Chapter 16
Yiti tugged the bottom hem of my new gown into place with her smoke, then whipped out a needle and thread with her smoke too.
Her mastery over her power was impressive and had everything to do with her lack of hands.
The iron layer placed over each stump by the jealous ex-head tailor had ensured her hands would never regrow.
I liked to think that my jealousy wouldn’t extend to maiming her permanently, but her encroachment on my one and only friend had tainted my usual pleasure of seeing the blue demon.
“Are you head tailor now?” I asked, sniffing after.
“I turned down the position, my queen. Head tailors don’t last long. A blue named Favop took the position. He’s far more bearable than the last head tailor. Maybe he’ll live longer than a few years.”
I arched a brow. “How is the last head tailor faring?”
“Dead… I heard.”
The comment dragged unwilling laughter from me. Dammit. “You heard, did you?”
Yiti peeked up, eyes twinkling.
She’d had him killed for what he did to her hands. I didn’t want to like her right now, but I did. “How is your friend? The one riding on your talent?”
“Tewewh found her mate out in the realm. So she is happy. Or her mind has been erased. One of those is true.”
“An unusually cynical view on mating.”
“I would have thought you might view mating that way too.”
I had for a long time—especially when I’d considered the mating lust. There was a constant push from it that could wear down the mind, though I wouldn’t say erase.
More like that force and magic worked tirelessly to throw the two beings in mating together.
“I did once. I’ve learned that no mating is a senseless match.
There is always a reason that magic drives two beings together.
As for the mating, either person can deny or accept it.
Or delay and reject it. Mating is not mind-erasing on that permanent level. ”
“But is any mating real when both people are made to feel a certain way in the beginning?”
I thought about that. “It can take a long time to build to the depth of feeling that mating automatically grants two beings. And when that feeling has to build naturally, many things can get in the way of that—money, location, prior relationships. Mating eliminates those barriers in an instant, and very little feels more important than the person you have found. Warmth and love and the drive to protect are presented on a platter, and the task of loving and caring between mates is made easier for having those in huge quantity. But loving and caring must still occur, as it would for a non-mated couple. So, no, I don’t believe mates are made to feel a certain way.
Their feelings are accelerated, and they carry the confidence of knowing they have met their greatest chance at an immortal companion.
” I shot the tailor a look. “Do you know how many humans would kill to know, without a doubt, who they were meant to be with? Supernaturals have it good.”
Yiti seemed more confused by my words than anything.
“Have you met your mate?” I asked. These questions seemed pointed.
She shook her head. “I wouldn’t make a great match.” She held up her stumps.
“You’re the queen’s tailor,” I replied. “You manage better than most demons with hands.”
“The occupation of queen’s tailor does not always feel secure,” Yiti said drily. “Not when I am asked to make her a horrendous wedding gown, or when I am asked to make matching gowns for the single women she has arranged to plan a party for the princess’s mate-intended.”
I supposed… that it wasn’t. “I won’t be offended if you wish to work elsewhere.”
“I wish to be where I am. Losing two hands has the effect of putting the worst-case scenarios into perspective. There is little pain or hardship that I cannot bear. And death takes no effort to bear because I wouldn’t know any different.”
I snorted. She finished sewing and severed the thread with her smoke before drawing her power back in.
I reached out and captured one of her stumps, and Yiti eyed me warily.
I stepped down from the small step and pushed out my magus power. “What stops you from removing the iron plates?”
“Pain. The iron was on for too long before I first could attempt to remove it. Its effect is permanent, and now, without the plate, my body tries to heal but cannot. The pain is…”
Yiti had only ever been cool, calm, and very rebellious. If she was scared of this pain, then it had to be intense.
My voice floated between us, born of my magus affinity. “The iron is hooked in your smoke and scales. There lies the problem.”
Yiti stared but didn’t pull away.
My gut warmed, and I glanced up. “I can heal this.”
Then she jerked her stump back. “I’ve been healed before.”
“In the demon sense, which is to say not at all.”
For the first time in our dealings, Yiti appeared uncertain.
“You mean you can heal me with magus magic?” she asked.
“That, and I have no urge to feed on anyone’s pain. I have enough power as it is.”
“We know you do,” she murmured. “Will it work?”
“I can remove the iron from your smoke and scales. I would guess that’s why your body has failed to heal in the past. I don’t know for sure.”
Yiti held out her stumps. “I can always have a blacksmith weld the plates back on. Will it hurt?”
“Yes,” I answered after the visual of someone welding iron onto her stumps had flashed in my mind. “My smoke is far stronger than yours, so that alone will be painful. I have a feeling the iron is at home in your smoke and scale, but I will do this as quickly as I can.”
The tailor paled. “I’m ready.”
I wasn’t sure anyone could be ready for this.
Gratia and Raes’s ceremony would start soon, so I didn’t waste time releasing tiny amounts of my black-and-crimson smoke. If I released too much, I’d blast her arms off.
I held my magus magic back for now.
I pried off the iron plates with a “rip the Band-Aid off” approach. Yiti screamed, and I held fast to her raw stumps.
Her whimpers rose to shrieks as I eased my power into her scales. Shit. There was iron all through the scales closest to her stumps. All the way up her forearms.
I worked systemically up both arms from wrist to elbow, and I had no choice but to crack open each scale and cauterize the interior with my smoke.
Yiti collapsed on the ground, and I maintained my hold, kneeling beside her. She was leaking smoke from ten scales.
That couldn’t be good.
My gut warmed, and I released magus power to my fingertips to form a barrier over each scale. She stopped leaking smoke, and that was a huge discovery that I couldn’t really contemplate right now.
Her smoke. If iron remained in her smoke, then her scales would gradually become riddled with the stuff again too.
Probably ideal that she was unconscious.
I eased a tendril of smoke into the tip of her stump and took a look at her magic. Tiny specks of iron polluted her power, congregating in the lower half of her arm. The stump was the worst. I formed a net of my smoke, then dragged it from elbow to wrist.
After repeating that five times, I felt reasonably sure all the iron specks were in my net.
Now to get the iron out of her.
I winced as the end of her stump split at least two inches to allow my net of iron particles to exit. Yiti’s body twitched and leaped at the pain, but she didn’t wake.
I took a last look at her stump and forearm. This wasn’t the kind of thing I wanted her to go through twice.
All gone.
I repeated the healing on her other arm and didn’t manage to lessen the exit wound despite trying to ease the iron particles out.
The door to my bedroom opened behind me.
“Uh… what are you doing?” Tsan asked.
Dang. This wasn’t great. “Not what it looks like.”
“It looks like you’re giving Yiti new amputations.”
“Hopefully not. Could you find something to bind her wounds?”
Tsan left the room and returned with bandages. Yiti was barely healing, and the wounds to her scales were to blame, even though my magus barriers had kept the smoke from leaking out.
My lucky yellow glanced at me. “So you didn’t like the dress? Or...?”
Or did my jealousy get the better of me? “Yiti can fill you in when she wakes. Has the ceremony started?”
“About to. That’s why I came to get you.”
“I’d better go.”
“Am I meant to wait here?” he asked, frowning.
I paused in the doorway. “You’re her friend, aren’t you?”
Tsan would actually want to watch Gratia’s ceremony. Smirking, I left my bedroom. Served him right for having too many friends.
Gratia had chosen to hold her ceremony in the same outside location as mine and Carmine’s joining ritual. Because that had gone so well.
But I had to commend her on the choice. The public venue meant this was a huge gesture of how fully she’d chosen to embrace Raes’s scale color.
She was waiting in the hall inside the entrance.
“Just in your own time,” she snapped.
I smiled, then took in her shimmering crimson gown that hung off her shoulders and trailed in twisted lengths to the floor, giving the appearance she was flame. “Great dress. Not as good as the one I wore at my joining ceremony, but close.”
Gratia’s bridezilla craziness receded. “Thank you.”
I started to head outside, then paused. “Do you want company on the walk?”
She’d asked me as much for my joining ceremony. I’d turned her down, opting to walk with the memories of my family.
Gratia sucked in a breath. “Yes.”
I stopped myself from screwing up my face. She did? I’d only offered because I’d thought her refusal was a given. Should I point out that she planned to throw me under the bus alongside her mother?
Not the time.
I joined her. “Do we hold hands?”
“Link arms. I always thought I’d do this with my mother.”
“She likely expected that too.”
Gratia sighed and shook her head. “Let’s go. My mate is waiting for me and growing increasingly nervous.”
“You can tell?”
“Yes. After the iron ritual.”
I remembered reading of that at sixteen. Not every mating pair received gifts, but the more powerful a demon, the more likely a couple was to receive them. Or if the feelings were particularly strong.