When the number penetrated, I jerked my head off his shoulder, needing to look into his eyes and make sure I’d heard him right. “Of the entire country?”
“Unfortunately, yes. We lost millions.” James stared down at the open book in my lap, expression twisting with memory and grief. “It raged for nearly a year and a half without anything to check it until Royce found the cure. Those were dark days. None of us were sleeping. I ran around like a madman, trying to get the cure into everyone’s hands, sometimes distributing it myself. The sight of towns burning, just black pillars against the sky as I rode for the next town, still haunts me. It felt like I could never do enough, go fast enough. It took us almost two months to get the cure out completely, and then the tide stopped, salence faltering until we had only a dozen cases.”
Yaldir protect us, no wonder he’d been so quick to recruit Royce and give him the hints he needed to figure out the cure. Just preventative measures would do much to save lives this time around. “Is this something else you dream of?”
“Yes and no. It crops up in dreams every now and again, but mostly, I dream of battling the Demon King.”
“You’ve mentioned before you fought him, but how did that evenhappen? Wasn’t the portal sealed?”
James let out a long sigh, sipping more wine. “I get a kiss for information at this point, I’m sure.”
Snorting, I leaned up and kissed him. “Yes, you’ve done well so far.”
“Thank you, darling.” He stole a kiss in return, grinning.
“Now, now, don’t get distracted. How did the Demon King rise?”
“Sadly, I don’t know,” James answered with a sad shake of his head. “The ward was old, yes, but still functional. We should have had more time to renew it, but somehow the portal opened. I never could get an answer as to why, just different theories.Once he rose, he sacrificed every person he could lay hands on up north, which was several thousand people, and either turned them into possessed souls to do his bidding or sacrificed them to regain his demonic powers. The only thing I can blame, really, is salence. Because we were so busy recovering from the disease, no one monitored the portal. It never really crossed my mindtobe worried about it. We paid dearly as a result.”
I could so easily see it. How often did we make a to-do list for ourselves? Calendar a renovation or a specific task around the house, only to have it put off for years because of a lack of time or money? Being a king didn’t automatically give you the power to have the right money, motivation, and time to get everything done. Rather the reverse, from what I’d seen.
“Right as the epidemic started, I was pressured into taking the throne. I did so almost immediately, for a variety of reasons. One, King Patrick’s health was failing. The stress of two disasters coming in back-to-back had weakened his heart until he just wasn’t up to the strain of governing. I didn’t really have my head wrapped around how to run a country but promised him I’d get up to speed. I told him I needed him to stay for two more years and then I’d send him off to retirement. He agreed.
“Two, I couldn’t stand by and watch the entire country suffer, knowing I could do a better job. I relied heavily on Royce, and after battling with salence, he was spent. He just didn’t have the energy to battle with his parents anymore over taking the throne. One day, he just packed up and left. Left the capital altogether, in fact, and retreated far south and stayed there. He did return to help me when the Demon King rose, and I’m forever thankful. Then, of course, we had the whole fiasco with Gillespie’s marriage to Helena, and the fallout, and my own damn marriage drama. Again, some of this I’ve pieced together after the fact, but I believe it was a few years after the epidemicfinally died down that the portal’s seal failed completely. Either failed or was undone somehow.”
The timeline worked out in my head near perfectly. “Is that why you were so confident it would fail in five years unless we did something about it now?”
“Yes. I know it failed at that point. Or was sabotaged to fail. Which is why I stationed knights this time.”
James made a face like someone had stuck a thorn directly into his side and then leaned into it. “When I took the throne, Beatrice arranged an engagement for me with Valentina, which I fought her on, but after the epidemic, I caved. We were in dire straits for money and needed the support of our southern neighbor to get the country back up on its feet again. I put off the marriage for three years, knowing how bad it would be. Gods below, I wish now I hadn’t gone through with it.”
“You said before she was a female Victor.”
“Truer words were never spoken. She was lazy, stubborn in all the wrong ways, addicted to luxury, and the most spoiled brat I’ve ever encountered. I disliked her from our first encounter and hated her within a year of marriage. She only attended council meetings to interrupt and argue with me. She wouldn’t learn the laws of the land, was constantly trying to write up some law no one had passed or voted on—it was madness. I spent more time putting out fires she created than I did actually ruling. Some nights, I’d get barely four hours of sleep before someone would wake me up in a panic, as she’d created trouble again. I had to eventually revoke all her power and authority as a queen to stop her from destroying the country from the inside out. Her parents gave me no end of grief over it, and I threatened to divorce her entirely and send her back to them, which shut them up.”
I gave him an odd look. “Her own parents didn’t want her back?”
“Indeed they did not. Apparently, she’d been a problem child from day one and it was why she was offered as a bride, despite her youth, instead of her two older sisters. They cared enough about their daughter—and their own pride—to want her to have the dignity of being queen, but they didn’t want her back to deal with, either.”
A female Victor indeed. We faced this same trouble now, with two parents who loved their son but didn’t want to deal with him.
“I spent years fighting with Valentina. Years. I learned more about the laws of this country than any ruler before me just so I could use them to stop her. The stress of her aged me to the point of some hair loss, that’s how bad it was. You’d started reading me to sleep years before, but by that point, it was a nightly habit. It was the only way for me to unwind enoughtosleep.”
This was why he sought me out when he was at the breaking point and needed sleep? Gods, how intrinsic had our ritual been, for his psyche to now link me reading to him with safety and rest? And how interesting that I’d felt the desire to read to him. James had been right: Some part of my soul still remembered him, otherwise I’d never have thought to do so. I also believed our routine had been as much for me as for him. A way to be with him, connect with him. I still wanted those things, actually, and would start reading to him the next time he was too stressed to sleep. I think restarting our ritual would do us both good.
“To add further fuel to the fire, nine months into my marriage, I received word the Demon King had risen.” James eyed his now empty wineglass, then grimaced. “I’d best stop drinking. I’ll empty the bottle.”
“Yes, please don’t get drunk.” For one thing, I needed a coherent account to work from, but also his tale was riveting. “How did you learn about the Demon King?”
“Oh, there was no mistaking it. Like fireworks of red flame and dark ash shooting into the sky.” James set the wineglass down on a side table before turning his focus back to me. “It was gods-awful, like watching a volcano erupt, or so I imagine. Berengar was wiped out in a day, everyone within a twenty-mile radius of the place used as a sacrifice to funnel power into the Demon King. Or so we believed, as we never found the body of a single inhabitant. He’d consumed them all. Him and his minions, I should say.
“We immediately went into battle mode, but no one knew how to combat demons. The ancient texts were in a language older than what’s spoken now, and our scholars worked night and day to decipher them enough to give us information to work from. To make matters worse, people were being possessed left, right, and center, and we didn’t realize it until the possession was so strong they were moving about like puppets. By that point, they’d damaged our supply lines and sent platoons off in entirely the wrong directions, making it pandemonium trying to keep the army fed and moving in the right direction.
“Half the nobles refused to help with the fight, as they were already depleted because of previous disasters and had little energy or money to offer. I had to leave the throne to go into the field to keep it all straight, which meant Valentina ran about unchecked, which caused evenmoreissues as she gave commands countermanding mine—until I had her thrown into prison. I threatened to behead anyone who let her out, so she stayed there the last six months of the war.”
James made a face. “I’m making this sound like it all happened quickly, but in truth, it didn’t. The damn war lasted nearly four years. We kept trying to put up barriers, to hold the demon army off until we knew how to combat them, but the line kept failing. Once we had a way to combat them, I had to pull in help and resources from our neighboring countries, which tooknegotiations and evenmoretime, and it only gave the Demon King more time as well to up his forces. When we hit the first battle, we were thousands strong, but so was his side—and it was a disaster. To this day, I’m not sure how we pushed his army farther northward. We did somehow, but it wasn’t much of an advantage. I relied heavily upon my generals, as I’m no strategist, not in terms of war.”
“No, you’re a businessman. Which is what we need in times of peace.” He must have listened well to his generals, though, as I knew he’d won the battle in the end. But dear Nimus, to battle both demons and your own wife, foryears, without reprieve. Except whatever solace past me had offered him. No wonder he’d been so exhausted and triggered in this life. Some part of his psyche was still locked in battle. “How many battles did you fight against the demon army?”
