.
There were just enough. Hythre leaves were sour and savory taste all at once.
It was akin to shoving lemon and bay leaves up a chicken’s butt.
Hythre came with the added benefit of locking in the moisture of the meat.
Which was pretty much crucial for everything we cooked here. Lean was an understatement.
Adeuto dug into the meal like he hadn’t already eaten a day’s worth of rations. “Want some, Mama?”
I shook my head. “I ate before I came.”
The afternoon disappeared as I played with Adeuto—while keeping an eye on the nismus, who never circled closer than a hundred feet away.
Come on, Grandfather.
He would take longer this trip because of extra precautions. He wouldn’t purposefully keep Adeuto alone and waiting, but Grandfather knew that I’d be here at this time. He just didn’t know I’d been here all day.
I exhaled, considering Carmine’s reaction. Eight hours away from the fortress already. I was usually gone for four. In another hour, the evening’s festivities would start—a quaint little game of Tiers for royals. With adjustments, of course. Bleh.
“Mama?” Adeuto giggled. “You’re smoking.”
I grimaced and pulled my smoke in. “So I am.”
“Why?”
The question wasn’t asked on a whim, or even out of childish curiosity.
In my childhood, and later in the demon realm, I was never really interested in kids.
Now that I had my own, I didn’t know any other kids to compare to mine.
But I knew that Adeuto possessed an innate wisdom.
In his eyes and mind, I saw a person far older.
I’d felt that wisdom the first time I looked at him.
And when he’d started to move, I’d seen that wisdom, and when he’d started speaking, I’d heard that wisdom too.
Perhaps all children were as wise as the day they were born. I couldn’t say.
But Adeuto was.
Despite that, I didn’t wish him to carry burdens. I wished him lightness and dreams.
But that wisdom made him too smart for my lies. So when Adeuto had asked about his father a year ago, I had told him about Carmine and that his father was not a good person.
Adeuto knew that I was “handling his father” while away.
“I’m thinking about your father,” I answered.
“How you’re going to handle him?”
Murder him, I silently corrected. “Yes.”
“Is he really bad, Mama?”
I nodded. “But I will never let him get to you, my love. You have nothing to fear.”
Adeuto looked at the carved nismus in his little hands. We’d been reliving the time that the nismus followed us home from the hunt. “Will you always come home, Mama?”
I wrapped my arms around him. “There is little that can stop me, Adeuto, especially when it comes to you. If there is ever a time when I cannot return, what do you do?”
“Wait here with Grandy.”
I nodded. “I’ll return when I can.” If I can.
“If you can,” Adeuto said, his voice wobbling.
“If I can, my love, yes.” I gripped his chin.
“But you should never doubt all the things I am capable of doing for you, Adeuto. Never. A mother can move the world for her child. She can do the impossible. What I’m doing is for you, Adeuto, and for me—for Grandy too.
This had to happen, darling, whether now or in three more years.
Nothing that is happening is your fault.
Nothing that might come to be is your fault.
Sometimes, we just need to do hard things.
I can tell you one thing, though. Want to hear it? ”
I wiped his face as he nodded.
“I love you more than anything in all the realms in the world.”
“Even the fairy one?”
“Even the fairy one,” I said, squeezing him tight.