Chapter 41
TEMPEST
Wild’s arms wrapped around me. “Doing okay?”
I leaned my head back against his chest. Everything was prepared and ready, and achieving that had been no small feat. “Yeah, I just want everything to go well.”
“Thinking of your sister?”
Sadness twinged in my heart. “At moments like these? Always.”
He rested his chin atop my head, and I sank into our mating bond, absorbing the healing that it naturally provided.
I opened my eyes, and my gaze lingered on the sign below us in the meadow.
Supernatural Battle Summit
The first one, exactly one year after we’d eradicated Tyran from the demon realm—and his presence from Earth too.
But at such a great cost. So many lives. Luthers, Vissimo, and magus would never forget the supernatural battle. Demons likely wouldn’t either.
I squeezed my eyes shut against the memory of the screams and the memory of my twin’s body leaping and twitching on the ground next to Carmine’s as the strange, white-scaled creatures had tried to heal them.
Tyran’s demise didn’t make those memories easier despite the year that had passed.
If only my power had held strong a minute longer.
If only we’d figured out the tiara was the new source of the parasitic white power before he’d placed it on Syera’s head.
If only… a useless sentiment.
But this summit, which would occur every year, was not a useless sentiment.
Here, the strongest four supernatural races would meet with the goal of always keeping our alliance strong.
Here, we could ensure the needs of all races were respected and met in a way that didn’t encroach on the well being of the other races.
Another Tyran would never be allowed to exist.
We were done with games.
“Hey, Aunty Tempest.”
I glanced down at my nephew. “Hey, little buddy. You all right?”
Adeuto sighed. He was an old soul encased in a child’s body, but divination affinities tended to be that way—too knowing for their tender years. Despite that, despite what his life had been, my nephew usually bounced around with a cheerful smile.
“When are all the people here?” he asked, sighing again.
“They’ll arrive soon,” I said, hugging him close. He missed his mother. I missed her all the time.
Delta opened a portal down in the meadow, and Vissimo royals filed through, led by Kyros and Basilia.
A number of their clan followed after. Though all of my coven would attend, we’d decided to keep the other races numbered at one hundred.
A year might have passed, but tension still existed between the original three races in the alliance and the demons.
Perhaps those tensions would always exist after so much life lost or perhaps due to the stark cultural differences between us.
But I didn’t think so, and I had a feeling my quipu would confirm my suspicions in time. I’d already watched a bond striking up between Vissimo and demon, and between Luther and demon.
Huxley opened another portal at the opposite end of the meadow, and Sascha and Andie walked through, hand in hand—though Sascha’s other arm cradled their pup. Their top-ranking pack members followed close behind. And Axel.
“Are you going to go and play with your friend?” I asked Adeuto.
His mouth tugged down. “No.”
I squeezed him to my side.
Sven walked away from my cousin, Rooke, to open the last portal, and a ripple ran through those in attendance.
“Mama!” Adeuto cried.
He sprinted down the hill and toward his beaming mother, who’d just walked through the third portal. She untangled herself from the demon king to catch her son.
I smiled as Syera crushed him to her chest and peppered him with kisses, and a lump rose in my throat.
“He doesn’t like to be apart from her now,” Wild murmured.
“No,” I said. “For all his little wisdom, he’s still a child who had to be away from his mother while she saved a world or two. She’ll convince him she’s part of the furniture again in time.”
This had been Adeuto’s first overnight stay since Syera and Carmine had woken from their healing slumbers. Which had really been more like comas.
We’d come so close to losing both of them, and I for one wasn’t sure how they’d survived the healing. The nismus hadn’t held back, and their healing had appeared more like an attack until a circle of ghostly kings had appeared to surround them.
Had they been the difference? Perhaps. We’d never know.
And my sister and her mate had been dead, too—I’d swear it over and over. They were dead until white dust rose from their mouths. I’d watched the dust rise into the air before the serpent creature had lashed forward to swallow it down.
He’d exploded afterward.
One by one, the nismus had kneeled, then rolled over to die before sinking away to dust too. And then only the largest nismus, Neti, had remained.
She’d looked directly at one of the ghostly kings. One that was particularly stooped. He’d straightened to his full height and demanded that she pay what was owed to his line for what they’d done.
The nismus had touched her nose to Syera’s forehead, who’d dragged in an inhale. Then the nismus had staggered to kneel at Carmine’s head to do the same before fading away to dust too.
Three weeks later, my twin and her mate had woken together, hand in hand as we’d placed them in the cold bunker that Carmine’s mother had insisted upon.
My exhale shook with the memories of how close I’d come to losing my twin.
“Ready?” Wild asked.
I smiled at my mate. “Ready. Everyone is here now. This is going to go well.”
“You’d know.”
I blinked, and the thousands of threads and paths connecting every being in the meadow to their potential futures flared into existence. As was my habit, I studied my sister’s in detail. Adeuto needed reassurance at the moment, and so did I.
Happiness and love. That was her future.
She wasn’t going anywhere.
I blinked out of my quipu magic and crossed to greet the demon party first. Adeuto was hugging his father, and I could see that a night may have been too much separation for Carmine too. He stared at his son in a slightly bewildered fashion, as always, as if he couldn’t believe his luck.
“Sister,” I said, as she pulled me into her arms. My head rested against her chest—she was definitely demon-sized. “How was your day without your son?”
“Long,” she admitted. “Probably good for us, but I never know what to do with myself.”
“Never anything to do as queen, I bet.” I grinned.
She lifted a shoulder. “Far less than there used to be.”
As far as the demon realm knew, the crown and “kingly” magic had rejected Syera’s claim to the throne due to the presence of her magus magic.
That was the only explanation they’d given demons for her attempts to kill Carmine, the sudden appearance of white-scaled creatures who’d tried to kill her, and also the attack of the supernatural alliance, quickly followed by the end of the war.
The demon realm seemed okay with what little they’d been told, and I was learning that there was a bizarre beauty to the most violent of the four strongest races. The demons knew they were being lied to, and they almost seemed reassured by that.
“He missed you both,” I said. “He got teary at bedtime but slept all night. He hasn’t smiled today until seeing you.”
Syera rubbed Adeuto’s back. “I missed you, too, my little love.”
My little love. Just like my mother used to say.
And didn’t that prove that even though this war had started for us over six years ago, when Tyran used Carmine to murder our mother and grandmother, that their love still existed and surrounded us?
The memories of all those we’d lost while fighting for freedom would live on too.
As we would live on in peace after the end of the supernatural battle.