Meanwhile Tempest would be locked in the dungeons for another thirteen years.
It was hard enough to only see Adeuto for a few hours each day. Fear-filled hours that they were. But no contact? Noreassurance from cradling him close? No trust-filled utterings ofMama.
The shaking spread from my hands to my body. Tears flowed down my cheeks. “I need?—”
Carmine blocked me from view and presented his arm. I burst upward and took his offered arm, turning my face from the onlookers.
I couldn’t seem to shove the shaking away. Or the tears.
My breaths were shallow and hitched.
I dragged in breath as Carmine led me into the fortress. Servants didn’t dare to steal a peek, and they were the only ones inside. I untangled from Carmine once we were out of sight and broke into a blurring run to my room.
I reached my room and shut the door, then slid down the back to a heap on the ground. I ran my hands through my hair and sobbed into my knees. Why was I doing any of this? I felt like my baby was being torn from me.
This was all such a fucking mess. It was meant to be straightforward. Me focused on the end goal.
I’d entered Tiers for me.
For Adeuto.
For Tempest.
And none of that had changed. I sniffed and lifted my head. The love I felt for them would make this possible, but right now, I was allowed to feel how much my life would dim after joining with Carmine.
His footsteps paused outside my door. He’d hear my trembling breaths, and I didn’t have the capacity to hide them tonight.
He didn’t come inside.
“I’m sorry, Syera,” the demon king said in a low voice.
He was sorry in the Earth way, or sorry in the demon way. Consider me shocked that his tone implied the first of those. I’d never thought that I’d hear that word come out of his mouth.
“There is no other way,” he said next.
I could think of one.
The one where he died.
Hell, what about the one where he stopped being so cruel and detached?
His footsteps faded, and I listened as he closed the door to his bed chamber down the other end of the hall.
I cried until I could cry no more, and when the tears were dry, and my head ached, I forced myself to consider the game tomorrow. The mating factor with Carmine was such an enormous mind fuck that I’d underestimated, but I had to pull together a strategy for tomorrow.
Or I’d die.
I blinked as the consequences of the game provided me with perspective at last. If I didn’t live beyond tomorrow, then I wouldneversee Adeuto again. If I didn’t win Tiers to free Tempest, then Adeuto woulddieat sixteen.
Neverwas a lot longer than months or years. Yeah, not seeing my baby would hurt my soul and heart, but we would survive that as we’d survived all else.
This was the only way he could be okay, so as his mother, I had to do it.
I clung to that thought to keep me afloat.
Afloat a while longer.
I woke in bed.
