Chapter 19
Stalls of goods and produce were arranged in rows in the dirt garden. Demons from the realm below had hauled their produce and wares up the peak to feed and entertain the crimsons for the evening.
I shifted on my throne, stomach rumbling. I hadn’t dared eat during my visit with Adeuto. Their supplies had to last as long as possible. If I portaled back late again, then Carmine would definitely murder my designers.
At my warning, Grandfather had double-checked the emergency packs. We had a second hideaway point, and even a third, but the nature of demon magic made it hard to set up any warning system. Even my magus magic could be sensed.
Grandfather would have to rely on his blue senses against those of a crimson. If she found them, then at best, he would manage to send a smoke signal.
The thought that they could be discovered at any moment made me want to be sick.
“Your thoughts are far away tonight,” murmured Carmine. “And you are hungry.”
He stood and extended his forearm. The fight to remain seated would steal more mental space than I could currently donate.
I descended from the throne with him, then walked around the stalls. He passed me a sweet bread, which I accepted on autopilot, but the small nibbles I took felt like rocks in my stomach.
Which was a point. My gut wasn’t warning me. There was nothing more important to me than Adeuto, so I trusted that my gut would warn me when needed. Carmine’s mother wasn’t going to find my son today.
I needed to keep up the act and pull myself out of fear.
Carmine glanced at me for the tenth time, then said, “My war council was impressed with you.”
“Were they?” I mumbled. “I couldn’t tell.”
“They don’t give away much. That’s why they are on my council.”
I nodded and tried to give some focus to the surrounding stalls.
The demons behind the stalls both wanted and dreaded the king’s attention on them.
I drifted my focus over their wares. Crimsons were crowded around a games stall.
Aside from games involving bloodshed, demons liked games of cunning.
They had a game similar to chess, called sehd.
There was a game named nekos that used wooden tokens—it was a combination of cunning and bloodshed, as the winner of each round got to stab a pin through their opponent’s hand. That was my idea of fun.
The inventions littering other tables were of the tried and true variety. Demons were very slow to change, and there was a beauty in the proven timelessness of the gadgets and tools here. The smallest improvement or alteration in such a gadget would always be viewed with awe and suspicion.
Loincloth stands.
Nipple string stands.
Cloaks too. Because loincloths and nipple string got chilly sometimes, though I had to credit the vendors with their creativity. There were a lot of ways to modify loincloths and nipple string.
Food, food, and more food.
My gaze settled on a dagger display, and more importantly, on the purple demon behind the table. I choked on laughter. “Ah, here we go.”
Carmine turned to follow my look. “What is it? Do you know him?”
“Wait and see.”
If Gratia had decided not to pursue her purple demon, then I was afraid destiny was about to truly screw her.
The demon princess swept down the stone stairs from the fortress and glided between the rows of stalls.
She greeted a few crimsons here and there, then stopped to accept a tasty morsel on a stick before she caught sight of us.
She frowned at my staring, and I felt Carmine’s attention on me too.
I just held Gratia’s gaze, then pointed to the purple.
She followed the direction of my finger.
And then, I seemed to recollect that she would feel as though the entire world had disappeared to recenter on one individual. Gratia staggered forward. All of her ties would be cut in one swipe of a blade. Beside me, Carmine grunted at the loss.
Soon power would explode in her. Gratia screamed.
And last, she would be consumed with the drive to mate. Both of their heads snapped up as something akin to fury filled their expressions.
Usually now the weaker demon would faint.
Which he did.
Gratia staggered forward as the purple collapsed to the dirt. The surrounding demons were realizing that something was amiss with the princess. They cleared the space, and then shocked gasps erupted.
Let the turmoil and heartache begin.
“A purple,” Carmine mused, then sighed in relief. “That is well.”
I glanced up at him. “Why?”
“I won’t need to kill her children.”
I studied his relief. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d care.”
“You imply there’s choice.”
“There is always choice.”
Carmine didn’t answer. “Mother will object.”
I laughed. Yep, Gratia didn’t owe me any more favors—though she didn’t need to know that. We were more than even now.
“Come, enamai. I can see you are determined not to eat. Let us return to the thrones to make our announcement.”
I nearly asked what announcement, then remembered my wedding day.
I tried to eat more of the sweet bread on the way back.
I really did need my strength for Tiers tomorrow.
I’d barely had time to contemplate a strategy, relying on the hour or two after tonight’s festivities to scrape something together.
At least keeping myself busy was helping me to manage my lust. I chose to believe that was to blame instead of the orgasm I’d grinded my way into.
We were nearly at the stairs to the thrones when a red demon stepped into my path. He bowed very low, then extended a wrapped gift to me.
“Mate-Intended,” he said. “Please accept this small token as a congratulations on your upcoming joining with our powerful king.”
Yikes. I accepted the token. “Thank you, demon.”
I could feel the tension in Carmine’s forearm as we walked up to our thrones. The secret was out, and the entire realm knew.
Ha!
His gaze was upon me. “You informed the servants.”
I cleared my throat. “I was excited. I couldn’t keep our… love, uh, contained.”
Carmine brought the back of my hand to his lips. “Enamai…”
I hummed in question.
He looked into my gaze. “Be careful.”
After Tiers tomorrow, my dresses would be delivered, which would piss him off.
But after that, I’d be more careful. Well, actually, there would be my joining dress, too, which he wouldn’t like…
so I would be careful between the delivery of the first dresses and the delivery of the joining dress. “Yes, Carmine.”
“And yet the demure way you lower your lashes fails to convince me,” he said drily.
I sat and peered out over the royals and servants and demons from the realm. They were certainly gossiping about our intention. Which was nice for Gratia, as she dragged her new mate from the garden. Through the dirt.
My shoulders shook with more laughter. But really, my magus side felt terrible for the purple. I’d warned her of turmoil and heartache—and most of that would be worn by him. He’d deserved better than this mess of a life.
The demon part of me was more intrigued than anything else, and considering how his presence could benefit me.
Carmine had remained standing. “Silence.”
Just one time, I would love if they kept talking.
“As many of you are aware, because my mate-intended was too excited to conceal the news, we have agreed to continue the mating rituals.”
One mating ritual.
“We will prove our intention in a joining ceremony in the fortress, one week hence.” Carmine sat after.
And that was that. In a week, the day before the final round, I’d marry a monster. That shouldn’t mean anything, but I held the memories of dreams and wishes from my younger self. For years she’d dreamed of her joining day with Carmine.
So I held all the disappointment of having those dreams dashed by the monster who was my mate, too, and I couldn’t even enjoy feeling emptiness.
Most of all?
I felt sick that my visits to Adeuto would need to stop. I couldn’t risk drawing Carmine to my son. Which meant that after seven more days, I wouldn’t see my baby until Carmine was dead. Months or years.
I hadn’t allowed myself to feel that yet. I hadn’t dared to. But now, to my horror, I could do nothing else but tremble under the crashing waves of that wrenching loss.
The burning started in my throat and then worked up to my eyes. My hands shook, and I tried to conceal my bitter sadness by shifting on the throne and clutching the armrests.
No, don’t cry. I squeezed my eyes shut, then tried to be subtle as I brushed the few escaped tears away.
But then there were more than a few.
Fuck.
What if none of this plan worked? What if I never saw Adeuto again?
Carmine’s mother would find them eventually.
Mother be, was any of this plan worth it?
I would have done better to simply live out as many of my days as possible with my son in hiding.
We might have made it all the way until he was sixteen.
And then what? Death.
Meanwhile Tempest would be locked in the dungeons for another thirteen years.
It was hard enough to only see Adeuto for a few hours each day. Fear-filled hours that they were. But no contact? No reassurance from cradling him close? No trust-filled utterings of Mama.
The shaking spread from my hands to my body. Tears flowed down my cheeks. “I need—”
Carmine blocked me from view and presented his arm. I burst upward and took his offered arm, turning my face from the onlookers.
I couldn’t seem to shove the shaking away. Or the tears.
My breaths were shallow and hitched.
I dragged in breath as Carmine led me into the fortress. Servants didn’t dare to steal a peek, and they were the only ones inside. I untangled from Carmine once we were out of sight and broke into a blurring run to my room.
I reached my room and shut the door, then slid down the back to a heap on the ground. I ran my hands through my hair and sobbed into my knees. Why was I doing any of this? I felt like my baby was being torn from me.
This was all such a fucking mess. It was meant to be straightforward. Me focused on the end goal.
I’d entered Tiers for me.
For Adeuto.
For Tempest.
And none of that had changed. I sniffed and lifted my head. The love I felt for them would make this possible, but right now, I was allowed to feel how much my life would dim after joining with Carmine.
His footsteps paused outside my door. He’d hear my trembling breaths, and I didn’t have the capacity to hide them tonight.
He didn’t come inside.
“I’m sorry, Syera,” the demon king said in a low voice.
He was sorry in the Earth way, or sorry in the demon way. Consider me shocked that his tone implied the first of those. I’d never thought that I’d hear that word come out of his mouth.
“There is no other way,” he said next.
I could think of one.
The one where he died.
Hell, what about the one where he stopped being so cruel and detached?
His footsteps faded, and I listened as he closed the door to his bed chamber down the other end of the hall.
I cried until I could cry no more, and when the tears were dry, and my head ached, I forced myself to consider the game tomorrow. The mating factor with Carmine was such an enormous mind fuck that I’d underestimated, but I had to pull together a strategy for tomorrow.
Or I’d die.
I blinked as the consequences of the game provided me with perspective at last. If I didn’t live beyond tomorrow, then I would never see Adeuto again. If I didn’t win Tiers to free Tempest, then Adeuto would die at sixteen.
Never was a lot longer than months or years. Yeah, not seeing my baby would hurt my soul and heart, but we would survive that as we’d survived all else.
This was the only way he could be okay, so as his mother, I had to do it.
I clung to that thought to keep me afloat.
Afloat a while longer.
I woke in bed.
Huh? I didn’t remember falling asleep. I must’ve crawled over here, half delirious.
A hand swept down the curve of my waist, and I smiled. “Again?”
“Always,” he murmured, hooking a hand under my leg to gain better access.
There was a warning in me that couldn’t penetrate the emotional and mental exhaustion of my mind.
I felt Carmine’s cock at my entrance, and I sighed in anticipation of it filling me. When he withdrew, I rolled onto my back to peer up at him. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, enamai,” he murmured, kissing my lips. He moaned, then kissed them again. I hooked my arms around him, granting him access to deepen our kiss. I arched to align our bodies, and when he still didn’t fill me, I took matters into my own hands.
I pumped his cock with my fist, then set it back at my entrance. “I want you. Make me forget who I am.”
His jaw clenched. “Not tonight, you’re tired. Go to sleep, my queen. I have work to do.”
Annoyance filled me as he made to leave the bed.
“Do your work here,” I mumbled.
He paused and glanced back. “I could do that.” He grabbed a thick tome off the bedside table and sat back against the headrest.
“I have a mind to feel very annoyed that my mate didn’t satisfy me,” I murmured.
“He is surely insane,” Carmine whispered, and he sounded as annoyed as me. And something more, too, that exhaustion wouldn’t let me decipher.
My eyes closed. So heavy. “I’ll seek my revenge tomorrow. When you least expect it.”
“Sleep, my Syera. I am watching over you.”