“Carmine, don’t be coy. You pride yourself on being just that.”
He turned away. “Ilovedyou, enamai. What did I do other than protect you?”
My laugh was as cold, empty, and humorless as his fortress. Did those words really leave his mouth? “Killing my family andsparing me only because the mating ritual ignited between us wasn’t enough? Oh, I forgot. You also concealed the truth for years while you used the mating ritual to tie me to you for the rest of ourimmortallives.”
“You allowed these things to happen,” Carmine said.
I had to check myself as red rage threatened to overtake me. Iletmy family be killed? Iletmyself be lied to for years by someone I’d loved?
Fury filled me, and yet five years in this realm had shown me that demons didn’t suffer victims whatsoever. If a demon was betrayed, then that was their fault, and they should apologize to whomever betrayed them for being so weak. That was theonlydefinition of “sorry” in this realm.I’m sorry that you were able to hurt me.
Messed up. Though not to demonkind. Weirdly, their attitude had helped me to become who I was.
Yet Carmine also knew that in the Earth realm people generally chose to do good things out of a sense of morality or empathy. During our last months together, he’d worked to understand that side of my culture.
All that to say that he knew the fury that his comment would inspire.
Rage boiled inside, but I refused to give him a foot in the door, whether physically, mentally, or emotionally. “I can say with all sincerity that I hope your hand keeps you warm over the centuries, Carmine.”
“Should I have continued to conceal the truth?” he asked, still turned from me. “Even after hearing your views of betrayal and Earth morals?”
I smiled. “If you wished to keep me as your pet, then yes.”
“I could not do so any longer,” he said in a low voice.
My blood boiled anew. The gall of him to stand there and whisper regrets. Carmine might have told mesomeof the truth,but he hadn’t told me everything. I’d only learned the full truth two months and one week ago. That truth was the entire reason I had entered Tiers. More importantly, Carmine had no idea that I knew everything, and his ignorance was important to my plan. “Is that so?”
Silence.
He was a coward. All that muscle and lethal sexiness and no fucking guts. Even with his supposed mate-intended, the demon king couldn’t be more than halfway honest. I wasn’t after a mateora man with two sides. For years I’d been in love with one Carmine, thinking that version of him was enough to erase the other.
Then the truth came out, and the veil was drawn back from my eyes.
He’d crushed my fierce grandmother.
He’d impaled my cunning mother.
He’d poured crimson smoke down the throat of my twin until her death.My twin, my Tempest. Thatwas when I’d felt the permanent shift from him and our mating. With that confession, I had seen that Carmine could not be saved from himself.
He’d told me the truth once we were nearly halfway through the mating ritual, thinking I couldn’t leave. Or that I wouldn’t. Really, he’d told me two years too late.Maybe I would never have entertained the ritual with him if I’d known upfront, or I might have forgiven him upon learning the intricacies of demon culture and norms that saw betrayal as the fault of thebetrayedand not thebetrayer. Either way, the choice would’ve been mine to make.He took that from me, and now, even if I found love again, I could never find sexual gratification.
“I’ll need to enter Tiers each week,” I muttered. “Otherwise, make your demands.”
Carmine remained turned away. “You will remain in my royal quarters and attend royal engagements as my mate-intended, and behave in accordance with that position.”
“Done,” I replied, though the other contestants would certainly form an enormous hunting pack in response. That was a problem for future Syera.
“You will not play Tiers,” he continued.
I pressed my lips together. If I responded with a challenge, he’d go out of his way to ensure I couldn’t play. If I didn’t say anything, he’d understand my intention was to play despite his order.
The furious roar that broke from him rattled the wallandmy insides, and I would’ve reared back from his charge if I’d seen the attack coming.
I looked up at the seething demon king. He appeared one misplaced word away from throttling me.Ice, ice, and more ice.
“Iwilldiscover why you entered the game,” he spat out.
Only once every piece of my impossible plan fell into place, hopefully.
