Chapter 44

44

Wild placed his hand atop mine. “I am with you, my love, always. Don’t hold back.”

His words unlocked the last of my resistance against the power demanding I rise.

So I rose like a puppet on a string, and that was the irony of my ability to see and direct the threads around me—I was as much at their mercy as everyone else.

I walked forward into the sea of chaos before me.

Screams rent the air. Claw met blade, and light and darkness grated against each other for the upper hand.

Pain and death. Blood and despair.

A blue thread speared toward me, and I pushed it away into the nearest churning mass of yellow. I stepped over the newly decapitated, yellow-scaled demon as the blue demon stared at his hands, aghast.

I pulled his threads in around his throat. The blue demon’s head slid from his body.

My hands were flung outward by the overwhelming force of the power inside me. I mirrored a bolt of red away from Winona, then twisted the power of four magus into a spiral that blew an opponent in every direction.

My hands moved largely of their own accord because I sure as hell couldn’t keep track of all the magus lives I was saving and the demons I was killing. I was a puppet, and they were my puppets.

My actions were pure instinct. All reaction and no logic.

No hesitation.

No mercy.

The reminder of King Julius’s words and his death and—my chest tightened—Varden’s death, sharpened my mind against the awe tinging it. I doubled down on my efforts, screaming as I pushed with all my might to intercept a wave of deep and dark purple magic from encompassing Sven and Rooke.

They were surrounded and had given up the fight. Instead, they were arm in arm and looking into each other’s eyes, ready to die.

No fucking way.

My hands clawed as I seized the tendrils escaping all the enemy surrounding them. The twenty or more demons froze on the spot, and then—with no finesse and only sheer force—I shoved all their threads into one another in a knot.

I hadn’t intended to kill. Just to incapacitate so the magus fighting toward Sven and Rooke would have time to reach them. But as I watched the writhing demons, I saw that their threads had hooked into each other. Similar to the way I’d embedded my father’s dagger into the demon king to weaken him, their threads were doing the same to each other. The threads connected all twenty of the supernaturals. There was a constant shifting of power through the threads as their poisons worked their misery. They were killing one another and had no way to stop it.

A calm exhale left me.

I know what I need to do, I thought at Wild.

A hand gripped mine, and I glanced at him. We were hovering in the air. I hadn’t noticed that happening, or that Wild had floated up to join me at some point.

Then do it, he replied in my mind.

He smiled, but I couldn’t do the same. My life wasn’t the only one hanging in the balance if I drew too much power. The path before me made it clear that this next move might not end with me breathing.

Him breathing.

We will always be together, Wild reminded me. Don’t be afraid, my queen. I am not.

My resolve firmed, and I squeezed his hand.

A power shook within me like a caged beast desperate for freedom. My entire body shook so hard that Wild abandoned his grip on my hand to hover behind me, holding me tight against him as the building energy threatened to tear me apart.

The ground shook.

Dark storm clouds rolled in, and lightning struck at the ground in warning of what was to come.

Magus, Vissimo, Luther, and demon alike paused in their fighting. Their faces, turned upward to me, were awash with fear and hope and despair and pain.

I saw their faces. I saw what could be.

I saw what was needed.

More than one hundred demons remained. One hundred and seventy-three, I corrected myself, feeling the number of tendrils probing at my senses. I let the roaring power fill me and felt my shaking arms rise. Wild was pouring everything he had into me.

My head tipped back against his shoulder, and then my head whipped forward as a roaring scream ripped from my very being. Power erupted from me as my scream continued, and my shaking was far more a convulsion as one hundred and seventy-three black ropes of magic lashed from me.

I held onto them for dear life—for the lives of all those I loved and was responsible for. I held on until the scream and roar died from my lips and the convulsions faded to shaking, which then faded to stillness.

Utter stillness.

But not calm.

My knees were on the ground. The labored sound of my panting filled my ears. My magic was hooked into nearly two hundred demons.

I opened my eyes and blinked sweat away.

The demon army was frozen but aware. Panic trickled from them as they watched me.

“Help me up,” I said in a voice shredded and raw.

Wild lifted me to my feet, and we both staggered afterward. He’d nearly drained himself dry lending me power. I’d nearly drained myself.

I regarded the demons and didn’t bother speaking in their tongue. “You attacked our lands and our people. You have harmed those I care for. You get no mercy from me or anyone here.”

I already knew what to do. If death was my fate, then I would have died when unleashing the explosion of magic to trap them in my power.

Compared to that, this was the easy part.

I repeated what I’d done for Sven and Rooke on a larger scale. I shot each demon’s threads into the demons surrounding them. Their shrieks and cries filled the knolls as their poison began to work on each other. The remainder of the army was connected, and they’d do all the dirty work for us.

Slowly.

Certainly.

First the yellow demons dropped. Another minute and the orange demons followed them.

Greens.

Blues.

Purples.

Browns.

The first of the red-scaled began to fall, and I walked forward to one in particular. One female remained standing, silent and determined not to meet the fate of the others.

And she wouldn’t.

Though she’d be close to death, she might slowly recover if given the chance. Not that I’d let her.

“Iy wun trey lyv hr,” she spat, her face tightening with pain.

You failed to kill him.

I’d noticed some time ago that the demon king had disappeared along with a sizeable chunk of red-scaled demons. I’d pried one of his scales off and plunged a dagger into his neck. I didn’t get time to cut his head from his body, but I hadembedded a poisonous blade into the king’s side and tied it to the iron casing around his heart.

He couldn’t remove that dagger without killing himself, and if he didn’t, then the dagger would keep him weak. “Hr esnt ef bahd ef lyv,” I told her.

He is as good as dead.

Her lips curved, and as the demon beside her dropped down dead, I plunged a hand into the chest of the last living demon.

The last of Varden’s protection sizzled away, and I felt her blood burning me.

I ripped out the iron casing of her heart, only possible with her so extremely weak. She dropped to her knees and looked up at me, seeing her end in my hands.

Magic didn’t work so well on iron. Strength did.

I cracked the casing around her heart as I would a coconut. Prying open the edges, I frowned at the pulsing gold heart within.

I’d expected black, and the color threw me.

But the very smell of blood soaking the grass filled my nostrils. I could hear the pain and feel the shock and loss of the other supernaturals here.

Reaching in, I pulled out her gold heart. Then, looking the red demon in the eyes, I squeezed the life from the beating organ and watched it die from her eyes in tandem.

She listed to the ground dead, and I dropped her heart and the iron casing.

Bodies sprawled in every direction around me. They hadn’t died peacefully. They’d died writhing in agony.

I glanced down at my hand and saw it was coated in blood. The rest of me was, too, I knew. I was tinged red, and my black scales were out. I’d expended so much magic, black smoke no longer needed to seep from my pores.

I was dripping in battle.

Turning to face those who still stood in near silence but for the wheezes and whimpers of the injured, I regarded their expressions. There was a curious lack of horror. I saw shock and numbness. I saw a distance in some gazes that made me wonder if some had shut down to make it through the last several hours. Or however long had passed.

“The fight is over,” I said hoarsely. “Tend to the wounded.”

That unfroze enough of them that eventually the others started to wake up too. The Vissimo were far less bothered than anyone, and I assumed the sight of blood was no big deal to them. Maybe the sight was even a comfort.

I gripped the advisor pendant, which warmed to my touch. “Barrow, Ruby, and Opal, form a team to make sure all magus in our coven are accounted for. Help our allies do the same.” We had to figure out who hadn’t made it. We’d lost loved ones today. There was no way we’d all survived that.

I gripped the pendant again. “Winona, Huxley, and V—” I broke off. Varden. There was no more Varden. “Winona and Huxley, please form a second team to clear the eating chamber. We’ll tend to wounded there.”

Their acknowledgment came through one by one, and I released a breath after. I’d just assumed they’d all survived when making the order.

“Opal is injured, but Barrow and I have it covered,” Ruby’s voice chimed through the pendant.

I turned back toward the sprawling mess of demon bodies to peer across the knolls and meadow and up into the alpine forest.

“He escaped.”

I looked up at the Vissimo prince. Vissimo king. “I believe so. He called his demons to the surface when he sensed his death. I embedded a dagger in him that is poison. I tied that to his heart casing. He is as good as dead.”

“Is he dead?” Kyros growled.

“He’ll exist in a weakness so severe that he will never again be a threat. Or he’ll kill himself to be free of the dagger.”

The Vissimo didn’t answer.

“King Julius saved all of us,” I said softly.

I couldn’t have beaten the demon king if he hadn’t been severely weakened already.

Kyros’s throat worked. “He knew he would die. Much makes sense about the last few weeks.”

I nodded.

Basilia slipped up behind him and briefly squeezed my shoulder. “Tempest…”

Her loss of words was understandable. What words could express all we’d witnessed and endured? I replied, “Basilia.”

We made it.

She dipped her head, then rested a hand on Kyros’s back. “We must tell your brothers and sisters. We must check on your mother.” Her voice was soft and filled with unshed tears.

Kyros blinked. “My mother?—”

“Will be okay,” I told him. “Your father had taken care to ensure she would survive.”

The two Vissimo looked at me.

“Your mother already knows. She would have known for some time.” There was no way she could have missed him pulling at the strands of their mating bond to distance himself so that she might live on without him. I’d never have thought it possible, and maybe it wasn’t for those of us less than six hundred years old.

Kyros wanted to believe me. And didn’t.

“Go and care for your family.” And your kingdom, I added silently.

Basilia led Kyros away, and Andie limped up, supported by Sascha.

She noticed me looking at her claws and fangs. “I can’t shift all the way back yet. I pushed myself too hard. I’ll be fine.”

“I’m glad, Luther Queen. Sascha?”

He scanned our surroundings. “I can’t believe we made it through that. I don’t believe it’s over.” The Luther placed a hand over his chest.

I wanted to do the same. There was a churning discomfort there at the power of the silence covering the knolls. The silence was oppressive, nearly. The wind was gone, for instance, even though a storm had whipped around us during the battle.

That the fight was over didn’t seem possible.

“I couldn’t get to the demon king,” Andie said. “A force of his red soldiers carried him away.”

I followed the jerk of her head and then blinked to focus on a faint streak of red—many threads in a group—that disappeared to the closest gate. “Yes, they took him back to their realm. I don’t foresee he will be a problem for us.”

“We’ve got to collapse the gates and rifts,” Wild said as he joined us. “The doors are all closed again, but this is our best chance to figure out how to drive the demon king’s gates and rifts—or those of any future demon ruler—back to the north mountains.”

“Agreed,” Sascha grunted. He glanced at me. “The old magus who sacrificed himself. You knew him.”

“I did,” I replied, my heart panging. “I respected him greatly. As did my grandmother. I would not have survived the wave of demons coming to the surface without his sacrifice.”

He and King Julius kept me alive.

Us all.

“What you did,” Andie said, shaking her head. “I don’t understand any part of how you controlled them, but thank you. We could have lost the day and everything without you.”

And yet I wasn’t sure if it was the gore or the obvious loss of life or just that I’d expended impossible amounts of energy, and I wasn’t in the best mental state, but what I’d done didn’t feel like nearly enough.

The foreign covens would know of my demon nature, but that didn’t bother me.

I’d killed so many supernaturals, but that didn’t bother me.

“We need to collapse the gates and push the rifts back to the north mountains,” I repeated Wild’s words. Then, even if the weak king was replaced by another in time, they’d have no access to attack us again without another several hundred years to get themselves in position.

And we’d never fall for the same strategy again. Scouting for demon gates would be a regular thing for the coven and other supernaturals for the rest of time. I was certain some identifying tool or magical demon radar could be formed eventually.

Most of the discomfort in my chest dissipated. “Yes, that’s what we must do.”

“Uh…,” Andie said. “Tempest?”

I peered at her, then followed her wide-eyed stare across the meadows.

Sascha stepped forward. “It’s a child.”

With my eyes blurry from fatigue, spotting what they’d seen took me a second.

“It is a child,” Wild said low.

I saw the boy then. The demon boy. “Mother be.”

He couldn’t be more than three or four. Boy was a loose term, really. The demon boy branched the line between toddler and child if anything.

My mouth dried. The child’s mother or father could be dead here. “I don’t want him to see the bodies.” I rushed forward, the other rulers close behind me.

Most of our force was still on the knolls, and slowly their movements and soft noise quietened as they, too, spotted the demon toddler.

I stopped on the other side of the demon bodies, and Wild and the others formed a line either side of me to block what we could of the child’s view of the battleground.

The hooded child walked to us.

“He’s walking to you,” Andie said. “Do you know him?”

I shook my head. “No, I—” I mean, I was part demon. The only part demon here. That the child might be related to me made the most sense. “Maybe through my father’s side. I have no idea.”

The toddler fell over twice, and I listened to him scold himself in the demon tongue for being clumsy.

“Tempest,” Wild said in a curious tone.

I wanted to ask him what he’d figured out, but I couldn’t take my eyes from the small form as he stopped ten feet before me.

The boy lowered his hood and smiled directly at me.

I gasped as a bond within me that had only ever been thin and mostly unresponsive swelled and thickened and glowed with a surge of connection. The bond shot between me and the boy, and the love I felt for this demon toddler was undeniable and unmatched in its nature—being the bond between an adult and innocent.

I’d crossed the space between us without realizing. I dropped to one knee before the boy, searching his face in wonder. “Who are you?”

He replied in my tongue, and a small dimple appeared as he smiled again. “I’m Adeuto, Aunty Tempest.”

My eyes rounded. “What did you just call me?”

“Aunty Tempest,” the boy said in confusion. “Mother said I had to come to you now. That you’d know who I was.”

His mother fucking lied.

“I share a bond with you,” I told him, reaching to take his hand. Now that he’d removed his hood, I could see that his scales were black, but embedded deep within them was a flicker of red. And that red was one of hundreds of hues of red.

I shook my head. “Who are your parents, young one?”

I’d never expected to be disarmed by a demon child. I didn’t know what I thought they started as, but this boy was as any other boy. I could feel his sweetness and intelligence through our bond. I could feel that he didn’t mean harm. I could feel that he loved. That he loved me.

“My dad is king,” he answered. “But Mama said she’s dealing with him, so don’t worry.”

The demon king’s son was here. Fuck. I did my best to absorb that bombshell. “And who is your mother?”

He chuckled. “Your sister, Aunty Tempest.”

The toddler said the words as though I were the silliest person in the world. He couldn’t have any idea how they made my heart pump and my soul scream. I’d only had one sister. She was dead. He must be referring to a half sister. “My father—your grandfather—had other children? Another daughter?”

The demon child placed his hands either side of my face. “My mama is called Syera.”

Andie’s muffled curse barely registered as I stared.

Syera.

He’d said the name like he’d practiced it one hundred times. As it was, on his lips her name still sounded more like Sera. “Syera.”

“You shared a tummy with her,” he said factually.

“My twin.”

“A twin,” he said in excitement. “Yes.”

I rested my hands over the boy’s. “Your mama is my twin sister, Syera. And your father is the demon king.”

What the fuck? What the fuck. What the fuck!

The boy nodded several times in rapid succession. “That’s right. Mama said our hiding spot was no good now. I have to stay with you until she comes.”

My breaths came fast. I squeezed my eyes shut. “She’s dealing with the demon king.”

“Yup.”

“He could be lying,” Sascha said low.

“No,” I whispered. “I’m bonded to him. I’d be able to sense it.”

“Mama said we’d get a bond,” the boy chatted. “But it took so long for the wall to get weak enough.”

The wall. “The barrier between realms?”

The boy lifted a shoulder. “And then you didn’t come, but Mama had said you wouldn’t. I just hoped because sometimes I was very bored.”

I’m going crazy, I thought at Wild.

Wild’s answer was slow to arrive. If you’re going crazy, then so am I.

My sister can’t be alive.

He’s not lying.

“But I can’t feel her,” I replied aloud to him.

“Who?” the toddler asked.

I swallowed. Because if I started to believe this, and then Syera was still dead after I unlocked that box… What would I do then? “I can’t feel my twin anymore. Your, uh, mama.”

He chuckled. “Demons don’t share.”

I stared. “What do you mean?”

“Demon boys don’t share their mates.”

Was I the only one struggling with all this? “My sister is mated to the demon king,” I replied dumbly. “And demon men don’t share their mates.”

“I don’t have a bond with Mama either,” he said proudly. “One day, I’ll steal all my mate’s bonds away for myself too.”

I didn’t reply.

I couldn’t reply.

The bond I’d shared with my twin was withered and dead. The tether to her died the day my family was murdered by the demon king.

Except, according to this boy—my fucking nephew—the king never killed my sister. He may have intended to, but instead he’d discovered his mate that day. And when that process began, then what? He’d stolen the bond between twins for himself and made me believe she was dead.

My heart pounded against my ribs.

That day in the car… the magic that claimed Syera was black. Black power had burst into the car and filled it. Black magic had blotted out the sunshine.

I’d fought the demon king, and his power was red. The black had belonged to my Syera.

Wild, is she alive? I tried to calm my breaths, seeing that the toddler was growing frightened by my response.

My love… it sounds like it.

I clutched my chest and a sob left me. “Syera.”

The boy patted me. “It’s okay, Aunty Tempest.”

I had a nephew. I had a sister. My twin was alive? And mated to the demon I’d nearly killed. He’d told me I knew nothing. I’d seen the mating bond extending from him off into the demon realm.

I nearly killed my sister. Only the demon king calling for aide and being dragged away had saved her from me.

I covered my mouth, sobbing again.

My demon unfurled within me and opened a locked facet of her knowledge to me.

You knew Syera was there, I thought at her.

I felt her yes.

Her knowledge downloaded into me, and I sucked in a sharp breath. Syera was the one to free her from the cage in the demon realm. My twin had demanded my demon’s secrecy in return for her freedom. Syera was the reason my demon knew why our dark and light magic collided to create black scales and smoke. My demon had known the entire time that my mystery tether connected me and Adeuto.

My twin had saved me and Wild with her actions in a different world.

Wild was reeling almost as hard as me.

The boy hugged me around the neck, bringing me back to the present, and I wrapped my arms around him tightly. My nephew.

My family just grew. I had a twin again.

And she was in danger.

I untangled myself. “We have to find her.”

I stood and pulled the boy up with me. Turning to Wild, I repeated, “We have to find her.”

The toddler nuzzled close, and I got the sense that although he’d smiled and charmed us from the outset, walking into this realm to approach us had taken much bravery. “She said you’d say that.”

I stilled. “Your mama said that?”

“Yes. She said that you can’t come. Not yet.”

“Not yet,” I echoed.

“She said…” He squinted. “The gates and rifts must be destroyed.” He curled his tiny hands into fists. “And that… she has to deal with Dad to do that. It’s the only way.”

I had a feeling when Syera referred to dealing with Dad that she actually meant murdering him.

Wild bent close to the toddler in my arms. “Your mama said not to enter the demon realm?”

Adeuto shook his head. “Not yet. Oh! Here.”

I put him down so he could shove a chubby hand into his robe. He drew out a slip of parchment.

“Was meant to do this part first,” he muttered.

I took the message and unfolded it. I couldn’t read a single word of it at first because I was staring at my sister’s handwriting. Her hideous fucking chicken-scratch handwriting that Grandmother had hated.

“Syera wrote this,” I hushed, touching the words with trembling fingers.

There weren’t many of them. Trust my twin to feel like I’d just put together the story from a few lines.

But she’d written these words, and I finally let myself believe that Syera had lived. And possibly gone through hell ever since. I mean, why else would she be trying to kill the father of her child?

I read the letter in silence, considering the presence of my nephew.

Dearest sister,

I am alive.

Wait until I send for you. Do not come now.

Be ready to fight.

If he is not defeated, then all supernaturals will fall.

Please look after my heart. I would trust him with no one else.

My love, my apologies, and my hope,

Syera