Chapter 26
I hobbled into the ballroom like a leprechaun who’d spent too much time on a pony.
Gratia’s brows shot up, lending a greater view of the dark circles beneath her crimson eyes. “What happened to you?”
Steth. Among others. “Training.” Carmine’s army wasn’t messing around anymore. They were out for blood, and though their ass-whopping was never personal, it was focused against maguskind.
Unlike my distraction during the last training, I really was depleted in power this morning after healing Owu. I traced a cut inside my lip with my tongue. Pretty sure that had ripped all the way through. Nearly healed.
The ballroom was filled with toys today, and Gratia had invited all the mothers in the fortress with young children.
“Morning,” I said to the nearest crimson.
She hurriedly stood to curtsey. “Your Majesty.”
I frowned at the Your Majesty, then felt a chill fall over me like a shadow. Literally.
That explained her lack of a cold shoulder.
“I am not here to interrupt,” Carmine replied to the crimson. “Go on as usual. I wish to sit here with my future queen.”
Ick. I shuddered and ignored him when he sat on the couch beside me. Gratia glared at him, then marched across the room to a group of chatting mothers.
“Why is your power so depleted?” Carmine wasted no time in asking. “When you agreed to train with my army, I naturally assumed you would give it your all. That’s twice that you have been unable to present a real challenge for my soldiers. Do I need to remind you that this is your trial?”
The thing about being a mother? Sometimes my head was too full for more bullshit, and so my mind did this thing where it just let the extra bullshit bounce away. “Let me know if I fail the trial, Carmine. Otherwise, get to the point.”
I was already chilled by his presence, so I could guess his icy alter ego was present.
“Why were you in the middle realm yesterday afternoon?” he demanded.
He had PMS every second day—that was my lead theory. “I was upholding my end of a deal. I told you that my strategy in Tiers was different this week.”
He paused. “What was the deal?”
I really hoped the red had already relocated his family. “Confidential.”
“Not if your king commands the answer, enamai,” he said in a silken voice.
I arched a brow. “I guess if you were my king, that would be the case.”
Carmine’s face was carved of ice. “Do I need to remind you of my power again? I had thought we were past that after Tygrio.”
“You proved very little with Tygrio. But if you must know, I tried to heal a child’s sickness. The healing failed, and his sickness accelerated. He will die soon.” I let every bit of guilt and grief over Grandfather’s execution rise up to fill my voice.
In the hour I’d had in the desert before returning to the fortress last night, Athira had confirmed that my grandfather was gone. I hadn’t asked how or where he was now because such things were obvious. She would have taken his head to Carmine.
As if echoing my thoughts, Carmine asked, “Will you say nothing about your grandfather? I told you what I would do.”
So you can’t blame me. “Why would I say anything to you about my grandfather? I understand everything I need to about who you are, and so none of your monstrous actions will ever surprise me.”
“Ever is a long time,” he replied after a beat.
Ever was a long time. But I only needed days—hopefully. Because Athira had delivered more bad news to me last night. They’d come across company close to the magus-demon gates. Athira had created a diversion so Tempest could slip into the nearest passageway to a gate.
In short, Athira hadn’t actually seen Tempest escape with her eyes. My twin could be wandering around demon gates right now. And if I searched for her, then I risked alerting Carmine to her escape and whereabouts.
She should have escaped by now, but my divination power pulsed in a low warning that made me hesitate. I needed to take care in this matter in case something was amiss. “Is that all?”
A ball rolled our way, and I leaned down to catch it.
A young demon blurred our way, then froze when she realized who was before her.
“It’s okay,” I said softly. “Would you like your ball?”
The girl nodded, and I rolled the ball back.
Carmine’s gaze was drilling into my face. “Perhaps our mating holds no joy for you now, but there will be daughters in your future, Syera. Many of them if you will surrender your body. Life will not always feel so lonely and empty.”
Bitterness filled me. “Daughters. Will you kill my sons at birth or sixteen, I wonder?”
“Birth,” he immediately said. “I cannot allow myself to become a broken king.”
Hatred built in me, a towering wave. “Too late for that.”
Carmine’s lips curved under his cold, hard gaze. “Perhaps I am not the broken one. You have failed your trial, future queen. I will not release your twin.”
At this point, not going through with the intention ceremony suited me just fine. Tempest had escaped, and without the next ritual, I would still be able to visit Adeuto. And Owu too. “Suit yourself.”
“So casual about your twin’s misery.” He tilted his head.
I stood. “My twin can withstand anything you throw at her, Carmine. That’s what I know. So if you no longer want to continue the mating ritual, then I have underestimated how much you wish for that.”
He smirked. “Our intention ceremony will continue. Or I will kill your twin.”
Revulsion twisted my face. Yesterday he’d said that I was the only thing that made sense in his existence. Now this? “You turn from playing nice to playing power so easily, Carmine.”
He rose beside me and leaned his face closer. “You bring out the worst in me. But one day, you will cease to challenge me, and then you will discover that I can play nicely indeed.”
I should have backed down from the start, but it was too late for that, so I curtsied, then murmured, “My humblest apologies, most powerful and cunning king.” I straightened and shouted in his face, “Fuck you!”
Silence chased all noise from the hall.
Not my best choice.
Snarls ripped from Carmine’s chest. His power exploded around me, and I was jerked forward as heavy chains snapped around my wrists.
He strode from the hall, and it became clear that he held the other end of the chain. I was jerked forward and stumbled into a jog to keep up.
Gratia’s shocked gaze landed on me.
I winked, because I was completely and utterly furious beyond reason, and winking was all I had left as a woman in chains. I called to her, “Be reassured that at least your mating won’t be like this.”
She nodded, seeming to genuinely feel reassurance at my words.
Carmine yanked on the chains, and I bit back on a yelp, forced into a quicker jog.
Once we were in his personal quarters, Carmine whirled on me and unleashed an explosion of power my way. His crimson smoke couldn’t hurt me, but it disintegrated everything else.
I screamed in rage and funneled my power back at him. And while my smoke didn’t hurt him, either, the rest of the lounge behind Carmine was disintegrated.
“Why won’t you submit?” he roared at me.
When he charged forward, the end of the chain dropped, and he pounded his hands on the ruins of stone either side of my head. The remnants of the wall fell away, and then nothing was left of the room.
He pushed my chin high and crushed his lips to mine.
No. I yanked the other end of the chain to me and whipped it across his face. A slash of crimson appeared over his cheek, and Carmine remained partly turned, shoulders heaving as blood dripped from the wound between two scales.
“No,” I said in a shaking voice.
He slowly looked back, and there was no reason left in him. Only ice. Only the Carmine I hated.
“Not yet,” he said to himself. “She will crumble in the end.”
My rage started to fall into the fear I should have felt from the start.
Carmine trailed his finger over my shoulder and up my neck. “She will crumble.”
Lust rose to meet his fingertips, and I gritted my teeth against the surge.
“Continue to test the limits of my power, and you will find that your leash grows shorter and shorter until the nearness of me that revolts you is all that remains.”
I struggled to keep my breaths even. I had so little against his mercilessness in these moments except bravado and the protection of our mating. There was still so much he could do to harm me and my plans.
“Perhaps my power will not hurt you,” he mused. “But there are ways around that.”
In display, his power circled the chains on my wrists and pinned them by my sides.
I didn’t bother struggling against his hold, more worried about the heady lust creeping over my vision. The throbbing lower in my body was painful.
“You would be foolish indeed to forget all that my power can do without harming you,” Carmine said darkly.
To prove his point, he pushed his power over me, so that I could feel the coffin of it. The trap and the dungeon.
His power strapped my arms to my sides and snapped my legs together. I was in a straitjacket prison, but as the vise of his power tightened over my boobs and the top V of my thighs, an agonized scream was torn from me. Pleasure ripped from nothing to everything.
I screamed again from the savage release, realizing I’d collapsed to the ground.
Such pain. And mother be, such pleasure. My body shook as aftershocks racked me. I whimpered, pressing my thighs together.
I wanted it to go on and on. Hundreds of times. Because a deep part of me knew that the pain of denying the mating would eventually disappear as I “surrendered” my body to Carmine each time.
Enough of the tremors had dissipated that I managed to roll to all fours. I bumped into Carmine, who was crouched beside me. He was talking?
“Syera, where are you injured?” Carmine said urgently. I heard him inhale deeply. “What happened? Did you…?” Horror filled his voice. “Did I do that?”
I felt the same horror.
Too much of his power on my skin and scales had made me orgasm. That was apparently a thing now, and I took it to mean that the mating ritual was losing patience with my denial.
Tears squeezed from my eyes. They weren’t tears of shame. The intensity of what happened had left my body and mind in shocked tatters. I’d been filled with adrenaline, then left to make sense of the rush.
“Enamai.” Carmine started. He hung his head. “Syera, I am sorry.”
I managed to stand. Part of me believed he hadn’t known what would happen, but shock and anger needed a target.
And in a calmer moment, I would have absolutely used his guilt against him too.
That was the nature of our healthy relationship.
That was who I had become for knowing him.
“In the sense that what happened is my fault? Or in the sense where you’ve somehow grown a conscience? ”
He didn’t answer or so much as lift his head to look at me. For once, words appeared to have been robbed from the demon king. A nice change.
I stumbled away to the four walls of my room, where I could gather the scraps of me again.
I’d never doubted my ability to hold fast to who I was through all this. When had that changed? Because now my mind reeled from wondering how many times I could return to myself before that was no longer possible.
Two? Three?
Perhaps this was the last time.