Chapter 29
I opened my eyes, and the unusual echo of noise and the dulled color of my surroundings alerted me that this was the past.
Here, I was a spectator.
And thankful for it.
The prison cells were tiny. Just large enough for a demon to stand and lie flat. The cells neighbored one another to the end of the fenced space, and the bars allowed no privacy.
Forty cells in total.
Forty white-scaled demons.
This was the Istg group. Those who had opposed Tyran’s views.
Three crimsons were gathered around the cell of a female prisoner. I walked closer to hear what they listened to so intently.
“He will do it tonight,” she was telling them. Her focus was on one demon in particular, the strongest of the three.
“How do you know?”
“Because I have friends of yellow scale on the peak. Ronj is gathering their power, and tonight Tyran will sacrifice their power into it.”
I edged closer.
The strongest crimson asked, “What do we do?”
She gazed around at the cells. Some of her group were sleeping, some moaning. Some were injured, and all appeared hungry. “Ronj will no longer exist in the same form.”
He said, “So we can release you. Istg will lead our race.”
“That cannot be either,” she said sadly. “You must release us before the coronation ceremony that Tyran has planned. What he will unleash, the Istg cannot beat alone. Our magic can only heal what Ronj hurts. We are too even in power, and there is too much risk in trying to defeat them and losing.”
“I do not understand, Neti,” another of the crimsons whispered, glancing over her shoulder to check for company.
I jerked at her name. Adeuto had named our nismus visitor, and I shivered at the depth of his instinct at three years old.
Neti looked back to the strongest. “Now we have arrived at the time of kings. And he will select you as the first, Utyrth. You have the power of a crimson, and the cunning of whites will be forced upon you.”
The crimson hissed. “He can try.”
Neti reached out and gripped his hand. “He will succeed, Utyrth, and you must become this willingly or you will die, and you are our hope.”
“You will save me?” he asked after an exchanged look with the other crimsons.
His acceptance of her words, and his faith that she would help him spoke of his deep respect for the white demon.
Neti met his gaze. “The Istg will not rest until Tyran’s intent is banished from this realm.
We will not rest in our efforts to save you.
I do not know what form his magic will take, Utyrth, but I do know that you should spend this day with your mate, and your children, and in doing the things you love. ”
“Will Tyran erase all that I am?”
Tears fell from the white-scaled demon. Her whisper was hoarse. “No, dear friend. You will love everything you do today.”
His shoulders eased.
Too early.
She continued, “But you will not be able to do anything about it. You will be his vessel, Utyrth, and you will obey his command, and you will scream within while doing it. Spend this day, this last day, as you. For after tonight, you will become a king. And a shell too. This is Tyran’s wrath on demons of your color, and his own. This is his curse on demonkind.”
Black started to ebb in on the scene. Great tears ripped the past, and time jolted in ripples where cell doors were opened, and Neti herded her group away—a gleaming tiara on her head.
I moved through the past to the only patch of light, but on the way I heard chanting. I heard crying and goodbyes. And then I heard the stamping of hooves on sand, and the slither of a snake’s belly on the dunes, and then the swishing of a large form burying itself in the hot grains.
“Take the stones,” Neti was calling on the wind. “Bury them far and wide until they are needed.”
The white demons were gone, and in their place, white animals had arisen.
The patch of light grew larger, and I soon found myself in another scene of the past.
Forty butyker, nismus, and qer swayed and stamped and leaped in the base of a tall dune. I watched their celebration from atop the dune, but my focus was stolen by a huge unfurling of crimson smoke in the distance. Atop the peak.
I peered further into the distance than I could have in reality, and stared at my smirking father as the iron crown was lowered onto his head.
My father’s coronation.
I glanced back at the Istg gathering below. Why were they celebrating another king’s coronation? The group started to draw a picture in the sand with sticks and rocks and indents made with tails and hooves. When they retreated to dance around it, I stared at the finished piece.
The picture was of a small stick figure wearing a crown. Inside a box.
Tears ripped through the scene, and this time I was flung forward in time. Any noises of the past were lost to me in the rush.
I was planted on my feet atop another dune, and I gasped as Adeuto’s peel of laughter rang through the air.
He was running around outside our shack. I was chasing him. I covered my mouth at the sight of him, but movement to my left reminded me where I was.
The past.
I glanced at Neti, standing beside me. She gazed down at our shack, and a ripple ran through her.
She watched Adeuto the most, while also checking on my whereabouts from time to time. As I chased my son around the shack, Neti’s head jerked up.
I followed her focus to a figure in the distance. A blue demon. Out on the hunt, judging by his weapons. He’d heard Adeuto’s laughter and was trekking this way.
Neti’s magic speared down into the sand, and less than a minute passed before an enormous serpent-like creature, a butyker, burst out of a dune and ate the blue demon whole.
My heart hammered, and I checked my past self and Adeuto. Neither we, nor my grandfather had noticed anything amiss. Not the demon who’d nearly found us, and not the giant fucking snake who’d saved us at Neti’s bidding.
How long had she been protecting us?
My mouth dried, and I looked at her.
And Neti looked back, and in her eyes I saw the demon as she’d once been.
A demon like me.
Who had possessed an ability to connect the future in a way I’d only seen my sister do.
Her voice boomed in my mind, and as I fell back—my awareness fading to black—her words echoed over and over.
The time has come. The wrath curse must end.