Chapter 35
“Can we throw stuff in the lake?” Adeuto asked.
“You can.”
He ran ahead with Owu, shouting a greeting to Tempest on the way past.
I sat on the rug next to her. My ass was out now. I preferred that. I’d borrowed a hemp dress from Tempest, and I didn’t like how confining the clothing felt, or how it masked the curves of my body. Those feelings then confronted me on another level.
Demon fashion had taken more of a hold in me than I’d realized. I’d been in denial about how demony Yiti’s designs were. They were barely Magus. Barely Earth fashions. I’d been fooling myself.
Did I want to wear a loincloth and nipple string? Not yet.
I was just very, very disturbed to discover they appealed far more than yesterday.
“Good morning?” I grunted at my twin.
“A morning,” she replied. “Managing relationships with other covens is not my favorite part of leading. As the war continues, their offers of help are harder to secure. It’s a good thing I have Ryzika’s relics.”
I’d caught a few comments about the relics during my cave tour, but not enough to understand why they were a huge deal. “What happened there?”
Tempest was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt.
She leaned back on her hands. “In a nutshell that doesn’t really speak to the intensity of the experience?
Ryzika was the last Magus in this coven to possess all four affinities.
Any Magus to possess all four affinities is the assumed leader.
When I gained the fourth affinity, the relics chose me—kind of attacked me, in all honesty.
Things got tricky after that. I knew I was a demon, and demons were attacking us.
I worried about how the coven would perceive all that.
Then I was suddenly leading the coven. It was a lot. ”
I may not like linen dresses anymore, but I’d grown up as a Magus. Somethings didn’t happen… like gaining affinities. “How did you gain grimoire?”
Tempest shook her head. “Through the mating with Wild. But I’m not sure if that was necessary for us to be mates, or if the mother was actually choosing me to lead. We think she definitely wanted to create the first mated Magus couple.”
Magus didn’t typically have mates. “I’d wondered how that happened.”
“My demon side made it possible. We think she grafted the demon ability to mate onto me so I could go through the rituals with Wild. We didn’t know that at the time. We’d kiss or touch or whatever, and then matching runes would appear, and a whole bunch of angst to go with it.”
She lifted her shirt, and I spotted the flower runes low on her abdomen.
Tempest continued, “We finally figured out what was going on, and got through the rituals, in part thanks to what you did freeing my demon.”
“And Wild? How do you feel about him?”
Her face softened. “Wild was unexpected. Unwanted to start with—I told you how messed up I was while parted from my demon. He didn’t want anything serious either.
Mating is about the most serious thing two people can do.
One thing after another happened, and somewhere along the line, we started to make sense.
I never want to be without him. Nothing could compete with what I feel for Wild.
” She smiled at me. “I can’t wait for you to know him better. You’ll see how great he is.”
“I see already,” I answered. “You’re his entire world. His whole reason for being.”
“His shitty parents make that easy. No competition. But Carmine’s mother doesn’t sound all bad?”
I choked on my own spit. “Athira?”
“The opposite?”
My shoulders shook with suppressed laughter.
“Athira is a very powerful and skilled demon who exists to enforce her son’s rule.
She tracked down my hideout in the desert and found Adeuto.
I’ve never been more scared in my life, but she surprised me with her choice to betray Carmine for her grandson.
I suppose she’s not all bad, but if there’s a demon who embodies everything demon, then Athira is it.
Did you find out anything about our maternal grandfather? ”
Our grandmother and pregnant mother had fled the coven and left our grandfather behind.
Tempest looked ahead at the lake to where the boys were splashing.
“He was in contact with Mother and Grandmother. To what extent, I’m unsure.
But he knew about the demon gates. He guarded them for a long time.
And then our uncle guarded the gates after him.
He left the truth of what the demons were doing with Varden, one of the councilors here that Carmine recently killed. ”
I could hear the sorrow in her voice. Varden had meant something to her.
“Carmine has killed a lot of people,” I said, and guilt churned in my stomach.
I should have killed him long ago.
Her gaze fixed on the side of my face. “Syera, what did he do to you? I don’t judge you for anything you did to stay alive in that realm. But if you’re willing to share what you’ve been through, then I’ll listen.”
A lump rose in my throat. If I was to tell anyone, it would be her.
I hadn’t had a person in five years. No one that I could rely on without condition.
For a time, I’d made Carmine that person, only to learn who he really was.
But I hadn’t had Tempest in five years, and I suddenly realized that I’d fought in a huge, lonely battle in that time.
I said, “He made me love him under false pretenses. That was the first thing he did to me. Then he crushed me with the truth, but only part of the truth—he left out that you were alive. If he’d never done those things to me, then I never would have conceived Adeuto.
So I can’t be sorry for any of the heartbreak and grief.
Birthing Adeuto built me again. I built myself because there was no one else to help me do that, and Adeuto needed me to be strong.
So Carmine not only gave me a son, but in doing so, he gave me the incentive to kill him that I may otherwise never have found.
Carmine has torn me in every direction, yes, and he morphs into a monster with the blink of an eye.
Every bit of that monster made me smarter, tougher, and more determined to learn what was needed to take him out.
” I looked at her. “Demons don’t suffer victims, and that’s one part of our culture that has earned my respect.
While I have regrets about who my mate turned out to be, I’m not a victim of his treatment.
I learned how to steer my fate, and I have done so since.
I am not the same as I was at sixteen, and I might have been if not for Carmine. ”
Tempest’s eyes were serious. “You don’t remember yourself well. You were always formidable. You always had this strength in you. Some of my earliest memories are a feeling of certainty that you were born to move mountains, and if I could keep up with you, then I’d get to watch mountains move.”
I frowned and glanced at her. “That’s how you remember me?”
She shrugged. “You were untouchable. So certain. That was what drew humans to you.”
I wrinkled my nose.
“Your favorite part,” she said, snorting after.
“I always saw you that way,” I confessed. “You were the queen of the world, and I was going to help you kick ass. I was going to be your Athira. You had a way of reaching people, and of understanding the whole picture. Everyone admired you so much.”
“You’re forgetting how strange humans found me until I could understand the whole picture. That was an overwhelming process. But perhaps in the end it worked out. An approachable and admirable leader is ideal for Maguskind. Not so sure about demonkind.”
An approachable and admirable Carmine… I grinned. “Feared and slightly despised is a closer description of the attributes of a demon leader. For Carmine anyway.”
“Even so. Do you think you can kill him? He’s vile, but he’s your mate. I don’t mean that in a condemning way. Do you want to kill him?”
My gaze followed Adeuto. The boys were taking turns throwing rocks at each other’s heads.
Not exactly my idea of fun. Then again, Tempest and I used to throw daggers at each other to test our barriers.
“I could never have imagined how having a child would change me. In pregnancy, I dreamed of how it would go and how hard things might be. Then I had Adeuto, and I learned, and only then did I understand the total shift that occurs when a woman becomes a mother. I will kill Carmine, who is my mate—vile or not—because without that, Adeuto isn’t safe.
I’m thankful that I hate Carmine, because even if he wasn’t vile, I would still need to kill him to keep my child safe.
Nothing in this realm or any other can compare to the love between a mother and her child, and while I once would have said the same for what I felt for Carmine, now I have learned the truth. ”
We watched the boys try to seriously injure one another for a time.
Tempest eventually said, “The mother is called so for good reason. Mothers are the greatest force in the world. That strength towers in you. I just wish you’d received a better mate in immortality. I wish there was a way to reach him.”
I wouldn’t have expected that sentiment. Carmine had killed people she cared about and knew. I’d stilled at her comment. “After all the harm he’s done?”
She pulled a face. “Perhaps not. He wouldn’t ever be accepted outside the realm now, not even a changed him.”
I swallowed back strange and unexpected disappointment. “He’s done too much damage, you’re right.”
He’d put supernaturals through decades of turmoil with the games designed to divide and conquer.
Maybe past kings had started that, but Carmine had continued the games.
Then he’d launched this war that had claimed the lives of so many.
Rhona. Kyros’s father. The man, Varden, who Tempest had cared about.
Our mother and grandmother.
Carmine would never change.
Tempest murmured, “The other leaders were impressed with you. Even Kyros. He’s never impressed with anyone. Openly anyway. Wild is amused at the idea you might form a friendship with him. I don’t know if Kyros has any friends.”
That would take me to the dizzying heights of two friendships. But it sounded like Kyros would only have one. I’d be more popular than him. How would I keep up?
I said, “Vissimo understand pain better than Luther and Magus. We have a similar coldness and calculation to them, minus the clan part. That’s a level of community that couldn’t exist in the demon realm.”
“Whatever the connection stems from, I could tell he liked you. His father, Julian, would have too. They respect power. Basi liked you as well. Mostly that you don’t back down from her bullshit.
She’s used to throwing her weight around to get what she wants, and she enjoys people who are immune to that. ”
“Of everyone in that room, she makes the least sense.”
Tempest threw me a grin. “Because that’s her aim. She wishes to be perceived as nonsensical. Then someone may make the mistake of believing her act. Then she goes for the throat. She’s smart and tough. Her grandmother was murdered, too, you know.”
My heart sank. “I didn’t know. Carmine?”
Tempest shook her head. “Not directly, though she was killed during the game between the two Vissimo clans. So indirectly, I suppose he did kill her.” She tipped her face to the sun.
“As for Andie, what you see is what you get. She’s the humble to Basilia’s arrogance.
She reminds me to always look at the person before me instead of every hidden detail about that person that I can see with my magic.
She’s the humanity in our alliance, and if I didn’t want to kill Carmine for my own reasons, then I would kill on behalf of her heartbreak over Rhona. ”
“Carmine has underestimated her value in the alliance.”
Tempest hummed. “I’d like to keep it that way.”
“And Sascha? What were his thoughts?”
“I perceived that some of your views took him aback. There’s no one more loyal than the pack leader, and he also has to balance his pack’s views of what happened with Axel.
So that’s a factor for him in connecting with you.
In saying that, he’s—how do I phrase this kindly—the most stable of any of our mates. ”
I considered Wild, who always appeared a blink away from drawing a weapon if someone looked at Tempest wrong.
Then I considered Kyros, who’d admitted the lives of Basilia and his clan depended on his tenuous grip on control.
“I can see what you mean about Kyros and Wild, but you think my mate is unstable too?”
Laughter burst from her lips, and I joined her.
I clutched my stomach after. “I got the really fucked-up one.”
Tempest wiped tears from her face. “Like I said, if Sascha is the one hedging his bets, then at least he’s the stable one.”
“Maybe that’s because he has the most stable mate.”
My twin’s eyes widened, and she covered her mouth. “Fuck, we’re the crazy ones, aren’t we? I’ve had an epiphany. I’ve blamed the guys all along, but Basilia and I are the issue.”
“What about me? I must be seriously unhinged.” I knew for a fact that I had a bunch of unofficial disorders.
Tempest and I were still rolling on the blanket, laughing, when two shadows fell over us.
“Mama, what you doing?” Adeuto asked.
His mother had lost the plot.
My voice cracked. “Catching up with Aunty Tempest, baby.”
“What about?” he asked.
How crazy we were.
That sent me into fits again.
I sniffed after, kneading my aching stomach. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed like that, but I’d wager it was around, oh, five years ago. “Just this and that, my little love. Are you hungry?”
I was fobbing him off, and he knew it.
Owu blurted, “I am!”
We set off back to the cave, and Tempest and I snorted and laughed along the way. Mother be. I’d been in survival mode for so long that I’d forgotten this feeling of having someone.
My heart was full again.
I’d need to enter survival mode again, and sooner than I’d like, I could assume. But if I did, then at least my heart would remember this full feeling for a while.