Chapter 4
“Any luck?” I whispered through the tiny portal I’d opened to Tsan’s room.
“What’s luck?” he quietly replied.
“It’s—”
He snickered. “I know what luck is.”
My brows rose. “You do?”
“I’m slowly learning what some of your strange words mean.”
That would make him the only one. For a person to learn, they had to want to learn. “What does ‘luck’ mean?”
“It’s when a person blames random fortune when actually their actions created opportunity.”
Hmm. “That is a great definition. So? Any luck with the search?”
Tsan sighed. “None. Where would a three-year-old hide something?”
Great question. In my experience, never anywhere an adult would guess. I’d found boot laces stuffed in the cooking pots once. “They have to be at the old shack.”
“That’s where we searched. I should thank you for giving me the perfect teammate.”
No one liked to spend time with Athira, except her children. Even Gratia avoided her mother these days, with all the mating strife between them. “Yeah. Necessary evil for now.”
“I figured. What are you working on?”
Tonight I’d pull Carmine into a dream and see what I could convey to him there. Otherwise… “Do you remember when Carmine mentioned Hge?”
“When he forced the name into conversation? I do.”
I hadn’t noticed the weirdness of Carmine’s comment until Tsan had pointed it out. But he’d been right. It was as if Carmine had wanted us to know about his cellmate from the dungeon days. “I need to visit the dungeons. I may be able to draw up an echo of the past with my magus power.”
“I can ask around the realm to see if anyone remembers stories of him.”
“Sure, if you’re careful.”
“I’m a yellow, Syera.”
True. “I forget.”
“That’s why I like you. Demons never forget scale color. It’s like you’re color blind, like Yiti.”
Yiti.
My thoughts soured. Not because I disliked Yiti, but because she was Tsan’s other friend. And I still only had one friend. That I was betraying.
“Need company in the dungeons?” Tsan asked. His tone was carefully neutral.
Great. He knew I was jealous. “Better not. There are protections in place. I can’t decide whether I wait for Carmine to go to Earth, or if I just go knowing he’ll feel me there.
He doesn’t visit the dungeons often, but if he did, then that may give me more information too.
But that comes with the risk of the… fallout. ”
The thread connecting me to Carmine slackened. “Gotta go.”
“Night,” Tsan whispered as I closed the tiny portal.
Nearly midnight. Carmine was retiring later and later these days. Probably in the hopes I’d be too tired to seduce him.
With the covers pulled up to my chin, I waited and listened to him move around his chamber.
Shower.
Drying.
Getting into bed. Without dressing first.
I couldn’t have failed to notice that detail with the mating lust, which was worse than ever in some ways.
Now that I’d decided my mate was locked inside his own body, one of the barriers between us was gone, and the lust was taking up more space in my everyday thoughts.
But the lust was also aimed at Carmine, not Tyran.
When Tyran was in the driver’s seat, my mind could shove the lust aside pretty well.
My mind.
My body didn’t seem to have any standards.
I listened until his breaths evened, then focused on slipping into sleep myself.
I centered my thoughts on Carmine as I drifted down the thread linking us.
Crimson and black. And so many hues of each color.
Beautiful. No white magic fouled this space in us.
Tendrils of smoke curled off the thread that I walked upon.
Peace radiated more powerfully in me the closer I floated toward Carmine.
This was our mating.
This was how things could be.
Now that I could view us as a separate entity to Tyran, and now that I could believe in the worthiness of our mating at all, I’d started to embrace the awe of what we shared.
I wanted to protect this precious peace with everything in me, and no one could be more surprised than me to learn that urge to protect my mating was equal in force to my urge to protect Adeuto.
Would Adeuto always win between the two if I had to choose?
Yes. Because that was what Carmine and I would both want.
But this feeling of rightness and certainty was one that Carmine often referred to, and that I had felt, too, for the first two years.
To have my mating back and to believe in it, to fight for it…
was terrifying. There was a reason I’d avoided this path until the last minute.
My efforts to know us again had to be tentative.
I had to return to our mating little by little so I didn’t drown.
I opened my eyes and looked at the stone ceiling, then tilted my head further back.
The wall behind me was splashed with my artwork—a picture of a man looking into a mirror and seeing a boy.
My take on Tyran’s artwork in the lounge, though I hadn’t realized how true my rendition was at the time—nor understood Carmine’s enjoyment.
I was in our dream.
I rolled toward my mate and stared at his tense back. He’d realized where we were.
He rolled to face me, his expression hard and unrelenting.
What to say? Hello?
That would have to do. I opened my mouth to speak.
Except with a gut-jerking sensation, I was ripped out of the dream, and deposited back in my bed.
My jaw dropped as I sat and scanned the room to double-check.
It was my room.
Motherfucker!
I mean, he believed I was riddled with Tyran’s power and unaware of it, and he wouldn’t want to take advantage of me in that state. I crossed my arms. His honorable intentions had just hijacked my plans.
Honorable… wow. Never thought I’d apply that word to Carmine.
And now I was awake and annoyed. I’d been this close to clueing him in on my healed state. I rubbed my face, withholding a groan that may wake Tyran.
If Carmine was going to kick me out of every dream, I had to figure out another way to speak with him.
I lowered my hands. The dungeons. Carmine was most himself in the dungeons! If Athira’s theory was correct—and the more I’d thought about her words, the more I felt she was on the right track there—the dungeons did something to Carmine, and so Tyran prevented him from visiting unless necessary.
My excitement died a swift death. Oh. Tyran had to allow Carmine to go to the dungeons. That could prove tricky.
But I supposed if Tyran didn’t follow me, then I’d have a chance to look for clues on Hge. And if he did follow, then I may get a chance to speak with Carmine.
Screw it. I was going.
I portaled to the dungeon cells. There was a two-demon barrier over this place, but Athira had granted me access long ago, and Carmine’s power didn’t want to hurt me.
Yet, anyway. Carmine had assumed that my magus affinity allowed me access through the barrier.
Otherwise Athira would have been interrogated long ago.
I peered around the empty dungeon cells. Empty since I’d freed my twin’s demon. In my father’s reign at least two demons had resided down here. Carmine and the mysterious son-of-a-gun called Hge.
Here, my demon power was of little help, so I drew forth my weaker magus power.
Of the four affinities available to maguskind, I had one.
Divination. The affinity honored ancestors and the lessons and knowledge of the dead.
Divination affinities didn’t really see the dead as dead.
We saw them as departed. Elsewhere. Available if needed.
Even my murdered grandmother and mother, who I’d finally summoned to beat the shit out of Carmine—aka Tyran—in the battle.
A magus with a divination affinity could tune into the past through a range of methods, but there was always a sense of the past around us—something humans would term a sixth sense or second sight or clairvoyance.
My magus power wasn’t particularly strong, so my sense of the past wasn’t strong, either, but where my demon power was useless to sense anything other than what was physically and magically here, my magus power could sense more.
I floated my divination affinity into each cell in turn.
Bingo!
Carmine’s past was a thick layer in the far cell.
I walked over, and the sense of him grew.
Carmine had spent over one hundred years in this tiny space, with enough room for him to take three strides one way and a single stride the other.
He’d slept on a crappy bed too small to stretch out on. For one hundred years.
Panic chased up my throat as I imagined these four walls as company for a century.
The panic wasn’t mine, I realized. The panic was Carmine’s, and it lingered in the cell, cloying my senses. No wonder he’d set his mind to the only thing he had control over while locked in here—his power.
He’d refused to release his smoke, driving himself to the point of death again and again in the doing. My father had thought him weak because of that. Or perhaps my father had possessed another form of control over Tyran’s magic.
Either way, Carmine had grown powerful through holding his smoke in so brutally. He’d also had the company of another demon. Standing in Carmine’s tiny cell, I could easily fathom how important that other demon had become to my mate.
Hge.
Which cell had belonged to him?
I checked Carmine’s location. He was still in his room, moving a little in the bed. Likely fuming. Tyran wasn’t coming down here, after all, but there would be questions later. And anger.
Which meant I had to make this visit worthwhile.
I turned to look out of the cell. Was Hge his neighbor? Or had Carmine been able to see Hge?
From here, I could see through the small, barred windows of the two opposite cells.
I strode in that direction, pulling Carmine’s past with me.
I entered both cells and couldn’t feel any draw from Carmine’s past to either. I returned to Carmine’s cell, then rested my hand on the room to his right.
The panic in Carmine’s past receded, calmed by whatever past lingered in this cell.
Ah.
Hge had been his neighbor.
I pushed open the heavy cell door.
My demon eyes and senses told me this stone cell was the same as the other cells here. The crappy bed was the same too. Three strides one way, and one stride the other.
My magus senses told a different story of deep healing and peace and companionship. The past in here was powerful enough to stop me in my tracks. Wow. Shit. Hge had really had an impact on Carmine. In my mind, Hge catapulted from “demon with good banter” to “very powerful and unique demon.”
I took another step inside, and the serenity intensified. Damn. This felt like a healing space. A soothing balm.
The past still held such strong intention to protect and support, yet why would any demon do that for another unless they were closely related?
In fact, other than a parent and child, I couldn’t imagine this sentiment existing for demons.
Even a parent and a child… If Athira had occupied this cell next to Carmine, the past wouldn’t carry such devotion.
That was the feeling. Devotion. Hge had been devoted to Carmine. Yet not his father—whom my father had killed to take the throne.
Why had Hge felt such responsibility to care for Carmine? Not physically. That wasn’t the flavor of the past. Hge had cared for Carmine’s heart. His goodness.
His character.
I pressed out more magus power and studied the expanse of Hge’s past. It rested all around Carmine’s cell. I traced the edges and frowned at a trail of Hge’s past extending deep underground.
The trail puttered off into nothing.
And that made no sense.
My magus power had uncovered all it could. I had to draw forth an echo of the past to learn more. I knew how to in theory.
I focused my divination affinity and pushed my magic into the layer of the past that I sought more knowledge on. I imagined that layer taking form and life. I whispered to the past to speak its story.
My eyes had fluttered, and I opened them. My hope fell in a heap at the lack of past echo in the room. No demons walked around. No half-eaten food tray.
Dang.
I tried again. When I tried the third time, I noticed the drain on my power and the fizzling sensation when my magus juice ran dry.
I wasn’t powerful enough to summon an echo of the past.
Fuck.
I brightened not long after.
I could summon the dead with my dual nature. Duh.
Releasing my demon power again, I crouched in the doorway and whispered my invitation to those who had existed here long ago, those who had died here.
I waited on tenterhooks, scanning the room for any signs of ghosts.
None came.
“What the fuck?” I rose again.
Carmine had said that Hge died in here. I peered behind me but couldn’t spot any ghostly company. I checked Carmine’s cell too.
Hge mustn’t have died here. But that wasn’t true either.
I knew him for ten years when I was first there. The guards did not like our conversations and must have told your father. Hge was killed for sport while I watched. They took their time.
So why wasn’t Hge’s ghost responding? I could feel when the departed denied my request to appear. There was no response at all.
Hge hadn’t died here.
Which meant that Hge had carried a secret.
Or my father had carried one.
More questions again. I swear, each time I checked something off my to-do list, I gained another five items on it.
I returned to Carmine’s old cell and sat on the bed.
What an existence he’d lived, and as it had turned out, this wasn’t the worst part of his life.
Still, he must’ve gone half mad in here from isolation after Hge’s death.
Then after seizing his freedom, he’d entered a dungeon far worse.
Far worse than anything I’d endured in my short life.
I’d been frightened of fighting in Tiers, and then of Carmine discovering Adeuto.
Those concerns felt minuscule in comparison to losing myself to Tyran.
If I’d been frightened and fearful, then those had been my feelings.
The actions I’d taken had been my own, too, as were my choices—excluding the brief periods of exposure to Tyran’s curse.
Athira had once said that the fortress was the real game of Tiers, and she hadn’t known how true that statement was.
From the white magic in the dust of the Crave Arena, to the mysteries of the dungeon, and then to the tyrannical force controlling kings since the beginning.
This was the real and deadly version of Tiers, the version where a demon could either win or lose themself forever.
This version couldn’t be won with a sword and a few kicks, because this was a game of secrets and agendas and buried pasts that threatened to frustrate me into madness.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
And now I had bigger problems.
If I wanted to reach the final tier, then I’d better think of a damned good excuse for coming to the dungeons in the first place.