by Sunny
I landed not as lightly or as gracefully as my father. The ground shuddered under the hard impact, and clumps of dirt and lawn sprayed up into the air behind me, but at least I kept my feet and didn’t plow my nose into the grass. Ruric bounced off my back to spring lightly onto his feet instead of trying to hang on, saving me a scraped hide.
“Sorry,” I rumbled. With a moment’s concentration, dense dragon flesh slowly condensed down and reshaped into my petite demon form. Ruric draped the cloak he had taken from Winston around me. I was grateful for the covering.
As the exhilaration left me, fatigue crept in, and I sought refuge inside the Hall, leaving Ruric and the High Lord to pass the news on to the others. In the bedchamber my father kept for me there, I washed myself thoroughly, scrubbing my skin almost raw as I soaped and rinsed every single reachable inch of my bare skin, washing four times over everywhere he had touched me. But even clothed, I still felt sullied. Dirty and unclean.
I was so tired, so weary. I wondered if it was because my heart had to labor now. Or if it was because I had burned myself down to ashes? That would be enough to make anyone tired, I imagined.
Winston was waiting for me outside my room, his tall, gaunt form ruler-straight, looming over me. “Princess.” He bowed. “Is there anything you require that I can provide?”
The few unfortunate occasions we had brushed together in the past, I had enjoyed tweaking his poker-stuffed ass, giving him grief and sass while he frowned disapprovingly at me. We’d always rubbed each other the wrong way, more intentional on my part than his, but for whatever reason—maybe the joy on his face when he had seen my father flying as dragon, the tears in his eyes—my usual animosity toward the oh-so-proper butler was gone now.
“Hey, Winston,” I said, greeting him, if not with joy, then minus my usual jeering disrespect. “No, I found everything I needed.” And I had. My favorite hair cleanser and soap had been in the bathing chamber. Placed there by Winston, I realized suddenly. Whatever his opinion of our individual family members, he served us well, took care of my father. Whatever his feelings for me, he seemed to care genuinely for the High Lord.
My mild response seemed to take the butler aback. Why? Just because I hadn’t snapped his head off? Looking back, I could maybe admit that I might have been a serious pain in the ass myself in the past.
I smiled up at Winston’s tall form, which made his brow crease into a frown. “As you can see, my father is doing much better.”
“Miraculously so,” Winston replied. “And yourself?”
Me? I was feeling suddenly old and tired and lonely. I missed Talon—even Hari—felt their absence. Talon, like a gentle ache. Hari, like a teddy bear I had grown accustomed to that had been suddenly taken away from me. How maudlin of me.
I shrugged. “I’m fine,” I replied without my usual snap and fire—an uncomfortable thought, that . . . heat and flame.
Wincing, I started down the hall, then stopped, swung back to face Winston. “I just wanted to say . . . thank you, for all the years you’ve taken care of my father.”
“He is a great man,” Winston said.
I smiled and watched his brows furrow even more. “Yeah, well, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but he’s lucky to have you.”
“He’s lucky to have you, Princess Lucinda, returned to him. As much as he loves Halcyon, he loves you, too, equally as much. You bring him great joy, and renewed life.”
“Literally.” I grimaced as my heart kicked out a loud beat. “I guess my father told you everything.”
“The general events, yes.”
“No need to hover. I’m fine, really.”
Winston cleared his throat. “Pardon me, Princess, but you do not seem fine.”
“Why, just because I’m not insulting you?”
“Well, yes, I guess,” he admitted, looking worried and puzzled. “You would have normally called me a cretin or a toad, or some other obnoxious thing by now.”
“How’s this? I’m fine, you freaky dipshit. Now back off. Don’t crowd me.”
A rare smile creased his austere face. “Thank you, that’s much better, Princess.”
I curled my lips up at him. Waited until I hit the stairs before letting my own smile slip across my face. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who took comfort in familiar routine.
My father had also bathed and changed, and sat with Ruric, waiting for me in the front parlor.
“You ready to go, Ruric?” I asked, feeling the itch to be gone.
“Yes, Princess, but—”
“Maybe you should take a day to rest and recover here before you attempt the portal,” Blaec suggested.
It took me a moment to register the concern in both of their faces, and realize why. Gah! They were worried about me, wondering if maybe my new altered state had changed my ability to traverse the portals. Demons who didn’t have enough power ended up dissipating in transit, never to be seen again.
Gods, wouldn’t that be an ironic? To be alive again, yet kept from the living realm.
“No, I’m ready to go now.” Ready and eager, wanting to go with every thump and kick of my heart. The set expression on my face told them clearly that I was not willing to wait or delay.
Sighing, my father gestured to the door.
As we walked down the front steps, the team of guards who had set out after my father came running up, their clothes drenched with perspiration. Blessed Lady, they must have broken records getting here. They met the High Lord with not one word of remonstration. At his acknowledging nod, they simply fell into place behind my father as we crossed the field to the south portal.
Just in case, I kissed my father on the cheek, the first time I had done so since my mother had broken us apart with her lie.
“Love you, Dad,” I whispered. Then, with Ruric beside me, I stepped into the shimmering portal.
As one of the oldest, strongest demons, I had traveled the portals with impunity and ease. After the three-way bond had snapped into place between Talon, Nico, and I, that had changed. Traveling this very same portal had caused a stinging discomfort. Now it changed yet again. It prickled in mild discomfort, an improvement. That was certainly nice.
My heart beat once, accelerating the prickling to a sharper, clawing sensation along my skin. Then we were in the living realm. Arrived at High Court.
TWENTY-FOUR
OUR SECOND ARRIVAL at High Queen’s Court was much more discreet than our first visit had been—what was it?—several days before. Gods! So many things had happened during that time. Relationships had changed, a mother and son had reunited, afterlives had been destroyed, a new life reborn.
Captain Gilbert had posted two duty guards to watch the portal. One of the guards dove for the alarm gong at our sudden appearance. The other went for his weapon, not a sword but a very modern shotgun, which had my eyebrows lifting in surprise since few Monères were proficient in the use of modern weapons, preferring the traditional sword and dagger. Silently I commended the captain’s wise judgment. A sword was pretty useless against a demon. A wide spray from a shotgun had a better chance of hitting its target. Well, at least a far better chance than an arm’s length of steel.
I laid a restraining hand on Ruric’s arm as he tensed, readying himself at my side—a move so quick, so fast, the guards didn’t even see it. I could have just as easily pounced and disarmed them both in that same split fraction of a second.
“If you shoot us, I am going to be very pissed,” I told them, standing very still.
The guard thankfully lowered his shotgun, and bowed. “Princess Lucinda.”
The second guard bowed as well, the gong mallet clutched in his hand.
More points to the captain for posting men who at least recognized me.
“And you are?” I asked.
“Zaquiel, milady,” said the guard standing next to the alarm gong.
“Irwyn at your service, Princess,” said the gun-toting guard.
I turned and slanted a look at
Irwyn from slumberous, half-lidded eyes that sped up his heartbeat, something I had done without thinking, instinctively slipping into my natural armor of smoldering sensuality.
“Do you know how to use that shotgun, Irwyn?”
I asked because I was curious. It was an oddity, a Monère warrior holding a shotgun with such comfortable familiarity. Only, the simple question came out in a suggestive, sensual purr, still locked at I was in my defensive state.
“Yes, ma’am . . . milady . . . I mean, Princess,” said Irwyn, his face growing redder and redder as he tripped over his tongue. Beside him, Zaquiel snorted in disgust.
“And you, Zaquiel?” I asked, turning the full force of my glittering eyes onto the other guard. “Do you know how to use a shotgun?”
He swallowed, flustered. “No, Princess. I, uh, don’t.”
I grabbed hold of my control and toned it down. It took concentrated effort. “I’ve come for my men,” I managed to say in a much blander voice, “and to report to the Queen Mother.”
“Yes, Princess,” Irwyn said, recovering his composure. “Just one moment, please.” He whistled, three short blasts, and another guard came bounding up the path.
“Armsman Talbert will accompany you to the Queen Mother,” Irwyn said.
“And my men?” I asked.
“They are supping at the dining hall, Princess. We’ll have them meet you at Council Hall.”
No witless Queen raised up a hue and cry as Ruric and I and our chaperoning armsman stepped out onto the main path.
Being met by two armed guards instead of one silly, screaming Queen was a vast improvement, but still I mourned the heightened security. Permanent guards had once been routinely posted at the portal but that had been long ago, before my time. It had never been manned during the five hundred years I had served as guardian. No need to, before Derek. The stray demons that slipped illicitly into the living realm didn’t come to High Court. They went to other places to wreak their bloody havoc.
Lunar New Year festivities were apparently over, thank the Goddess, and High Queen’s Court was once again its usual tranquil self. We strolled our way down to Council Hall, where the Queen Mother resided and presided, without any alarm being raised, although more than a few guards we passed cast wary glances at Ruric. But then, he drew the same guarded attention even in Hell.
As we walked, I became aware of something I had not noticed before. My heart had sped up. I had not registered it until now because it beat in the same rhythm as those around me—at around thirty beats per minute, the same heart rate as the other Monère, blending me seamlessly in with them.
I entered Council Hall focused entirely on my inner self until we came to a stop before two duty guards stationed in front of a door. Armsman Talbert knocked and opened the door, bidding us enter. Ruric looked relieved when I asked him to wait outside.
I stepped alone into the Queen Mother’s private study.
“Lucinda!” Shock, relief, and pleasure crossed the Queen Mother’s face as she rounded the desk and embraced me. I tensed involuntarily at the brief hug.
“I was so worried when I heard you had been taken by that rogue demon,” she said. “Your being here . . . it’s good news, I take it?”
“Yes, Derek is no longer a threat.”
“Ah. That is good news indeed. Sit. Tell me what happened.”
She drew me to the sofa instead of the armchairs set before the desk, making our meeting more casual. I waited until she had seated herself next to me, before asking, “Do you notice anything different about me?”
She frowned, studying me, this Monère woman I had known throughout my long afterlife of existence. I’d known her when she was young and beautiful. Over the unnaturally long centuries of time, her skin had grown softly creased and wrinkled; she was the only Monère to ever reach such an aged and human looking state. But then, she had lived over twice a Monère’s normal lifespan. Only her eyes were the same—crystal blue, vibrant and intense. Eyes that were capable of being coolly calculating, impartial, ruthless even. But none of that aloofness was in those blue eyes now as she scrutinized me carefully. It wasn’t until she delved deeper beyond the skin’s surface that her eyes lit with shocked surprise.
“Your heart is beating! Dear sweet Light. I hadn’t noticed because, well, everyone I come across here has a beating heart.”
“But not demons. Except me. I’m different now from others of my kind. Just as you are, Giselda.” Here, in this privacy-bespelled chamber, we could speak openly of long-kept secrets. Here, I could call her by her real name and not by her title.
“But how is that possible, Lucinda? Your heart is beating. Did your father . . . ?” Her voice trailed off, not knowing how to ask if my father had done to me what he had done to her—give her one drop of his demon blood. One mere drop. Not enough to turn her into Damanôen, demon living, so that she acquired our physical demon traits and bloodthirst. But enough to kick her power far beyond that of any other Monère, any other Queen. One drop of forbidden demon blood mixed with her Queen’s blood, and Monère history and survival had changed for the better. Giselda had been there, a Queen powerful enough to guide her people during a confused and chaotic time when the pure bloodlines of powerful clans had fallen away into extinction as death from battles and skirmishes took their toll on all.
Clans fell apart as the last of their pure-blood Queens died or were killed, leaving them lawless, homeless, and desperate to steal or capture another Queen to survive. It was a time of great upheaval, a time when Monère social structure slowly unraveled and fell messily apart. In that rough and unstable time, High Queen’s Court was hammered into existence by the iron will of the most powerful Queen, who was backed by the High Lord of Hell’s even more intimidating demon clout.
New territories were formed, and Queens of mixed clan blood ruled over an assemblage of people who had been taken from different dissolving clans and thrown to live in peace together under these new Queens—a peace and order that was strictly and ruthlessly upheld by the Council and, on the rare occasions it was needed, by Blaec’s enforcing hand. In time, the young Monère Queen named Giselda became simply known as the Queen Mother.
Wrinkled, old, and motherly, Giselda was, in truth, more of a sister to me. After all, my father’s blood, a tiny bit of it, ran in her, same as me.
“No,” I told her now. “My change came about much differently than yours. After Derek snatched me, another bigger and badder demon came along and destroyed him, and took me prisoner.”
“Lucinda,” Giselda said, looking at me with frowning intensity. “I know for a fact that there are not many demons more powerful than you. Derek, they said, used some sort of dark magick to sneak up on you.”
“He used death magick.”
“That sounds ugly.”
“It is. The bigger, badder demon who came along was the originator of this death magick.” I started from the beginning and told her the tale. Told her how either my blood or Talon’s had awakened the millennium-old sorcerer. “His psychic power was far greater than mine. Maybe even greater than my father’s. I couldn’t escape him, so I burned us up—heat, you know, is one of my gifts. I managed to destroy him but also ended my own afterlife. Talon said we both burned down to ashes, and that I rose up out of these ashes as a phoenix.”
“New life. The symbol of rebirth,” Giselda said in soft wonderment. “And the other half of your blood.”
“Yes, well, my heart has started beating again. Slowly, at first, but it’s sped up since I came back here. I’ve changed . . . am still changing.” I must have looked more unsettled than I realized because Giselda gently squeezed my hand in reassurance.
“Are you frightened?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
She smiled. “So was I after I took your father’s drop of blood into me. My change was more subtle than yours, but I know how frightening, how bewildering change can be. How you feel as if the very foundation of who you are is crumbling beneath you
.”
“I feel so . . . vulnerable now.”
“You feel alive again.”
I shook my head. “I look like a demon but my heart beats like a Monère. I don’t know what I am anymore.”
“You are who you always have been,” Giselda said with earnest wisdom earned from a long life, “and you are also the new person you are becoming. Life is change—that is its very meaning.”
“I was content being a demon.”
“Were you, really?” Giselda asked kindly, her eyes so piercingly blue. “You were alone, an outcast of sorts among your own demonkind. It wasn’t until you encountered your two Monère rogues and bonded with Nico and Talon that I truly saw you as you say you were—content. Lucinda, even when you were demon dead, life called out to you, and you embraced it. Don’t stop now, girl.”
I laughed, a short ragged sound of involuntary mirth.
Giselda grinned at me, her blue eyes twinkling. “I may look like an old lady, but my heart is still that of a young Monère.”
“Has living this long been difficult? Do you ever regret it?”
The sharp clarity of her eyes softened as they turned to look inward. “A people cannot survive long in lawless disorder. No, I do not regret it, but sometimes I am tired, and eager for someone else to take over the reigns of responsibility from me. I thought for a time perhaps it might be Mona Lisa,” she said, speaking of the new human-Monère Mixed Blood Queen. Another Queen had blood-raped my brother, gulping down mouthfuls of his blood, and Mona Lisa had sucked that demon-tainted essence of this other Queen into herself.
“She is not like you, merely enhanced with demon strength and dragon longevity,” I warned. “Mona Lisa is Damanôen, becoming a true living demon complete with fangs and bloodthirst. I saw it myself.”
“Yes, Halcyon mentioned that she is having some difficulties. Only time will tell what becomes of her,” Giselda said with a sigh, then looked up with a small smile. “So you see, you are not as alone as you thought. And you will likely have an easier time adjusting to your new changes that Mona Lisa to hers.”