Chapter 39
Yiti used her blue smoke to stitch the back of my dress.
The top half of the dress was designed to fit like a glove, so no zipper or row of tiny buttons fastened the sheer material.
The band of sylk around the curve of my waist was solid black—though Yiti had embroidered artful flames to cover some of my breasts.
The skirt was sheer, too, aside from the matching solid band surrounding the bottom hem around my heeled feet.
The skirt was unusually heavy, and I could feel exactly why.
“They’re all there?” I asked her.
Yiti nodded, rubbing at the nubs forming at the top of her palms. She’d stitched the blue gems into the bottom hem of my dress.
They’d be on me the whole time, and when each step in our hurried plan felt like it could go wrong, it was a relief to have simplified one part of the battle.
I could thank Tsan for the idea, no doubt.
Father hadn’t returned to my circle of ghosts. Did he get my message to Adeuto? I hadn’t heard anything from Tempest either.
I needed that sword.
“Done,” Yiti announced.
My chest was too tight to do anything but nod.
“Thank you for my hands, my queen,” she whispered. “I had given up on them. For what it’s worth, and for whatever is really going on, I believe in you. This realm needs you.”
I touched her shoulder. “Do me a favor and look after Tsan. He needs friends.” Especially because he may lose his best one.
“You can be sure of that, my queen.” She curtsied and left the room.
I summoned my ghosts. “Anything?”
One of them bowed. “He is yet to return, young queen.”
My heart sank. Not because of the sword or how much Tempest may know, but because Adeuto may not have received my final words. “If my father has been unsuccessful, then is someone else willing to take the message to my son? I don’t want him thinking that I never said goodbye.”
That thought crippled me when the idea that my life might end in the next hour never had.
“I will take it,” Carmine’s father said. “If I fail, then another shall do so. And another. My grandson will hear your words.”
My mouth was too dry to thank him. I dipped my head, then dropped the circle of ghosts.
Sound flooded back in.
Demons were gathering outside the fortress. As with so many royal occasions, my rise to leadership of the realm would occur atop the jutting rock outside, so all in the realm could bear witness.
I could hear demons cheering, both near and far, atop the peak and down in the realm. I doubted a single being in this realm would miss this day.
A restlessness itched at me, urging me to tear off the dress and replace it with my training clothes. But I’d felt this torturous brand of limbo. This was akin to waiting behind the gates of Tiers for them to open, not knowing if I’d live through another round and see my son again.
I longed for the battle to begin and lend me the mindlessness of a fight to the death. Until then, I’d agonize over the details, and mostly the terrifying lack of detail to our plan.
My breaths came faster, and I rested a palm on the wall. So much to go wrong.
So many people to lose. Adeuto, Carmine, myself. My mind rattled off the names of everyone I cared about. Everyone who could die if I couldn’t hold Tyran at bay for long enough.
Knock, knock.
I straightened off the wall. “Enter.”
Athira and Gratia walked in.
Gratia said, “Ready, I see.”
I had no idea how much she knew about what would happen. From her cheerfulness, I’d say very little, and if things played out well, then I looked forward to filling her in about Tyran’s ancient agenda. I’d tricked her to our side, but this was where she would have wanted to be.
Right?
Or was that the demon in me talking?
“Ready,” I grunted.
Athira circled the room, glancing at me once before returning to her predatory sweep, which had to be an outlet for her caged energy. She stood to lose nearly as much as me, and I’d even considered that if Carmine and I died without taking Tyran with us, she might become his next vessel.
Gratia said, “There are a few high-ranking females with us. They’ll walk ahead of you, and Mother and I will follow behind and help you with your dress if needed.”
Athira snorted.
Her daughter slid me a look. “I will help you with your dress.”
I was beyond ready to start fighting. “Let’s do it.”
Gratia met my gaze and quickly tucked away a spark of fear in her eyes. “Yes, let’s.”
I walked with my in-laws to the entrance where ten crimson females waited, their number including Darthy and Hiub. How nice to be surrounded by my nearest and dearest. I opted to ignore them in lieu of vomiting on them.
Gratia signaled the opening of the doors, then ushered the first crimson out. The women were shoved outside every thirty seconds until my turn arrived.
Gratia arranged my short train over the stones, then paused when she felt the heavy hem. Her gaze rose to mine. When I tilted my head, she cleared her throat and lowered the skirt again.
“You’re up,” she whispered.
I glanced at both women, and Athira smirked, waggling her brows. Should be fun, her look implied. Gratia was pale but forced a smile. Whether she knew the details of today, she was smart enough to feel something was off.
“You’re up,” Gratia repeated.
I sighed. There was nothing for it. I’d chosen not to run. I’d said my goodbyes.
I walked out of the fortress and down the entrance steps.
Whoa. So many people up here. Soldiers held the parted crowds back despite their mass pushing forward to see me.
“Queen Syera!” a demon screamed.
I ignored their adoration to stare ahead. Crimsons occupied the space nearest the front, and the throne I was expected to sit upon was set upon a raised platform to enable everyone on the peak to see me.
They were about to get the show of their lives.
Demons of every color packed the road down to the realm, making the road appear like a rainbow river. The realm below was awash with the colors of my race.
The urge to laugh rose in my throat, and I clamped down on hysteria. Focus, Syera. You can’t lose the plot now.
I’d come too far. I stood to win everything. So much that I felt like freezing in terror.
I scanned the throne again.
He sat there—the monster.
That body had moved in time with mine last night. For hours, it had felt like, though I could never be sure in a dream. Except the demon sitting there wasn’t my mate. He was just wearing my mate as clothing.
I walked through the screaming masses, and then through the quieter masses of reds and crimsons at the front.
The ten females who’d preceded me peeled away to take their seats, and I obeyed Gratia’s muttered order to “Stop” once I reached a crimson cushion on the ground at the base of the jutting rock.
Gratia left to take her seat in the front row next to the empty chair that Raes would usually occupy if his mother-in-law wasn’t injuring and poisoning him.
Athira walked around me to stand on the other side of the cushion, between her son and me. She inspected the crimsons and reds closest to my back, and then the larger mass of demons on the peak and down in the realm.
Her magically enhanced voice boomed. “You attend the first rise of a queen as ruler of this realm. You witness history today.”
When they roared their approval, Athira glared them to silence.
I licked my lips, ears straining for any sound of my sister’s arrival through the gates. There were the two gems to collect from Tyran’s favorite lounge too. Should I have done that before now? And the sword. The fucking sword.
I focused on Athira’s words and on keeping my breaths even.
“You attend my son’s abdication of a throne too.
In that, you also witness history. Let us reflect that he has been a fearsome king.
A king who advanced the position of our realm more so than any king before.
Now he is wise enough to recognize that another must take the reins, and he would know best—as this person is his mate.
Together, they are more powerful than most of us can understand.
Together, and led by our future queen, they will crush our enemy. ”
Stamping and jumping shook the entire peak.
I looked past Athira to Tyran. He rested his arms on the sides of the throne and watched on with detached amusement. He knew this would end in chaos. He didn’t care. He would have taken measures against us, as surely as we’d taken measures against him.
Tyran expected to win as he’d won for the last five thousand years.
The guy had a track record, I’d give him that.
“I invite our king forward to relinquish his claim to the crown,” Athira said, lifting her gaze to mine.
This was it.
Fuck, this was it.
Tyran rose from the throne and walked to join us at the base of the jutting rock. She stepped aside, and Tyran wasted no time lifting the crown from his head, and passing it to her.
I already knew the crown didn’t hold white magic, but I couldn’t help checking again. Tyran wouldn’t have come here without an ace up his sleeve. I just couldn’t guess what direction he’d screw me over from.
Athira placed the crown on the cushion at my feet.
“Circle the crown,” his mother instructed, and I walked clockwise around the crown, and Tyran did the same, until we’d switched places.
“Will our future ruler stand before her throne?” Athira asked.
Tyran’s lips curved.
I smiled back. I’m going to kill you if it’s the last thing I do. “I will.”
I walked to the throne, and cast my magic over it on a whim, but that wasn’t polluted with his magic either.
I faced the crowd again, still standing.
Athira picked up the cushion with the crown and walked to join me. “I invite the past king to kneel before his new ruler.”
Tyran joined us, but when he reached his mother, he drew my tiara from his pocket. He replaced it for the crown on the cushion, tucking the crown away after.
I froze at the white magic swirling within the tiara.
Shit.
Of course.
“An instance of that ‘luck’ you talk about,” Tyran murmured. “I’d already made plans to make you queen before my crown was taken.”
He’d transferred the power into the tiara before Gratia had stolen the crown. I hadn’t spared the tiara a single thought since my coronation.
He’d taken it from my room.
Tyran still had one of his recharge sources. The butyker hadn’t destroyed the crown. And Neti had just fucking stared at me when I’d told her the crown was gone.
She’d known and didn’t think to warn me? Or had warning me not served her?
I lifted my gaze from the tiara. “I’d wondered how you’d do it.”
“And if you were smarter, then you would have guessed,” he said.
Athira glanced between us.
“Continue, Mother,” he ordered.
Athira cleared her throat. “The past king must kneel before a worthier leader.”
Tyran winked before obeying.
“Present the new leader with her crown and her queendom,” Athira said, and her throat worked.
How many times had Tyran done this?
I squashed the errant thought because this really was it. He was about to leave Carmine, and the coming minute would decide the fates of an entire realm, of Earth, and of me and everyone I loved.
Tyran held the cushion up. As Athira lifted the tiara off, the ice in Tyran’s gaze faded.
There was a split second where Carmine’s gaze widened on me, and then he appeared to freeze with the cushion in the air.
Athira blinked a few times at her son, then stepped toward me with the tiara. I clenched my hands, shoving down the urge to knock it from her hands. But Tyran had to be inside a host to be killed.
Athira lowered the tiara onto my head. The mother of the king also opened a portal to the desert in front of thousands of demons.
The weight of the tiara settled atop my ears. A brief flash of thundering hooves and screaming demons along with an enormous rainbow plume of mass-released smoke was obliterated by an explosion of white in my skull.