30. Chapter Thirty #2
Steig yawned as she was talking, not because he wasn’t paying attention, but just because his body was starting to shut down. The warmth and safety of his home—his family—made him just want to collapse for days.
“You should go sleep,” Lara said gently, covering his hand in hers.
Steig shook his head. “No. No way. Not while the kids are still awake. I need to be here for them.”
Lara smiled at him, and the look brightened his entire world. “Okay,” she said understandingly. “Let’s at least unpack your bag, though. How much time do you have?” She knew without having to ask that Cole was sending him out again—and that he would continue to do so until Ty was found.
“A day. He’s sending me out again tomorrow with Unger and Jace.”
“A day?!” Lara exclaimed, loud enough that the kids looked over at them, their faces concerned.
“Everything okay, Mama?” Leela asked. Her stilted three-year-old speech had progressed so much since Steig had last seen her, it almost surprised him.
“Yes, love, nothing to worry about,” Lara said, calming herself and handing the girl a fresh spiced bun from the table.
“It’s okay, Lara,” Steig assured her once Leela had rejoined the game with her siblings.
“No, it’s not, Steig. None of this is okay.”
He didn’t know what to say to her. She was right, of course.
None of this was okay, but Steig didn’t know how to fix it, and he didn’t know what else to do.
At least while he was going out on missions, Lara and the kids were left alone—Cole didn’t mess with their day-to-day.
But he knew, the second he was put into an imperae collar, that could change.
Not only would he lose access to them altogether, but Cole wouldn’t waste time before pushing Lara into a new marriage.
She would resist, of course, but then he’d use the kids as a bargaining chip.
He could take them away from her. He could put them in collars.
There was no end to the cruelty Cole would perpetrate to achieve control, power, and supremacy over everything and everyone in the Underworld, especially his own daughter.
Steig moved to her, wrapping her in his arms again, holding her tightly. “I know,” he said simply.
After a minute, she moved away from him, returning to check on something in the kitchen, and he grabbed his pack, moving it to their bedroom to remove his dirty clothes and refill it with clean ones.
His eldest daughter Myda followed him, ostensibly to help him sort through his bag, but he could tell she just wanted to be near him, which suited him just fine because that’s what he wanted too.
“These smell, Dad,” she said, tossing his dirty things into a pile on the floor.
Steig chuckled at her bluntness. “I’m not surprised. I’ve been wearing them for a month straight,” he said.
She continued to dig around his bag until she pulled out a small wooden board, sanded and stained, and decorated with carved letters and wiccan symbols. It had a small planchette attached to it by a string, and was very clearly not a daemonic relic.
“What’s this?” she asked curiously.
“Oh, nothing,” he said, taking it from her and leaving it on the bed. He felt bad lying to her, but she couldn’t know what that was for.
“It’s starting to move, though,” she said as she stared at it.
Steig whipped his head to look at it, watching it intensely as he saw the small planchette shift just the tiniest bit, moving from where it had hung limp by the letter L towards the letter T.
“Lara!” he called. “Come in here!”
“What is it?” she asked as she came down the hall from the kitchen and into the doorway.
Steig looked up at her briefly, keeping one eye on the planchette as he tracked its movements.
“Myda, go watch your siblings, please,” Lara said.
“But Mom, what is that?” the girl asked, watching the planchette move along with Steig.
“Now, Myda,” Lara said, her tone brooking no argument.
Myda huffed with displeasure, but did as she was told, leaving Steig and Lara alone with the talking board.
“Is that…?” Lara asked.
“A message, from the matriarch of the Auster Coven, yes.”
Steig had been given the talking board when Greya had released him.
She’d said she thought it was a good idea, so they could keep in touch about Ty’s whereabouts, and meet if they needed to exchange any information.
They were on the same side, after all—wanting Ena and Ty to be safe and the king to be gone, so he’d agreed.
At first, she’d used it to ask for occasional updates on daemons’ missions, so the Covens could be prepared for any violence, which he’d responded to via letters sent by mortal messengers, but it had been over two months now without word.
He’d been starting to worry that his information had gone unheeded, or that their tentative alliance had fallen apart.
“What is it saying?” Lara asked.
“I don’t know if I missed any of it, it was in my bag, but I think it said…
” Steig watched as the pointer began to move, darting between letters now as it spelled out the message.
He moved to his side table where he kept some scrap paper and ink and scribbled down the letters and symbols he’d seen so far.
Ty returns. Meet Aquilo. And then the black circle symbol.
“Ty returns?” Lara asked, her voice relieved and overjoyed. “Do you think that means he’s alive?”
“Yes, it must,” Steig said, looking up to smile at her. “I knew he wasn’t dead, the son of a bitch.” He nearly wanted to laugh with joy as relief bloomed in his chest.
“‘Meet Aquilo.’ That’s strange, though. Why does she want you to meet there?”
“I don’t know,” Steig said. That part made him suspicious. As far as he knew, Aquilo had no idea about the bond to Iblis, nor the breaking of it.
“And the black circle, what do you think that means?”
Steig studied the board and wished that he’d asked for a brief rundown of the symbols’ meanings before accepting it. That circle symbol was adjacent to other phases of the moon, though, and knowing the witches…
“Maybe it represents the new moon? Maybe that’s when she wants to meet.”
“That’s in two weeks,” Lara said, her eyebrows raising.
“Good timing, I guess,” Steig said. “I’ll be out on the mission, heading that way.”
“But what about Unger and Jace?”
Steig rubbed his face again. The stress and the duplicity of all this maneuvering was likely to lead him into an early grave. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I’ll come up with something.”
“Why do you think they’re coming back? Ena and Ty?” Lara asked, her voice full of tentative hope.
Steig shook his head. “I can only guess,” he said. “But whatever the reason, we need to be ready for them.”
“Do you think…that it’s time?” Lara asked, her voice sounding both grave and excited.
Steig sighed. He didn’t want to get too far ahead of themselves, but they needed to be prepared—in case Ty was returning to make moves against Cole. “It might be,” Steig said. “Do you have the list?”
The list of daemons they could trust. The one Lara had been working on these past several months.
The list of those who were without a doubt unhappy with Cole, and maybe could be swayed to support a change in power, despite the fact that it went against one of the daemons’ most basic tenets—that the power of the king was absolute, and the rules of succession must be respected at all costs.
But with Gaia’s will present in them all now…
many daemons’ distaste for Cole’s violence was at an all-time high.
Lara nodded.
“Then I think it’s time you start bringing people into the fold.
Warning them of Ty’s return, and what it could mean.
The more we can lay the groundwork for whatever comes next, the easier it will be when the time comes.
But Lara—be careful.” Steig knew only too well how things could go wrong if she were caught.
“Do you really think that’s why he’s coming back, though?
If he truly wanted to overthrow Cole, why did he leave in the first place?
” Lara asked, speaking out loud that which Steig had wondered almost every day since he’d found out Ty had left.
Greya had told him about Ena’s pregnancy and their concerns around the baby’s safety, and how Ty had chosen to stay with her to protect her.
Iblis, he understood all of that. Better than Ty would ever know.
But still…Ty was the heir. Deep down, he always would be, and he couldn’t deny that forever… right?
“I don’t know, but I have faith that he won’t let us down. Don’t you?” Steig asked her.
She met his gaze with steel and purpose.
Cole might have been the king, and Ty might have been the true heir, but Lara was the one keeping the Underworld running every day.
Steig knew that if she’d been born with a cock between her legs, she’d have made just as good of an heir as Ty.
Though, selfishly, Steig would not have liked that quite as much, but still, he respected her so fucking much.
“I do,” she said fiercely.
Steig smiled at her, gripping the back of her head in his hands as he spoke his next words. “Then hear me, Lara, because one way or another, we’ll bring Cole to his knees for all he has done, and I will come back to you and our family.”