Chapter 34 #2
“We’ll stay in the room. Do what you need to do.” He left with Yiti, whose eyes were bright after her rebellious act.
“Go,” I told Andie through the portal. “I’ll guide you.”
I closed the portal, sat on the bed, then cast my magus power down to her position. Turn right out the door, I instructed.
The wolf barged through the closed door and ran in that direction. Where next? she snarled.
I started. Andie?
I’m Booker, the wolf responded. Andie is here, but you’ll deal with me now.
Fine by me. Left at the stairs. Go to the end. Avoid demons on the way.
She chuffed, Smoke can’t hurt me.
Them sending the word to the king that you’ve escaped could.
She ran, and I couldn’t help asking, How can you shift while pregnant? Doesn’t that hurt the baby?
A Luther female who carries a pup must shift twelve times in her pregnancy to train the pup’s magic how to do so once born. We shift at the onset of pregnancy, and at each new moon thereafter, and again when the baby is on the way.
Whoa. Kind of cool. Right, then quick left.
She did so, whipping down the smaller hallway where I’d directed. She growled in my mind, then barged through a small doorway and paused.
Strong demons, she growled, hunkering down to wait.
They passed by, and Booker poked her head out of the room, then settled into a loping run again.
Go through the main hall and continue straight—
The words had just left my mind when Booker disappeared. I surged to my feet, and cast more magic forth to scan the hall and surrounding rooms.
A sinking feeling flipped my stomach. Already knowing the answer, I checked Tyran’s location.
Outside the fortress.
I speared magic his way, and located Booker’s presence too. “Fuck.” She’d been most of the way to the hangar.
Dammit. This was bad.
I looked at the ceiling and made my choice.
I portaled to Tyran.
“Very clever, my queen. How did you manage that feat?” he asked me in a low voice. “If not for the opening of a gate, I would never have known.”
We weren’t responsible for that either.
A howl rent the air, and the doors of the fortress—already open—were filled by an enormous dark-brown wolf.
Sascha paced on the steps, his lips drawn back over bared teeth. His honey gaze fixed on Booker, who was unconscious at Tyran’s feet.
Kyros appeared, and then Basilia, Wild, and lastly, my sister.
As unexpected and fear inspiring as their sudden appearance was, it didn’t manage to completely distract from everything else.
Demons were everywhere outside the fortress.
Not just those who usually lived within.
Demons from the realm had come up here too.
Their screaming had stopped. They were weak.
Some wavered on their feet. Some sat and stared at their king.
Others were slanting or had given up, lying down as smoke continued to leave them through their damaged scales.
“Have you come for your mate, dog?” Tyran asked Sascha.
Sascha snapped his fangs in reply, and I for one was not brave enough to turn my back on the huge Luther. I stepped to one side, so I could keep both my mate and Andie’s in sight.
My sister moved forward. “Release her, and I will release the antidote for your dying demons.”
Dying? I didn’t think so. The curse was slowing. But Tyran didn’t need to know that.
“Your magic cannot sustain this curse for much longer,” he replied.
Tempest’s smile was as icy as his. “It will hold long enough, demon king. I promise you that. Would you like to see if I’m bluffing?”
“You are so good at it, magus queen,” he replied. “Alive and well, when we believed you dead.”
He flicked a look at me, then back to my sister. “My demons need no antidote. But I offer you an antidote that you seek. An antidote to this war.” Tyran held Booker aloft. “Surrender now, or I kill her.”
Kyros’s meadow-green eyes glowed with his focused fury. “Kill her, and you will die, demon. You cannot fight us all.”
“You cannot fight a realm of demons, even weakened ones.”
“The three armies pouring through the gates as we speak can,” Wild replied.
Tyran conceded the point with a nod. “And yet it remains that the life of one of your own would be forfeit. And with her, the life or sanity of her mate. One-third of your alliance. Do you feel brave in their loyalty, Luther king? The life of your mate, and your own life, is in the hands of other races who owe you nothing.”
Sascha lunged forward, snarling.
Tyran shook Booker like she were a child. “Careful, pup. Her pretty neck is so fragile.”
There was no winning this.
So all that remained, like in so many other times, was the choice of what I would do? For so long that choice had been, what could I do. What could I get away with? What could I survive doing?
But I’d seen something that I doubted anyone else in the realm aside from Athira would have noticed.
Tyran was under the curse. He was controlling the leaking smoke to keep it close to his body—his feet specifically—where he was pushing the black-tinged crimson smoke underground to keep it out of sight.
He was weakening. Time was a factor. But his weakening state would level the playing field.
“No,” I said, moving forward. “No one will die today. No demons, and not the Luther queen.”
I was painfully, painfully aware of the other demons witnessing this.
This was the moment Tyran had been building me up to.
This was the instant where he pulled the rug from under me, and I came toppling down from the winner’s podium he’d placed me on.
I was falling into his trap, and there was no other option but to do exactly that.
“My mate, my queen, you do not make that decision,” Tyran said, in a voice dripping with menace.
I faced him. “Would you like to lose your subjects over this? That is what you stand to lose. The last time we spoke, you mentioned how important they were.”
Tyran met my gaze.
Yep, you asshole. I let them know that was a bluff. “No one wins tonight. We tend to our sick and injured demons and return the Luther queen, and our realm lives to fight another day.”
I pitched my voice low, but the words nevertheless carried through the clearing. Likely because the surrounding demons had gone deathly quiet. Hopefully not actually dead.
But if they were alive, then they’d just listened to me challenging their king.
Tyran tilted his head.
There was no way he could let this slide now. Dammit. Which might account for his smirk.
Was this it? Should I attack him?
Should I try to heal Carmine with the other supernatural leaders here?
I strained my ears to pick up any sound from the Crave Arena. Nothing, and I didn’t want to risk healing Carmine if the arena was still a power source for Tyran.
Would there be a better opportunity?
I could die from healing Carmine, and I had to be sure Tyran never came back to haunt Adeuto and the others. Because if I had to leave my son, I’d leave him in a better world.
And Andie couldn’t die. For so many reasons, including that I cared about her.
I released my power into the ground, and the ghostly forms of two past kings rose to grip one of Tyran’s arms each.
“Release her,” I ordered. I did that even as I wondered how this could possibly end in a way that benefited me. I’d challenged a king, and kings never let a challenger live. That was a concrete truth that every demon knew.
Tyran’s eyes lit, and he seemed amused.