The Demon King's Final Tier

Chapter 1

I returned to my throne beside Carmine, then sat to enjoy the show.

Darthy crawled away, her face bleeding, and only when she was a “safe” distance from me, did her family approach to help her.

She hadn’t been flaunting her goods to Carmine tonight, but as I’d been sitting beside him, the thought had come to me that I should give her a reminder of my power.

So I had.

I laughed and felt Carmine’s gaze on me.

I arched a brow at him. “Yes, mate?”

He had that look in his eyes. A look I’d seen more and more over the last week since our smoke ritual. The look was pained. Sad. No sooner did I have the thoughts, than they were dashed away and replaced by another.

The demon king wanted me.

I lifted a hand to the side of his face. “Let’s get out of here.”

His gaze flicked to the blood splatter where Darthy had recently been.

“Don’t worry,” I told him. “The servants will scrub the floors.”

I laughed again, and the sound chilled me. Cold was good. There was so much strength in the feeling. Or lack of it. I used to worry about everything, all the time.

But what those things were, I couldn’t recall.

Clearly not important.

Carmine took my hand. “Yes, enamai. We’ll retire for the night.”

The room was already hushed when he stood, and I rose after him.

When he addressed his subjects, his voice was as chilled as mine. “Enjoy the festivities.”

I grinned at Darthy, who was weaving on her seat across the ballroom. No one could leave the evening activities until Carmine did. A power play I’d come to enjoy.

Carmine held out his forearm, and I curled my fingers over his closed fist. “Your room or mine?” I murmured.

He shot me a look, and any concern I felt at his small frown was whisked away. When we’d left the ballroom, he answered, “Not tonight, enamai.”

I pouted. “Again? That’s been your answer each night since the ritual.”

“My focus must be war.”

Ice speared my chest. “Of course. Now that our smoke has merged, and you’re more powerful, there’s no use for me until the next ritual.”

Carmine searched my face, and his face hardened after a time. “I see you’ve learned your place. When I want you, I’ll call for you. Otherwise, I expect you to dedicate yourself to queenly duties.”

My lips curved. “Just not the ones where I carry your child, right?”

There was an odd pang in my chest at the mention of a child. I rubbed the area over my heart, frowning as a distant memory tried to surface.

“Syera? Are you well?” Carmine asked.

I looked up at my mate, who could pass for a Viking from times long gone if not for his height, which slightly exceeded that of the tallest human males.

Whatever memory had tried to reach me flittered away. I shook my head. “Yes, I’m fine.”

His expression told me that he disagreed.

“I’d be better if you’d satisfy me,” I told him.

“Satisfy yourself,” he replied before walking away down the hall.

Not in the direction of his private rooms at the heart of the fortress where both of our chambers were.

No, he’d taken to spending most of the day and night in his war council.

Except he no longer had a war council because they’d died at our enemy’s hands. My sister’s hands.

No wonder Carmine didn’t want to touch me. Look at what was happening to his realm because of my family. Maybe if I killed her, then he’d forgive me.

I wandered to my room, chuckling every so often as I remembered the interaction with Darthy. I should make that a regular thing.

When I got to the chamber, I walked into the bathroom and stared into the mirror over the sink. I saw the same woman as always—dark hair, gray eyes that Carmine now shared but for the circle of crimson that ringed his irises. I saw a warrior in the mirror.

I saw a lot of skin. Because I’d worn a crimson outfit for Carmine tonight, which was really just lengths of fabric wrapped around parts of my body. Still, I wasn’t the present that my mate wanted.

What if he was with Darthy right now? Not that he could find sexual satisfaction without me, but Darthy could still try.

I tracked his location to his war room. He was there. My shoulders relaxed until the sneaking thought snuck in that Darthy was in there with him.

But surely not. She wouldn’t dare after tonight.

Carmine was my mate, and everyone knew it.

To reassure myself, I released my smoke—our smoke.

The color of my smoke had always been black and remained that way.

Now, in the depths, and only visible at the right angle, it was the deepest of reds.

My smoke held another color now, and even more hues of black and dark grays than after the last ritual.

I was more powerful.

So was Carmine.

The power radiated under my scales, and in the last week, I hadn’t felt my magus side at all.

Not a single twinge. Which I preferred. My dual nature was nothing to be proud of, and I’d do whatever it took to scrub my tarnished blood from the minds of the demons in this realm. And from Carmine’s too.

Maybe that was another reason he wouldn’t touch me.

I sighed and drew the smoke back into my body.

A knock at the door startled me.

A crimson. And not just any crimson.

I bared my teeth in a grin and walked to swing the door wide. “Mother.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Athira to you.”

Carmine’s mother had never liked me, and she’d liked me less since I’d learned to assert my power. “What do you want?”

“Carmine sent me.”

My eyes narrowed.

She continued. “He wasn’t happy with your behavior in front of his subjects tonight.”

“He was happy enough. He enjoyed the show.”

Athira fixed me with a quelling look, and the look reminded me that her lethal daggers were only ever a blurring spin away. “You embarrassed yourself. And him. You think you appeared strong? You looked pathetic. My son has tasked me with training you into more queen-like behavior.”

Hurt and anger licked my insides in turn, but I wouldn’t show Athira any of that. Odds were that Carmine hadn’t said any of this.

Yet… he’d walked away and denied my touch for the sixth evening in a row.

Athira held out a message, and I unfolded it.

There is an art to ruling.

Go with my mother to learn it.

Carmine

Not addressed to “Enamai.” Not signed off with “Your mate.”

He’d written this. He’d done that and sent the note via his mother instead of telling me to my face twenty minutes ago.

He really hated me.

I clenched my jaw. I had to kill my sister—the sooner, the better—but for now, I’d go with Athira and play nice.

Or maybe kill her too.

I folded the letter again, then smiled at her. “Let’s go.”

Her lips curved, and she opened a portal. “Let’s. After you.”

“We aren’t training in the fortress?” I asked.

“Carmine doesn’t want any witnesses for what I must teach you.”

Athira had reigned as queen for a century before my father dethroned her mate and chucked Carmine into the dungeon. But over a century had passed since that time, and in recent times, she’d been nothing more than a hunter and tracker for her son. An assassin.

Carmine wanted me dead.

My insides chilled, but I remembered myself just as quickly.

My power exceeded Athira’s, more than ever. I had nothing to fear.

I stepped through and glanced around. “The river?”

Athira closed her first portal, and I felt the pulse of her magic searching the area before she opened a second portal.

She gestured, and I humored her—walking through.

The smells of the desert greeted me as my boots sank into rapidly cooling sand.

Night approached, and as hot as the desert could be, there was nowhere colder after sunset.

How did I know that? The sound of shifting granules and the distant shimmering skies that vibrated with the lingering heat pulled at my mind, giving me the strange sense that I’d been here before. At length.

I frowned, then turned to Athira. “So this is where you try to kill me?”

She snorted while closing her portal. “I wouldn’t bring you here to kill you. I’d do it in front of everyone. If I could. Which you know I can’t.”

I followed her into a dune and grunted at the sight of a shack hidden at the bottom. I hadn’t noticed it until we were nearly upon it. “What is this place?”

Carmine’s mother glanced back, and I tried to interpret her expression. She smoothed her features and turned away again.

After striding to a table, she kicked out a seat for me, then grabbed a bottle and two goblets from a small kitchen.

I sat as Athira slammed them down on the table between us.

She poured out the nectar into the goblets. “I’ve been saving this one for a celebration.”

I took my goblet. “What’s there to celebrate?”

“Your extraordinary fuck ups of the last week. I have been waiting for over five years for Carmine to lose interest in you, and now we’re finally here.” She lifted her goblet high and drank it all back.

Ice froze me over. “He hasn’t lost interest in me.”

Athira paused in the act of topping up her goblet. “You’re smarter than that, daughter. At least I thought you were. The last week has proven me wrong. You’ve merged smoke with my son and lost your brains in the ritual. What brains you had.”

Anger unfurled in me, the chilled kind that I was learning to love. Or perhaps I’d just forgotten the alternative.

I was going to kill Athira.

I’d kill her, and then I’d go to kill my sister. My power would be irrefutable, and Carmine would love me again.

I lifted my goblet to my lips and swirled the contents. “Yes, let’s celebrate.”

Your life.

And the end of it.

I held my goblet up to her and had the satisfaction of seeing her blanch at my expression. She knew what was coming.

I drained the contents, then stood and kicked the small table aside. “You’ve outlived your welcome and your use, demon.”

Athira didn’t stand. She sipped at her drink again. “You aren’t so foolish as to disobey the king’s orders. He sent you here as punishment. What do you think he’ll do if you kill his mother?”

“Thank me,” I hissed. “The whole realm will thank me.”

I stumbled, and Athira cocked a brow, saying, “Stupid and clumsy.”

My brows drew together as I staggered to the left. I snapped my head up and suddenly there were two of Athira. Which was two too many. “You drugged me.”

The words were garbled, but she understood them enough to remark, “I expected your magus side to make that harder.”

I had just enough brain power left to realize she’d expected my magus side to notice the poison. Which it should have.

But then again, I hadn’t felt that side of myself lately. Not in a week.

I dropped to a knee. “When I wake, I’m going to kill you.”

Athira grinned. “There is that risk.” She glanced over my head. “Bring them in.”

I weaved on the spot, then gave up and collapsed in a heap. I peered up at a yellow-scaled demon, illuminated in the moonlight. I knew this demon. “Tsan.”

He crouched beside me. “Syera. You may not remember asking for this, but it’s going to work out… I think.”

I slumped to the ground and stared up at the roof of the shack.

My thoughts swirled, and in the whirling funnel they formed, there was the face of a young boy that I loved more than myself.

There was the face of my sister, and two others—a Vissimo female, and a Luther female.

There was a boy with crimson power. There was a tiara.

White smoke. White magic too.

It filled my thoughts and me. So much so that I didn’t register the white-scaled creature bowing over me straight away.

I gazed into the intelligent eyes of a hooved creature, somewhere between an Earth mule and a horse, but built for desert life. A nismus, I recollected.

Another nismus butted up against the first, and then another until I was encased in the circle of them.

A hallucination.

Had to be.

Tsan held a blue gem in front of my eyes, then grabbed my unresponsive hands to curl my fingers about the stone.

He disappeared, and the nismus were back.

I smiled as they bowed their heads over me, over my hands that held the gem. As black clouded my mind, they touched their noses to the gem. Glass shards were ripped out of my body. Millions of them.

And I knew no more.