Chapter 29 #2
Come on, Carmine. Please be less of an asshole than usual.
“There are two rules to Tiers,” the king stated. “One is to kill an opponent, and the other is to make the checkpoint. Those rules must be upheld. You may keep one of the other demons alive. Who is your choice?”
My stomach lurched, and I closed my eyes. “Are the others dead, Enp?”
He stammered, “T-they are. I made sure.”
He made sure because our plan had seemed so straightforward. So clear and simple and obvious that I hadn’t put more than a minute of thought toward it.
I hadn’t considered my prize until this very moment.
And now one of them must die.
“You should know,” Carmine called, because he wasn’t done being a monster, “that one of their lives is spoken for already, should they survive Tiers.”
I glanced up at him again, my heart thudding at the information.
I turned to face the others. “I screwed this up. I didn’t consider this part, and now…”
The red was looking at Carmine. “Syera,” he said, too intent on the king to notice his slip. “He means me.”
I’d gathered as much. Carmine had visited the red’s parents, and I assumed the conversation had gone like:
Carmine: Stop harassing your son’s mate and child.
Them: Only if our son dies in Tiers.
Which blew my mother’s mind. How did someone bring a child into the world, then shun them like that? They felt so ashamed and humiliated by his match that they wanted him gone.
They’d earned a place on my shit list forevermore. Perhaps I could repay all of their acts of pettiness against their son’s family in kind.
I looked at Tsan. “Do you wish to live, or do you wish to join your mate?”
If he didn’t want to live, I’d take the risk of keeping Enp alive.
The yellow gazed at me. His chest rose and fell with whatever he was feeling and thinking. “I would like a chance to achieve what I came for.”
I’ll help you kill the king.
He was a yellow, and I’d have him on my team any day. He was one of the last three contestants of Tiers. There was power in him, if not the obvious kind.
Enp’s power, on the other hand, was very obvious, and had nothing at all to do with the color of his scales. His power stemmed from his love for his family.
“It must be me,” Enp said.
Dread filled me as I looked at him. “Yes, I believe so. To live now, to die in five minutes. That is cruelty in itself. I wish it could be different, Enp.”
“The cruelty is that they were always so cruel, and that they still win,” he said so quietly that I nearly didn’t hear.
His parents. I lifted his chin with my hand. “In this story, they don’t win. And so you have won a prize anyway.”
“I have won more than one prize, thanks to you.” He bowed his head. “You cannot leave the arena without killing me. I am ready. Tell… her… that I love her more than life.”
Tell them that I love them more than life. “You can be sure of that,” I said hoarsely.
Rounding him, I drew my father’s blade.
This was not the hardest moment of my life, and I was grateful for those other instances that had built my resilience so savagely. But this was one of the hardest things I had been forced to do.
I saw how life could be for Enp. I’d make him warden of the outer realms. With his alliance, slipping his mate in and out of the desert to visit Owu would be so easy. Adeuto would be safer for the extra buffer between enemies too.
But Carmine would not allow me to break the rules of Tiers. He could have. But he would not.
“Goodbye, friend,” said Tsan. “I will watch over her too.”
Enp trembled in his crouched position with his head bent. If he were magus, then I could have soothed him with my magic. But perhaps I could do so anyway.
I allowed my divination power to rise from my center, and I whispered a specific request to the dead.
Not all of them answered, too at peace in their new state. But one did.
The eldest teen boy who had first given me the answer to Owu’s condition formed in the air. He nodded at me, then hovered before Enp to turn his hands palm up in offer.
Enp placed his hands in the ghost’s and stared at the boy. There was no question of where his imagination had gone, or that Enp was pretending this ghost was a real-life version of his own son.
Enp smiled, and I lashed power through my father’s blade and brought it down upon the demon’s neck. This had to be clean. I couldn’t bear to saw through him as I had done so easily with others.
Enp’s head rolled across the ground, and the ghost faded to nothing once more.
Tsan rose from his knees to straighten Enp on the ground, then he picked up his head and placed it so the face of Owu’s father was to the sky.
I crouched and closed his red eyes. “Goodbye, Enp.”
The crowd stamped and shouted, and I did not care whether they cheered in favor or in disapproval.
I stood as the winner of Tiers, which I’d entered with so much fear and determination while driven by love for my child.
I was still alive for him. We were on the path to our freedom.
“Shall we?” asked Tsan.
I glanced at him and nodded. “Let’s.”
And now I had more help than ever before.