Chapter 22
I’d portaled directly into the house. Not the smartest move, but I was a cornered animal. I was gone to panic.
“Adeuto,” I screamed, ripping back screens and searching under the bed.
I pulsed my magic and didn’t feel him.
I clutched my hair, spinning in a circle. Did they get away? I had to check the remaining hideouts.
Carefully.
I had to be careful. Carmine’s mother could be watching this place. Which meant even if I didn’t want to, then I would spend five precious minutes portaling around and washing and checking for company.
I ran outside and tripped over a body.
On my hands and knees, I stared straight ahead at the rolling expanse of sand dunes. A fear unlike that which I’d ever known froze me.
I’d tripped over a body, and I didn’t know who the body belonged to. I couldn’t turn and find Adeuto.
I couldn’t.
“Granddaughter,” coughed my grandfather.
Relief swept through me. Shame too.
I spun around and crawled back to his side. “Grandfather, where is he? Where’s Adeuto?”
Mother be, she’d done her best to get to his heart, but he wouldn’t die of these injuries.
“Got away,” he wheezed. “I held her as long as possible. She’s following him.”
His eyes rolled back as he lost consciousness.
I shook his shoulders. “What way?”
Nothing.
“I’ll come back for you,” I told him.
Then I stood, spinning in a circle. I was mindless with panic. Think, Syera. He needs you. And he did.
That thought, like it had so many times, induced a temporary calm. One that would get me through the battle. I could fall apart at the end.
I burst away from Grandfather and blurred around the perimeter of our shack.
Footprints.
Anything. Any sign.
Sand was not kind to those wishing to move without a trace, whether demon or critter. Unless a person took particular care, they would leave a clear path.
I wrenched to a halt at the sign of tracks.
Nismus prints trailed into the distance, and the larger tracks of a running adult disrupted them.
Adeuto knew how to cover his tracks, so he might have fled in another direction. That was more plausible than him escaping on the back of a nismus.
Except really, I didn’t need to know where Adeuto was. He might be on the nismus, or he might have escaped undetected by Athira.
What I needed to do was to kill Carmine’s mother.
Her tracks led this way.
That was where I would go.
I started to run. Blur. I sprinted harder than I’d ever sprinted, even when fighting for my life.
Adeuto was worth more than me.
I sprinted over dunes, sending critters scattering in every direction. They’d traveled so far—so much further than Adeuto would have been able to manage on his own legs.
Please let him be wandering the desert. I could find him in a matter of hours.
My lungs squeezed for air as I pumped my arms and legs harder, portaling at intervals when I could see the footprints extending ahead.
The tracks dropped into a deep dune and rose up the other side. I readied myself to open a portal, but arrested my sprint at the sight of Carmine’s mother atop the opposite dune. She was crouched, dagger drawn.
I could hear the nismus grunting over the next dune.
“Keep it up, Neti,” a little voice called from the same direction.
My heart froze. Everything I was shriveled and died.
Adeuto was here too. On the nismus.
Carmine’s mother glanced back at me, and ice chilled me to the bone at the calculation in her gaze.
I opened a portal and stepped through.
And when I arrived on top of the dune, it was empty of her presence. I pulsed my magic to find her, then peered down into the next valley.
At the nismus and Adeuto, and at the dagger to Adeuto’s throat.
I screamed and roared at the same time, and I couldn’t say whether my legs or a portal dragged me to the bottom of the dune.
But I was there in one mindless second.
“Stop,” Athira ordered.
I did.
She had a dagger to his throat. I couldn’t do anything. Outplayed.
Obeying her was all I could do.
“Adeuto, stay still,” I muttered to him.
His gray eyes were wide and fixed on me.
I smiled. “Everything will be okay. I promise you.”
The lies passed from my lips. I would save him from any fear that I could.
I lifted my gaze to Athira’s. “I won’t let you harm him.”
“You can do nothing to stop me.”
“You underestimate me.”
She answered, “I have done so, daughter. But no longer.”
Adeuto tried to peer over his shoulder. “You’re my grandmother? Hey, you are. I can feel you in my heart.”
Athira ignored him. She felt the danger.
I would attack at the slightest drop in her focus. Which she anticipated.
“So you fled the fortress because you fell pregnant,” she mused. “Wise. Much makes sense now. The changes in you, most of all. For all Gratia’s efforts, and my own, all you needed was to have a child.” She snorted.
“There is no way out of this,” I told her. “You know your death will leave Carmine unprotected.”
“From who?” she asked.
I smirked. “Me.”
Her sneer faded. “I suppose that must be your plan. Kill Carmine to allow your son to live. I did not need to kill my mate in the end. But I would have. Or tried with Carmine’s help. Is that why you play Tiers? Will you ask for his crown?”
I reached into my magus power, frantic for an answer. But the twinging in my gut was nowhere to be felt. It hadn’t even warned me when I was in the Pinnacle. I’d relied on that warning to alert me to any danger surrounding Adeuto, and in my arrogance, I’d failed him.
But every trap had a way out.
There was a way to save him.
Except I knew there wasn’t.
In this realm, the strongest demon was Carmine. I was second. But very, very slightly under me, and not at all under me in terms of her experience, was this woman.
Without a miraculous save from my magus power, she held all the power here.
“How did you find them?” I asked her.
I just needed time. She’d drop her guard eventually.
Athira’s gaze didn’t budge from me. “I paid a blue demon who traded with your grandfather. He placed a tracker inside.”
At my frown, she added, “A human tracker. They do not work perfectly in this realm, so I had to fleece the desert until I got within range. But he did not notice the tracker, where he would have noticed any smoke I sent with him.”
“I would have thought you’d just kill him on the spot,” I said.
She lifted a shoulder. “Call it a mother’s instinct. I knew there was more to your decision to return. I wanted to see where you had been and see who else was there. Did I expect a child? No. I expected a lover. Who I would have killed to hurt you as you hurt my son.”
“She didn’t hurt him. He hurt her,” Adeuto said angrily.
Athira narrowed her gaze. “He is not a pure demon.”
I didn’t answer.
She continued. “So he will possess some power of his mother. Unique power. Her way of thinking. He will have her help.” Her gaze lifted to mine. “And that of her twin in the dungeon. Carmine told me that you know the truth.”
One second. That was all I needed to portal inside her. That was the quickest attack I could think of, and I would barely emerge from it alive. But I would live, and so would Adeuto.
Athira was watching me in silence, and her crimson eyes darted between mine. “I am glad that you did not end up a disappointment, Syera.”
She’d never used my name more.
“I need you to withhold your attack,” she said next.
I sucked in a breath. “What?”
“If you can do that, then I will remove the dagger from my grandchild’s neck. He is starting to wriggle, and my daggers are very sharp. We have business to discuss.”
I blinked. Did I believe for a second that Athira didn’t intend to kill Adeuto and me? No. She’d realized that she couldn’t kill both of us in this standoff. Carmine’s mother was bargaining for time, as I’d just done.
I nodded. “I will hear what you have to say.”
Athira snorted in reply, then sat on the sand.
Adeuto ran to me, and I hugged him close, never taking my eyes off my enemy. “Mama, I had to leave Grandfather.”
“I know, my love. You did what you had to do.”
“Neti helped me.” His voice trembled, and despite his bravado, I could sense that very little was holding him together right now.
The nismus butted me, and I turned to set Adeuto atop the animal.
“Thank you,” I said to her. She looked days away from birthing her own young. This journey wouldn’t have been easy for her.
As for why a nismus was helping me in the first place, I had no clue. I just hoped to live long enough to answer the question.
I didn’t sit. “Speak.”
Athira tilted her chin. “This explains and changes a great deal.”
“I’m sure it explains a lot, but what does it change? You should know that I am very close to ending your life, Athira. Speak quickly if you have something worth saying.”
Her expression was grave. “Like most demon women, I was eager to become a grandmother. I did not relish the weak human mate of my son at first, but I would have accepted your young even as you were. Of course, with the son as my king, I hoped for a girl.”
“That he would not kill.”
Athira said, “That he would not need to kill. The urge of a king to kill any threat to the throne is not something they can control. Not my mate, nor your father, and not Carmine. I watched as each of them was forced to kill those who challenged their power. I witnessed their despair. I am grateful that my mate never had to kill Carmine or die by Carmine’s hand.
And I would not wish that fate for my son.
Carmine would not wish to survive his son. He would wish for his son to win.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of all that, but my heart thumped in my chest for a different reason. “What are you saying, Athira?”