Chapter 21

21

The demon braid was enormous. I’d realized tonight that the braid was actually a spine for another quipu joined to this one. My quipu was so big it had its own quipu. One for the coven, Caves, and then this huge demon mothership.

I’d asked the sentries to leave me a few hours ago to do my work, and my fingers throbbed after downloading the recent information about the demon king murdering my family, the open gates, the original coven, and my coven’s restlessness. Otherwise, I felt better. I hadn’t solved any problems, but I felt more capable of doing so.

I hadn’t had it in me to face the coven at dinner tonight. Call me a coward if you like, but exhausted would be a better word for how I felt. I’d decided to give myself a break for the first time since the demons attacked.

I walked around the quipu hung in my esteemed quarters to locate Rooke’s braid. I wove new antidote developments onto that, then moved to Delta’s, Ty’s, Christyr’s, and Serene’s. I added information to the braids for my advisors and then more to the braids I’d started for the other covens. I had a feeling that would turn into a quipu of its own in time too. Magus politics was an entire world that I was yet to fully enter.

I stood in the middle of my quarters to look at the full quipu. The thing was massive and complicated and only getting more so.

A knock.

“Come in,” I called.

The quad, minus Wild, filed in behind Rooke.

I took one look at their faces and general dejection. “There can’t be more bad shit today. I’ve filled the quota for that. Tell me something good.”

“People are whispering about Nightlock’s coven joining us for sparring,” Sven said. “They’re excited and reassured by the news.”

I released a breath. “Good.”

“Varden announced there will be a group healing at the next esbat,” Rooke offered. “And from now on.”

My brows rose. “Also good.”

“Wild heard about Frond’s deal with the original coven from Delta at dinner,” Huxley blurted. “He attacked Frond.”

I stared.

“Just went for him, no magic and all fists. Frond fought back—tried at least. But he did manage to tear Wild’s tunic.”

“His tunic?” I asked in confusion.

Huxley grimaced. “The one covering his runes.”

My jaw dropped. Shit. “What did the coven say?”

“Frond started shouting about dark magic use. That set off Wild big time, and it took most of us to get him out of there.”

I threaded my hands through my white hair. “Fuck!” I just needed one single thing to go right.

A coven member attacking Frond was one thing. More than a few people wanted to do so even though an attack would undermine the harmony and unity we were trying to achieve. That Wild had been the one to do so was worse. Wild attacking Frond came across as me attacking Frond.

The runes were another matter. “If the coven knew about our mating ritual, the runes wouldn’t have given Frond a foothold.”

Rooke closed the gap to wrap an arm around my shoulders. “There was nothing to be done about the demon gates delaying Wild’s explanation.”

“We could have told everyone the morning after.” I’d seized onto the excuse of trainings and meetings to delay the subject further. I’d celebrated the timely intervention of the opening demon gates. Now, I regretted it tenfold. “What happened after everyone saw the runes?”

“Varden intervened,” Sven said.

Both my brows rose. “Everyone listened to him?” I’d pictured anarchy without possibility of order.

“No, they didn’t even listen to the entire team of advisors. Everyone stopped talking when Varden collapsed.”

I blinked. “What?”

“He’s okay. He seemed more embarrassed than anything, but when he fell to the ground, the coven stopped for a crucial second and realized they were acting crazy. The other advisors got a handle on things then.”

Sven didn’t seemed worried about the old esteemed, but I was. Varden wasn’t someone who just collapsed. “Serene is with him?”

“Yeah,” Rooke said. “We wanted you to know what went down. And didn’t too. It’s not fair that you’re getting hit with all this bullshit. I’m so sorry, Tempest.”

I felt a little sorry for myself too, but the words of Basilia’s grandmother came to me. The ones about getting great bargains from people who felt sorry for themselves. This is what the original coven wanted.

“The Astars are being systematic about tearing me down, I’ll give them that.” Squeezing Rooke in a return hug, I released her to approach the gaping demon gate—something I’d managed to forget about while I braided and knotted. Quipu work put me in a deep trance. No doubt that was why I’d missed the surge of Wild’s emotions when he went for Frond. “The demons will be loving this upheaval.”

I gazed into the darkness of the demon realm for a beat, taking inward stock of the bond I shared with Wild. I didn’t need a translation for the agony radiating from him. He was beating himself up about what happened. “How was Wild when you left him?”

“He took a while to calm down,” Corey said. “When he did… he took it hard.”

“I don’t know where to start with all this,” I admitted. My quipu didn’t have enough information yet to begin showing me new pathways. I was on the brink of coven collapse. And Wild was walking one dark path that I didn’t know how to pull him from.

“There’s only one thing to do,” Sven replied. “Own your runes. Tell the coven the truth.”

If Sven was recommending the truth, then these were desperate times. I wanted to confess all, as much out of sheer exhaustion from this pattern the coven and I had fallen into as genuinely not wanting to hide so much. I understood that secrets limited a person from forming real connections—I’d experienced that through high school.

I didn’t want to be the Mistress of Dark Magic or feel so fucking guilty all the time.

That was the hard part of this. I didn’t feel indignant about the coven’s reaction or like their treatment of me was unfair. I felt utterly deserving of most of what they were saying. I didn’t feel worthy to be leading them. Because at the end of the day, I wouldn’t be their leader—relics or not—if they knew my darkest secret.

Tied up in that emotional paradigm was the fact I felt bereft at my demon’s absence.

Was I even half demon any longer? If not, I had nothing more to hide. Yet I wanted her back, even if that made my life difficult.

Still standing before the demon gate and feeling lonely for the first time since bonding to Wild, I opened myself to the tether connecting me to my demon. I still had no idea why the tether only appeared a month prior to joining this coven, even though my demon had existed in me since birth, but if I ever got her back, maybe she’d tell me.

I focused on the tether. “That’s odd.”

“What?” Corey walked over.

“The tether to my demon, it’s thicker.”

“Is it?” Rooke said, joining me.

A thicker bond was a stronger bond. A stronger bond meant greater connection. This was the first change in the tether, and the first change since my demon disappeared too. “Maybe the journey did do something to help her.”

“Can you feel anything different through it?” Huxley asked, standing beside Corey. Sven stood on Rooke’s other side.

I took a breath and stepped closer to the demon gate. A low moan left me, and I staggered forward, nearly toppling into the other realm. “Pain.”

I dropped to my knees. “She’s in pain.”

So much hurt. I couldn’t sense or feel the tether through the agony.

What was the demon king doing to her? I fell to all fours as wave after wave of torture battered at me from the demon realm. I didn’t know how to close myself to the anguish and torment.

I screamed, curling on the ground.

“What’s happening to her?” I heard Wild’s roar.

“She opened the bond to her demon,” Sven shouted over my screams.

I writhed on the ground, white heat stabbing behind my eyes and in my temples. Then Wild’s hands were on me, and the pain cut off abruptly as though severed.

Yet it wasn’t. I just couldn’t feel the agony through his protection.

My head lolled to the side, and I stared through the protective barrier after the tether.

I blinked several times when I found myself staring into a face on the other side. There was a person less than two hand widths away through the barrier. The woman’s face was edged with black scales, and then dark clothing she wore camouflaged her from view. Nearly completely. I’d been in the room for hours, and sentries were here prior to that. None of us had noticed the unconscious female.

And this woman… I knew her though we’d never met. I know you. A force took hold of me, and I lifted my arm closest to the demon gate.

I reached through my barrier to touch the woman.

“No,” Wild yelled.

He latched onto me, dragging me away, and I screamed wordlessly, latching onto the woman for sheer life.

I couldn’t lose her. I couldn’t lose her again!

Alarms sang in my ears and through the caves. I’d disturbed the barrier over the gate and set them off for the whole coven to hear.

I didn’t care. I couldn’t care.

I wanted her back.

Such was Wild’s panic that he didn’t immediately notice that he’d dragged another woman out of the demon realm with me. When his grip loosened in shock, I shook him off and scrambled to the demon.

Mydemon.

“That’s the woman I saw at the gate,” Huxley blurted.

She’d been trying to escape that day, and she’d managed to do so again. This time, she’d made it.

Thank the Mother I’d found her.

I clutched her face in my hands, and her eyes flew open. My demon sucked in a ragged breath as though I’d restarted her heart, and as her gaze found mine, something in both of us stilled like an impossible lull in a furious windstorm.

We were the same.

She smiled, and I smiled back.

A bright light erupted in my quarters. Panic found me again as the feel of my demon’s hand faded in my hold. “She’s disappearing!”

Light ate at her until all that remained of her body was a glowing orb hovering in front of my face. My voice—along with my uncertainty—cut off as the glowing orb shot directly into my chest.

As she returned home.

Glass shards sliced at my insides.

Darkness hooked its way into me, warring with the light that made up the other half of who I was.

We’d been born together. She’d woken in me at sixteen only to be dragged to the demon realm soon after. My demon was reclaiming her space within me. I knew this. I understood it had to happen—that we had to become one again. That she’d only had a body while separated from me in another realm and now had to take her place in mine.

I understood all that as black spots appeared in my vision.

I understood all that as I knew no more.