Chapter 34
Screams.
I’d felt the instant the curse triggered and was surprised the ripple of magus power hadn’t woken Tyran. Ten seconds had passed before the first scream.
I sat in the dark on the side of the bed, fully dressed, and listened as Tyran blurred from his room to inspect the danger.
Too late.
I’d spent the rest of the evening forced into Tyran’s company, watching as the curse had spread to every single person in the fortress.
The magic spread through touch and lingered on objects too.
Goblets. Clothing. The amount of power it must have taken to put this into play...
This was more than one coven’s combined power at work.
My sister had pulled some serious strings.
More screams rose until they were deafening—to the ears of a demon, at least, and no doubt to the ears of a Luther.
Andie and I had spoken most of the night. If she managed to return to Earth tonight, then I’d wanted her to know everything that may be useful to the alliance. We were past the point of omitting information. We had to be all in. That was the only way we could survive now.
“This game is going to end,” I murmured in the dark.
I opened my door and watched as a red blurred down the hall, screeching.
She was in Carmine’s personal quarters, for starters.
But she no longer cared about that. Smoke streaked behind her, and other running demons shrieked as they came into contact with her stronger smoke, too deranged to think about dodging her slipstream.
Their own smoke filled the hall too. The entire fortress would look the same, if the screams echoing everywhere were any indicator.
My gaze took in the cracks and dents in their scales as they blurred by—the reason for them leaking smoke everywhere.
Mother be. This was a serious attack. This could have been life-threatening for demons on a smaller scale, but the magic in a curse was finite, and eventually an attack of this scale would peter out.
Even so, most demons would need several days to recover from injuries to their scales.
Go time, I thought at Andie. Are you ready?
She answered from the bunker, and I had to tune out the screams in the fortress to hear her in my mind. My guards are gone, but I’ll need help with the chains.
Okay, I’ll be there soon. If the curse touches Tyran, then all the better for us.
I closed the door to my room and returned to sit on the bed.
I opened a portal. “Athira?”
“The curse?”
“The curse. Is Gratia with you?”
“I’m here,” she said. “Raes is running through the realm.” Her voice hitched.
“He’ll survive, daughter. He is aware of the plan,” Athira soothed. Soothed, no less!
I’d never heard anything more terrifying.
I snapped my mouth shut at Athira’s warning glance.
She was totally leaning into the lie I’d fabricated to wiggle her way back into her daughter’s heart.
Which did imply that she’d felt a level of regret over how she’d reacted to Raes, but she’d decided against the “apologize and move on with a healthy relationship” route.
There were normal depraved acts that an average demon would commit; then there was Athira.
Gratia rasped around her tears. “Thank you, Mother. I have to remember he’s strong. And Syera spoke to him.”
Uh… Never got the chance. “Exactly,” I answered.
Athira smirked through the portal.
We weren’t the same, right?
Right?
“Stay in this room. No matter what.” I closed the portal only to open another. This time to somewhere that had served as a refuge. As an escape.
And as a lie.
A necessary one.
I looked through the portal at the desert and down the dune to the remnants of our old shack where I’d held my baby for the first time.
I’d watched Adeuto sit and crawl and try to put every damned thing into his mouth in this place.
There, I’d seen his divination affinity overcome him for the first time.
So many memories, and yet the joy they’d inspired had only just held my terror at bay. That hadn’t been living. This, no matter that there seemed less chance of winning and surviving by the day, this was living. Facing fear. Fighting the evil threatening those I loved.
Living came with risk, but merely existing—for all its appearance of safety—was more like dying than anything else.
“Neti,” I called.
I listened to the thumps of her trotting arrival.
She gazed through the portal with the huge, dark, and hooded eyes of a nismus.
Yet this was an ancient being that had chosen to exist as an animal instead of taking over a powerful body.
That made her more worthy of my trust than Tyran any day.
“Tyran’s crown is gone, and this is an opportunity to take out the only other source I know of. ”
She didn’t react to my words.
“The Crave Arena,” I said. Another two rounds of Tiers remained. Though I couldn’t tell if the round this week would go ahead with a realm filled with weak and recovering demons. “Can you get rid of the power stored there?”
She stamped her foreleg and tossed her head.
“I’ll take that as a yes?”
Neti reared, and when she stamped down again, I blinked at the ripple of power that exploded in a wave of sand from her feet.
I watched the white magic sweep across the desert and out of sight, and though I understood her magic was the antidote to Tyran’s, by this point in the game, the sight of white magic couldn’t help but induce a shudder.
I checked Tyran’s location. Leaving the fortress. Good. I tracked him, making sure he didn’t turn to the Crave Arena. He turned left and descended to the realm, moving fast. He was leaving to check his subjects—or his future sacrifices.
The sand through the portal convulsed and heaved. Neti didn’t seem bothered, and I gave her the benefit of the doubt until the first qer appeared.
“Aw, hell no.” A dry retch followed my words.
Qer scuttled and stretched over the sand toward Neti. All fifteen of the fuckers. I wretched again. “They are not coming through my portal. They can tunnel to the arena.”
Neti swung her gaze back to me, and there was a reprimand in it that served to remind me that these fifteen qer were also ancient beings who’d sacrificed their other forms to serve demonkind thousands of years ago.
In fact, they’d become qer, which was far more like a punishment than becoming a nismus or butyker.
“Fine,” I huffed. “I’ll open a portal there.”
After doing so, the qer scuttled through as I battled back nausea.
I just couldn’t with them.
“What will they do?” I asked Neti when the last qer had disappeared into the arena.
Neti turned and walked away.
I called after her. “Things are growing dire. We’re one misstep from our efforts collapsing. Your efforts. Is there anything else you can do to help us?”
Neti looked back, and there was empathy in her gaze.
Empathy… was unwelcome. Empathy came across as her knowing something bad lay ahead.
I narrowed my gaze. “I want it clear between us, Neti, that I will kill Tyran at all costs. Even the cost of my mate’s life—by his request. But if there is any way to achieve that while saving Carmine, then I will take it.
If there is any way he can be saved, then you owe that to Utyrth and his line for all they’ve sacrificed in this.
Slaves in their bodies for thousands of years, Neti.
Utyrth didn’t understand what he was getting into, and you know it. ”
The nismus was listening, but beyond that I couldn’t tell.
I just inherently knew what any demon knew.
When a being’s goal wasn’t quite your own, then you couldn’t quite trust them.
“I’m asking that you keep that in mind whenever an easy path to killing Tyran might present itself.
If you kill him without giving me the opportunity to save Carmine, then you’re on your own. ”
In answer, she walked away.
Great. That was as much of a “you do you” and “you’re on your own” as I’d ever received, and I’d had Rowaness Corentine for a grandmother.
I closed the portal and released a long exhale. Next item on the agenda.
A knock sounded, and I swung open the door to admit Yiti and Tsan. “Right on time,” I told them. “Are you both okay?”
“Prepared for battle,” Tsan said cheerfully. Yiti grunted. Weariness pinched the corners of her eyes, and I stole a peek at her healing hands. Not hands yet, but the palms had formed, which I imagined was a fucking painful process.
I’m about to open a portal, I thought at Andie.
I’m still alone, Andie’s voice was faint. I need to shift. The adrenaline in this place is getting to me.
I opened a portal to the bunker, then glanced at the yellow and blue demon who’d joined me. “The king will be tracking me. I need to stay in this room. You know what to do.”
Tsan stepped through, and Yiti followed.
Yiti wasn’t part of my original plan, but Tsan had been out in the realm searching for Tyran’s chosen replacement when I went looking for him.
I’d been forced to send a warning about the curse via Yiti.
Which hadn’t worked out badly. Tsan may not be able to break the chains by himself, but Yiti was a blue.
They crouched by Andie, and I watched them work.
Carmine felt my focus, and in return I felt his curiosity. He knew I was up to something.
Andie sighed as the chains fell away from her wrists, and then from her ankles. “I have to shift.”
Tsan and Yiti backed up as Andie’s bones cracked. She was tired, and her groans made it clear the shift wasn’t an easy one.
Or a pretty one.
I grimaced as her knee reversed to become a hind leg. First one, then the other. Eventually, in minutes that felt far longer, Andie was in her red-furred wolf form. Beautiful.
“Come back through,” I said to the others. Part of me couldn’t believe Tyran hadn’t appeared.
I touched Tsan’s shoulder as he passed me on the way out of my room.
“What?” he asked.
“Just need all the luck I can get. Don’t linger in the halls. The curse is still going strong, and I can’t be sure the infection phase is over.”