Stronger,and as focused on her task. She had no time for shame or uncertainty unless they could help her save the people she loved.
Which… perhaps they could.
The work that Carmine had done on me so far was burned away like the curling edges of paper.
Only desperation remained.
More of it than ever.
15
I was a mess.
Adeuto was home alone.Not even three years old.In the desert.
I could reason that he was a demon. I could reason that Grandfather had already taught him how to wield a daggerbehind my back.
But I didn’t want Adeuto to betested in this way. I wanted him to play with rocks and smile in the daylight and never know of hardship.
I also knew that without hardship, he wouldn’t gain the tools he needed to be king. Carmine had spent three years in the royal fortress by the same age, absorbing the intricacies and politics of surrounding demons. Not that I believed he’d become stronger for that. There was something about love that overrode everything else.
So I hoped.
Because love was all I had to give Adeuto. And even that was from afar these days. Though if Gratia stopped talking, then I’d make my escape to check on him. Ten minutes every hour until I could leave this afternoon for a few hours.
“Are you back here for good, Mate-Intended?” a crimson asked—one of the lesser crimsons from last night.
We were in the garden, a.k.a. a patch of dirt. Demons liked to rake dirt sometimes in patterns. The whole thing reminded me of Japanese Zen gardens, except there was zero beauty. No plants, no boulders, no statues. Instead of sand, they scoured black dirt. Beautiful, clump-free dirt, granted.
But still dirt.
“I am,” I answered. “Were you born here, demon?”
“My parents are red scales who live in the larger realm, Mate-Intended.” She dipped her head, then looked at her partners as they left with Gratia to do some dirt raking.
“What life do they live there?” I asked.
“My mother guards and guides my younger siblings, and my older siblings work with my father, who is a healer.”
Hmm.“A lot of pain in that.”
She grinned. “There is.”
Demon healers were a different breed to the Earth notion of healers. Sometimes a demon was lucky to encounter a healer who didn’t like to draw out proceedings. “You must have a lot of siblings.”
“Five, Mate-Intended.”
My brows rose. “Prolific.”
“My mother spawns well.”
What an accolade. But demon children really were rare. Carmine’s mother was hundreds of years old and had two. That I’d conceived Adeuto in mere months was unheard of. I wanted a T-shirt that readExcellent Spawner. “She is fortunate. There must be many demon males vying for your attention.”
“There are some.” She cast her lashes down.
There was a learned air to the movement that made me like her. Tempest was smart like that. “None of them have captured your attention?”
She peeked up. “My mate is not among them.”
