Chapter 9
A book titled The Bloodied History of Kings sat open before me. Were the blood stains a purposeful part of the interior design, or had they been added later by authentic means? I’d only come to the archives because figuring out a way to communicate with Tempest had proved impossible.
I felt sick at the thought of children being separated from their mothers, and in place of having no idea how to help that situation, I was here.
So far, I’d found details of two white-scaled rulers.
While the original demon leaders weren’t noted—probably because demons hadn’t lived in organized communities back then—there was a clear trend in the earliest recordings.
Whites and yellows had reigned over demons due to their greater control over their violent tendencies and lower feeding needs.
But none of the leaders had lasted long.
No wonder yellows and whites were so cunning. They’d always had to be.
One of the yellows had lasted nearly a year. Impressive.
I flicked through the pages. Another white-scaled leader caught my attention. Name: Dudi. I laughed. No wonder he only lasted a week.
Yellow. White. Yellow. Yellow. Orange. White.
“You lasted a while,” I said in awe at the next white. Three years. That had to be a record.
Orange.
Green.
Yellow.
Purple.
Blue.
Red.
Crimson.
Whoa. Sudden switch. Over the space of three years, stronger demons had replaced yellows and whites.
Crimson.
Crimson.
Crimson.
And they were all Carmine’s ancestral line from there, aside from the interruption of my father in the succession.
I scanned the stacks of books hiding me from view—as if anyone would come here. To date, I had only seen Carmine with books. A demon would be more likely to eat or burn a book, or use it to pulverize an enemy. Though someone had written all of these… Strange.
I thumbed back through the pages to the last leader with white scales. Tyran. Better name than Dudi. Not far off Tyrant. And he’d earned the name too. Three years really was a feat.
Was there any more information on him? I’d only found histories on the leaders in Carmine’s ancestral line.
I traced over a nearby spine that read Animals of the Realm, then selected a book titled Scales beneath.
The tome was in bad condition; the page edges were crumbling. Someone had enjoyed this book a lot.
Maybe it ended on a cliffhanger?
I smiled to myself, mostly because there was very little to smile about. “I’d love some answers right about now.”
Scales started with descriptions on crimsons and reds.
The richness and number of hues in a demon’s scale color said a lot about their power—in any scale class.
The more hues swirling in a demon’s scales, the stronger and older you could expect them to be.
That was partially how I could tell my power had strengthened since the joining ritual—there were streaks of charcoals and dark grays amid my black smoke now.
Not that I’d had time, or initially the desire, to test my limits since the joining ritual, but I could feel the extra magical endurance coiled in me and ready to strike.
I could feel that my Magus nature had needed time to assimilate to the stronger demon presence in me too.
I hadn’t felt my gut twinge since the joining ritual—though that could have been because of how my mind was hijacked afterward.
I flipped to the back. Whites.
Weak. Extinct.
I tapped the listed extinction date, then lifted the book to look at the one beneath.
Tyran. Reign: Year 71-74.
Demons counted their years differently to Earth. We were in the year 4631.
I settled Scales on top again.
Extinction of white-scaled demons: Year 75.
White-scaled demons had died off a year after Tyran’s reign. I frowned at the page, then rested back on the cushioned seat.
Was Tyran the last white, or did a whole group of them die?
The rest of the chapter described the founding of animals with white scales in year eighty.
“Demons with white scales disappeared, then animals with white scales appeared after.” Or were founded after.
Back then, the desert would have made up most of the realm, and demons didn’t venture out there much.
Nismus and any other creatures with white scales might have existed for years before discovery.
I scraped back the chair and strode to the most boring shelf in the archives. Censuses. The most recent volumes were thicker than the width of my hand. I trailed back and back and the records grew thinner. One census was particularly worn.
65-75.
I tapped the worn edges after slipping the record free.
Someone had looked at the same books as me. I could reason away a couple of worn books, but none of the other censuses showed this wear. And in general, the books in the archives appeared brand new and never read.
Another had investigated white magic.
I shook the thought off and located the seventies. The demon seventies.
The reported numbers of each scale color were listed at the start. “Handy.”
Seventy-seven white demons had lived in the realm in year seventy.
That number had climbed to eighty in year seventy-four.
Year seventy-five?
I scanned the list, noting the steady climb of reds and purples since year seventy But white-scaled demons? Zero.
My jaw dropped. Eighty to zero in one year? Or a day, or a minute? The census didn’t provide details on the timeframe of their extinction.
There had to have been a reason or event that had caused that mass extinction. I erased any traces of me from the census and returned it to the shelf.
I murmured, “Did the crimsons and reds decide they didn’t like how things were run? Did you all revolt?
Except the numbers of yellows and oranges had steadily climbed over the years in tandem with the other scale colors.
Why were only white demons exterminated?
I walked from shelf to shelf, looking for something along the lines of Syera’s Every Question Explained in Full.
No such luck.
I returned to my stacks and assessed the titles. The one I’d looked at earlier—Animals of the Realm was worn on the corners too.
Foreboding crept into me as I picked it up.
The contents listed three white-scaled animals of the realm. I was only familiar with two, and I’d only seen one.
Nismus. I skimmed through the chapter that detailed their discovery, habitat, and diet. I knew more about nismus than this book simply by having lived beside them for three years. The last sentence caught my attention though.
One of the peculiarities of nismus is their consistent numbers.
Their recorded number at discovery was 23. At the time of this edition, their number remains the same.
The number meant nothing to me, but that was peculiar.
Hungry demons hunted nismus on occasion.
I’d never had the stomach. They were too aware, and their eyes were intelligent.
Freaked me out. My views weren’t typical.
Nismus weren’t easy to hunt, and those demons strong enough to kill them likely didn’t go hungry enough to try their luck.
But nismus were hunted every so often. It sounded like for every nismus killed, one was born.
Cool.
I flicked to qer, a rodent-like animal with white scales. Huge. And rare. I’d never seen one. They lived in tunnel systems deep underground, and everything they needed to survive was down there too.
Like nismus, the number of qer have not altered since their discovery.
I checked the discovery date. “Year seventy-nine. Fifteen of them.”
Why had their numbers never increased? The book described how qer were the top of the food chain in their habitat. With no real predators, why hadn’t their numbers increased in over four-thousand years?
I located the chapter on the last of the three white-scaled animals.
“Butyker.” Looked like a snake. I read its dimensions. Shit. A giant serpent. I’d never heard of them. “No wonder, only two in existence. Male and female.”
I hoped they were friends. That seemed lonely.
And again, there was a mention of their consistent numbers and lack of predators. I wasn’t as cunning as a yellow, perhaps, but multiplying only took two. If there were a male and female butyker in existence, then why weren’t there butyker babies?
It was as if only so many of them could exist at one time.
Which wasn’t a new concept to me. Magus families possessed a limited volume of magic. The more children a Magus couple had, the weaker each child’s power would be because the familial magic had to be shared amongst the living. That was why some couples chose to only have one really strong kid.
I traced over the drawing of a charging nismus. “That’s the answer. Your magic is finite. You guys can’t exceed a certain number.”
They shared the magic, and that held their numbers true.
Twenty-three nismus.
Fifteen qer.
Two butyker.
“Forty,” I said. Forty. That meant nothing to me other than it was half of the eighty white-scaled demons who had disappeared.
Exactly half, which did seem coincidental. Perhaps I was overthinking this now.
Yet someone else had followed this exact trail too. I inspected each of the surrounding books, and found another with signs of wear.
I read the spine. “Cults through the Ages.”
Nice. Demon cults. Human cults got up to some serious shit. I could just imagine the horrors of a demon one.
The thread deep within me slackened, and I blanched. Carmine was on the move.
Toward me.
I took one look at the surrounding books, then threw out tendrils of smoke to shove the books back wherever they could fit.
I pulsed my magic to remove all traces of what I’d looked at.
Shit, the book in my hands! I opened a portal to my room and chucked the book through, then drew forth Magus power to dissipate the smell of sulfur left behind.
Carmine was opening the door when I yanked a title into my hands at random and assumed a sprawling position on the wooden chair.
I stared at the random words on the page and glanced up as Carmine entered. He must hear my pounding heart. “Hi.”
Breathless. But I could work with breathless. After the joining, I’d wanted the demon king in my bed. Badly.
The demon king scanned the archives. “Why are you in the archives?”
“To read. I do so on occasion.”
He circled closer, sniffing the air. “You read books on mating rituals and the realm. Because no one else would tell you about them. Otherwise you hated books.”
I hated his memory. But I had an impervious tool in my belt. Denial. “No I didn’t.”
“What are you reading?” he asked after a beat.
I checked the cover, and my mind stumbled. I stalled. “Is there a reason you’re here?”
“To see why you’re in the archives.”
“Fuck me,” I muttered at the book.
Carmine lifted his head. “Excuse me?”
Heat entered my cheeks and I placed the tome cover down. “Nothing. I’m leaving. Want lunch?”
He glanced at the book. In a whip of crimson smoke, and faster than I could intercept, Carmine hooked the book and drew it to him.
I closed my eyes and immersed myself in the delightful burning sensation in my face that quickly spread to my neck and chest. When I opened my eyes, the demon king was staring at me.
He held up the book. The spine read Preparation to Breed. “For anything in particular?”
To say no? To say yes? “Just interest.”
Carmine walked closer. His attention had returned to the book, but when he reached me and tilted my chin, all of his focus reverted to my burning face.
His throat worked. “Syera, there may be a time when we share a bed again, but I will never wish for a child. That is one reason that part of me is relieved we are physically estranged. The path of a king and his children is always bloody, especially for males, but also for daughters who are bargained and threatened from their first breath. During my time in confinement, I swore an oath to myself that I would not sire any young.”
Well, he’d failed that one.
He added, “We’ve never spoken of this.”
No. And if I was eighteen, my heart might have broken.
But this was great. Incredible news! And surprisingly heartfelt on his behalf.
He didn’t wish to hurt any children he had, and he didn’t wish for them to be hurt by others.
I didn’t understand what drove kings to kill any threat to the throne, and I didn’t want to deep down.
To pretend there was no choice in a matter rang of bullshit to me, and always would.
Athira and Carmine could pretend otherwise, but murdering people to protect a stupid throne—killing children and entire families—was something I’d always condemn.
I recalled that savage-bitch Syera wouldn’t care about how heartfelt his words were. She’d gone out of her way to research how to prepare for breeding with him, and now he had the audacity to reject her. “What about what I want?”
Carmine regarded me in silence. He lowered his hand from my chin.
“Guess that means no sex for the rest of immortality then,” I said sarcastically.
“What a joy. Just how I want to spend immortality. Guess I know why you don’t want to complete the rest of the mating now.
” The remaining rituals were smoke, iron casing, and scale.
From what I’d read about them, sex wasn’t necessary for any, but usually happened because of the intensity and depth of merging that occurred.
I stormed past him and slammed my way out of the archives.
I quickened my steps once outside and covered my mouth with both hands. This was amazing news! Not the “no sex for immortality part,” but maybe once Carmine was dead, other men could satisfy me again. The no sex for right now part was a definite win.
No wonder he’d held himself back since my return.
He didn’t want children.
I grimaced over the Preparation for Breeding mishap anew. Of all the books I could have summoned, why that one? Better not be the mating magic trying to manifest shit.
I cast breeding thoughts far, far aside and set my mind on the book awaiting me in my room.
I was onto something big—something hidden and powerful. Something that another had uncovered in the past, whether all the way or in part. My gut twinged for the first time since the joining ritual. Just a faint twinge, but one that reassured me of my path.
Even my Magus magic knew this was vital.
This white magic was crucial. Somehow.
I was going to figure it out.