Chapter 30 #2
The one he most liked to look at? Or the favorite work Tyran had painted? “I thought you hated it too.”
Carmine didn’t answer. He circled the couch, and stood behind me.
I sighed, and turned. “There aren’t any charms in this room, why—”
He grabbed me around the throat and lifted me.
My eyes widened as I kicked my legs in a useless bid to find purchase. No air flowed in, and no air flowed out.
“When did you plant it?” he roared.
I shook my head, feeling the blood beginning to pound in my head.
He yanked me closer and roared in my face. “The tube leading to Earth. When did you do it?”
I was dropped, and collapsed in a heap, dragging in air through my bruised throat.
Carmine sat on the couch. “You are my mate, and you will only remain so if you serve to increase my power. So speak, enamai,” he said sarcastically. “Speak so that you might live.”
My first thought was to deny it. That would only enrage him. I hadn’t expected him to find the pipeline. It was tiny beyond reason, and in a fortress this size.
Yet of course he would have searched the gates.
In the rush of everything, I hadn’t given that as much thought as I should have. “Why do you hold me to standards of a being other than a demon? If I have kept my options open, then it is because of this side of you that can’t see reason.”
Carmine’s eyes flared crimson. “I see everything. Except for the strength you have concealed. The agenda. Though your grandmother gave you that advice, I seem to recall. Feign weakness to lure your enemy where you wish.”
I held my throat and sat. “I wasn’t referring to myself when I said that. You know you’re unpredictable, Carmine. Why would I ever fully trust in a future with you? I had to create a second option if you went too far.”
“So you have helped the enemies of your own race, in a bid to see me fall.”
“I’m still here,” I croaked. “I didn’t leave. But no, after shows like this one, I didn’t want to be trapped into one future.”
His face twisted. “And you couldn’t have reported my strategies if you’d left for Earth either.”
I closed my eyes. “I had to give them something. Do you think they’re eager to welcome a demon after what you’ve done? I gave them the least amount I could.”
“You realized that the war council had grown suspicious of you,” he replied.
I struggled to stand. “I was hedging my bets. If I stayed here, I didn’t want to lose a war. Like I’ve said, I did this to keep my options open. No more, and no less. Any demon would do the same. By the standards of this realm, you should apologize to me for allowing this.”
Carmine started to laugh. His cold laughter was terrible, and I was struck by the knowledge that I’d crossed a line that I’d managed to always stay on the right side of for five years.
The protection granted to me as his mate had evaporated.
He continued laughing, and I opened a tiny portal to the stronghold and shot my black smoke through in a small, continuous stream. I maintained it as long as possible, hoping against hope that Athira hadn’t taken Axel back to her accommodations.
I closed the portal.
Carmine’s cool gaze settled on me. “I wondered how you would attempt to reason your actions. You have always been smart, and so powerful too. A rare combination—as rare as your scale color. You have become a problem, and what power I might have gained from our mating is no longer worthwhile.”
Yep, the mating protection had expired.
Now it was a matter of stalling so the others could escape. “This is because of the dream.”
“I will humor you, human. How so?”
Reduced to human. “You don’t really care that I’ve been communicating with the alliance. You care that there’s a way to continue the mating without your power hurting me.”
His brows quirked with his lips. “I don’t care that you have given strategies to my enemies of centuries? You think that I care about hurting you and not about the sabotage to something I have work toward for most of my existence?”
The gates. Conquering supernaturals.
I tilted my chin. “I have established a relationship with the alliance. You should consider that can be used to your ends.”
“You will not betray your twin as easily as you betrayed me.”
“Betrayal has nothing to do with it. My survival is what I seek. You don’t believe me when I say that I was keeping my options open, but that was my objective. You caught me out, and the risk I took has backfired. But with my help you can win this war, even if I don’t do that as your mate.”
For the first time, I could see he was listening. “And what would you be if not my mate?”
“I would be as any other demon in the realm,” I answered. “I would work and live life out of the fortress.”
“You would choose that life over a life by my side,” he spat.
That concept bothered him, and I imagined that had to do with what his subjects would say.
“I could disappear on Earth too,” I said. “If that would be better for the king. Once the war is won.”
Had Athira reached the gates? She’d better hurry.
Carmine considered me. “And was the answer to a problem a black-scaled demon all along?”
I didn’t answer, but my stomach churned at his words, and if I lived more than an hour, then they were words to consider in depth.
He leaned back on the couch. “Tell me everything they have relayed.”
Okay, I’d brought him down from total ice. I opened my mouth, but he froze.
Carmine shot to his feet, and he tilted his head.
I threw out my own magical scan and cursed inwardly at the sudden and painfully obvious presence of a powerful little crimson and a Luther in the hangar.
Athira was hiding her presence at least, and Tsan wasn’t there at all.
There was a rush in my ears as Carmine drew his power forth all at once. He grabbed my arm and opened a portal.
Owu was going to die. Axel too.
So I did the only thing I could think of.