Chapter 3
There was a soft grating noise. Wet. Anyone who’d sharpened a knife would know it.
I didn’t open my eyes. “Have you come to kill me?”
If so, at least I could portal somewhere—though Athira would undoubtedly follow.
“Contemplating it, daughter,” she answered.
I felt almost as cold as her voice. This bunker needed central heating. “Where have you been?”
“You mean after you raised Gratia’s suspicions by asking to see me? I was going to come down of my own accord, you fool.”
“I gave her a reason.”
“That she didn’t believe. No sane demon would ask to see me.”
Well, I did like a self-aware soul.
I rolled to sitting and looked at her. Athira was hundreds of years old and beautiful.
Powerful and lethal. She was everything that a demon ought to be, in the eyes of the realm.
She’d shocked me not so long ago by agreeing to keep her grandson alive and helping me to end Carmine. Was that still true? “Adeuto?”
“Safe. Why do you think I’ve been busy? I’m checking them whenever I can.”
Relief poured over me. “Are they okay?” I’d saved Owu, and seen that he would be my son’s best friend for immortality. He was mine to protect until Carmine was dead and he could return to his mother.
“I’ve answered that question.”
“Athira,” I said, and she whipped her head to look at me. I said in the same voice, “Is he well?”
She blinked. “Yes, he’s safe. He misses you, but is sound. So is the other boy.”
Whatever grandmotherly love Athira held for Adeuto did not apply to Owu. He’d recently lost his father. When I’d killed him. Owu needed love right now. Not Athira.
I could only take her word that Adeuto was safe. Demons were cunning, and Athira was more cunning than nearly every demon I’d met.
“What state is Carmine in?” I asked.
“Bad,” she said. “Unlikely to recover. You should end him now.”
My turn to blink. Because—fuck—I couldn’t imagine uttering those words so casually about Adeuto. I peered at her and noticed the detached wooden quality of her gaze. Dissociated. I did that sometimes. In fact, I had plenty of disorders. A whole list of unofficial ones.
I said, “I’ll need your help.”
The demon king may be at death’s door, but he was strong beyond reason. In this state, I wasn’t sure that I could crack his scales enough to smoke him out, or to decapitate him. Maybe I should burn him.
Athira paled. “I cannot take part in the killing of him, Syera.”
Understandable, but chilling words flowed from my mouth. “Weakness in the king’s mother. I wouldn’t have thought it possible. You have decided Carmine will die, Athira. Even if my sword strikes, then you have held the hilt.”
Her breaths thinned. “Your voice has changed.”
A cornered animal would do what she had to do. This cornered animal knew that she couldn’t trust Athira to help do the deed, which meant I needed more time to recover.
Athira stood. “I’ll take you to him.”
How good of you.
I stood and waited a few moments for my blood pressure to adjust before I strode to the door. I couldn’t possibly kill him today, but assessing him would tell me how much power the job would take.
Athira led the way, and the stiffness of her posture reminded me of the doom that had cloyed at me before walking into Tiers each week. Then again, wasn’t it Athira who had told me this fortress was where the real game of Tiers was played?
Raes was guarding Carmine’s door and glanced up at our approach.
“Go away,” Athira ordered.
Raes peered past her shoulder at me. I nodded, and he bowed, then stood aside.
Not leaving? That was fine. I didn’t intend to kill Carmine. Just yet.
Athira pushed inside, and I followed.
“Why isn’t Carmine on the stone slab?”
She didn’t answer, already through the next door. But that was a bunch of bullshit. They hadn’t worried about moving him twice.
I stopped in the doorway.
A sole torch flickered its weak flame on the opposite wall. The shadows cast fell upon his unmoving form.
He was in the bed, on his back, his face carved from rock. Even my hatred of Carmine since learning that he’d killed my family couldn’t stop me from admitting that he was impossibly beautiful. The contours of his face were art, and I’d stared at them many times in my younger years. I did now.
Carmine was a Viking. A warrior.
But the most lethal part of him was his ruthlessness and his cunning. His single-minded ambition to conquer that nothing could shake. Not even his mate-intended. That was what other demons instinctively sensed in him. That was why they feared him.
Why I feared him.
The blankets covered his legs and left the black designs on his chest bare.
They were the signs of our mating, and I could see the new additions since our joining ceremony.
One of the new designs was like a slanted capital F, and the other was somewhere between an x and a t.
That one was particularly jagged, and I could guess that had something to do with our nearly failed joining ceremony.
The runes were complete, however. Somehow.
“He has a knife in his chest,” I noted. I scanned his body again and noticed the cuts and bruises that his inked designs had nearly hidden in the shadows.
Athira perched on the bottom of the bed. Not very murderous of her. “He went to war.”
I stared. “What?”
“He recovered full power after a few days, then sought war on the Magus again.” Athira swallowed, her focus entirely on her son.
I inhaled. The fuckers. Not only had Carmine recovered from the ceremony far faster than me. He’d then gone to kill my sister while I was out. “Clearly he lost.”
“Your sister defeated him.”
I grinned. Yeah she did. I’d known she would. My twin was a queen. But part of me was extremely glad that I’d been out during that.
Athira continued. “The king of vampires sacrificed himself to weaken Carmine, and then your twin managed to embed a dagger in his heart.”
I whistled low. “Through the iron casing?”
She nodded. “Steth got him back here. I contained the poison to the immediate tissue, but the knife is in his heart.”
Why did you help him? But I couldn’t ask that aloud with Raes standing guard outside. “You couldn’t help him?”
“I didn’t dare,” she replied. “The situation is certain. If we pull the knife out, then he dies from damage to the heart. If we don’t pull the knife out, then the poison will continue to kill him.”
Dead either way.
This. Was. Ideal.
In all my dreams of killing Carmine, and being free of him, I’d never dreamed of such an easy finish. “If he’ll certainly die from the poison, then we have nothing to lose from trying to pull the knife out,” I said for Raes’s benefit.
I didn’t need full power to rip out a knife. I could do it now.
Athira didn’t respond. This was how she’d come to peace with the act. He’d die anyway. She might as well put him out of his misery.
I moved to the edge of the bed, and Carmine groaned, turning his face to me.
I’d hated that face for three years. I’d fantasized about that face.
Freedom was in my grasp.
I knelt on the bed and gripped the hilt. I just had to yank this knife out. Maybe shove it back in a few times to ensure the job was done.
My son would live.
I would live—after believing that taking the life of my mate would also take mine. I would live a life with my son.
With my twin.
The other supernaturals under attack from Carmine would be safe. There was so much to gain from taking his life.
“Remember your mating bond. If he does die, then you’ll never sever it,” Athira said in a hollow voice. She’d left the bed and stood in the doorway, her back to me.
Of course. I’d forgotten in my glee.
And severing the mating would take me out for weeks or months. In that time, Adeuto would be at Athira’s mercy. She’d need to keep the realm together too.
Ice filled me. Those were risks I’d have to take.
I’d have to trust that Athira wouldn’t take me out either.
But if she did kill me, then I still had to get this done.
I would do anything to keep my son safe.
“If Carmine dies, and I’m out for a while, then you’ll need to tell Gratia everything.
You’ll need her help to keep the realm under control. ”
Athira dipped her head.
I turned back to Carmine, my mate. Revulsion unfurled in me, and I tightened my grip on the dagger.
This was it.
Such cold had frozen me. My mind whirled with whispers that this was my mate. My only mate in immortality. No one would ever understand me as this demon did. He could have been my everything. Instead, he’d taken everything from the moment we’d met. If I hadn’t been his mate, then I’d be dead too.
My mother. My grandmother. My twin, who’d been torn in two, and part of her locked in a dungeon for five years.
Smiling, I tensed the muscles in my arm. “Goodbye, Carmine.”