But I needed some support that wasn’t my shitty mother-in-law.
“You may speak, Mate-Intended,” he said, and magic made his voice boom through the arena. The last of the grumbling crowd settled in to watch.
Meanwhile, I was wondering what I should do after Tiers when the craving made me mindless.
I pushed smoke into my throat so all would hear me. “King Carmine, I have not killed these two demons because as the winner of Tiers, I would ask that you spare their lives as my prize.”
Tsan was already onto me. Enp had been too deep in memories of his son and mate, but he whipped his head to gape at me.
Carmine’s expression and voice was impossible to decipher from here. “If you do not kill them, then you cannot earn your prize.”
“If I kill them, then my prize will be dead,” I replied, earning laughter from the crowd.
“You would choose mercy as your prize,” he called next.
The crowd jeered, but I had seen that humor could get me what I wanted.
I laid a hand over my chest. “As you have seen, I am but a weak and unskilled demon.”
The crowd laughed. They jerked around their loyalties more than a tug-of-war rope.
“You are far from either of those things,” the demon king replied.
The crowd hushed at the compliment.
I could practically hear Carmine’s mind from here. Why did she choose these demons? Are they crucial in some unforeseen way? Was this her plan the entire time? Did they enter together? She’s saved the yellow more than once. What are the familial connections of these demons? The parents of one are wardens of the desert. What of the yellow?
The answer?
One I just plain liked. One I felt deeply sorry for.
The crowd shouted their opinions at the demon king. I couldn’t understand a single word. They were just a wall of screams and bellows.
“You could have asked for anything,” whispered the red.
He’d summed this up perfectly back by the gate.Everything seems small against the few things that matter.These people may matter to me, and if they weren’t destined for that, then they would matter to others.
The crowd was whipping into a frenzy, and Carmine allowed it.
Until he did not.
He cracked his power overhead, and a few screams were torn from onlookers before silence fell once more. “I have made my decision.”
Come on, Carmine. Please be less of an asshole than usual.
“There are two rules to Tiers,” the king stated. “One is to kill an opponent, and the other is to make the checkpoint. Those rules must be upheld. You may keep one of the other demons alive. Who is your choice?”
My stomach lurched, and I closed my eyes. “Are the others dead, Enp?”
He stammered, “T-they are. I made sure.”
He made sure because our plan had seemed so straightforward. So clear and simple and obvious that I hadn’t put more than a minute of thought toward it.
I hadn’t considered my prize until this very moment.
And now one of them must die.
“You should know,” Carmine called, because he wasn’t done being a monster, “that one of their lives is spoken for already, should they survive Tiers.”
