His smoke was entirely yellow for a time, and then red after.
And as I dropped to a knee in the crushing waves of heat from his parents’ pain, finally the smoke formed a beautiful, complex crimson.
So many hues.
So powerful.
This was it.
Owu climbed out of the blanket of his soul and stared around the inside of his body. He lifted his arms, and his smoke rose to the call to eradicate the hardness and the sluggish flow of built-up illness.
Owu chipped at the bone filling the space between his ribs. He washed his body clean so that crimson smoke could find its harmonious path—crimson to reflect his destiny.
I staggered to the boy and extended my hand. He took it, and I pulled us out of his essence and back to his parents.
Remaining in the demon’s power had drained me of my strength, let alone hovering so close to his parents’ pain-filled sacrifice.
I listed on the bed, and my favorite yellow gripped my shoulders to hold me upright.
“Thanks,” I said wearily. I hadn’t realized how much that was taking from me.
Owu gaped up at me, then sat bolt upright in bed. “I did it! The pain is gone. Most of it.”
Crimson scales bordered his face. A few wisps of crimson rose from him. He couldn’t be more than five, and yet he would need to contend with smoke and scales far before any of his peers received their smoke and first scales at sixteen. Owu would be the first of his kind to live.
“Your body will continue to heal,” I told him. “Soon all of your pain will disappear.”
The pearly children watching sobbed into their hands and the shoulders of their neighbors. They were haunted by their lives, but now one of them would survive, and so there was no reason why all demons of two colors could not live. One by one, they smiled and tipped their faces in the direction of the sky before departing.
Peace.
The red clutched Owu’s mother to him.
She was alive. Barely.
But that meant she would live.
“Mother!” Owu threw off the blankets and collapsed in a heap beside them. He placed his hands on her.
“Owu,” I said sharply. “You’re too strong to heal your mother.”
“Guess that’s where I step in,” came the dry reply from the yellow behind me.
He edged between the bed and the wall to crouch beside Owu’s mother. The yellow started to push his power into her, and only then did the distraught red look at his son.
His eyes widened. “A crimson. My son is a crimson.”
Not just a crimson, a fucking powerful crimson. “Your son’s destiny cannot be left to the likes of your parents, but he also must remain… hidden for the time being. The demon king cannot know that he exists.”
The red paled. “He is a threat to the throne.”
I nodded. “Not yet, and not really. But that is not how the king will see matters.”
My gut was working overtime to nudge me in the right direction. I was about to do something that would be outrageous if not for the neon sign my divination magic was practically waving in my face.
I glanced at Owu, who lifted his chin and made it very clear that he would hear whatever it was that I intended to whisper to his father.
Okay, then.“I hid for a number of years, as you must know. There is a place where Owu can remain safe. Far safer than he will be surrounded by so many demons. His life there will be much freer than he can be here, with the scales and smoke he carries so young. But the hiding place comes with conditions.”
