by Lizzy Ford
“No. Aside from you becoming a partial demon, the rest was mainly favors. Wynn still had a huge collection of them, and he traded pretty much everything to free you. Fate had to agree to conditions about the Future that neither he nor Darkyn will tell me about, which makes me think they were pretty considerable and probably won’t end up very well.”
“Fate wouldn’t destroy the world to appease Darkyn,” Stephanie said.
“He wouldn’t. They managed to make it in private, so there’s no official record with the Oracle, either.”
By Deidre’s expression, she was as dissatisfied as Stephanie about the endless possibilities of the deal only Darkyn and Fate knew about.
“Did anyone happen to free my mom?” Stephanie asked hopefully.
Deidre shook her head. “It was everything they could do not only to free you but to bring you back to life with your soul.”
“I have my soul.” Stephanie looked down at her body, as if she could see it. “I don’t feel different.”
“You are. Trust me.” Deidre smiled.
Stephanie relaxed. Being brought back a partial demon seemed like a small price to pay for regaining her soul.
Right? She asked herself, bewildered.
“Trayern did some pretty extensive damage,” Deidre said, eyes on Stephanie’s neck. She glanced towards the door. “You’ll be scarred for life.”
Stephanie followed her gaze. Both her reluctant protectors stood at the door. “In more way than one,” she said acidly, glaring at Trayern. She touched her neck. “I’m not surprised. I wouldn’t let him eat any of the servants in the castle.”
“That’ll do it.”
Stephanie sighed. “I feel … decent. Considering everything.”
“I did my best. I was far gentler than Darkyn would’ve been,” Deidre assured her.
“But I thought only …” Stephanie looked at the tiny demoness curiously.
Deidre winked.
“You told me you gave back the title of Dark One!”
“Did I?” Deidre challenged.
Stephanie thought back to the discussion they’d had in this very room. She recalled asking Deidre if she returned the Dark One position to Darkyn.
What do you think? The demoness had responded.
“Whatever,” Stephanie muttered. “Do I suck blood now?”
“I don’t think so,” Deidre said thoughtfully. “I hate to be the bearer of more bad news, but there’s another issue. When you’re in charge, the shit never stops rolling.”
“What is it?” Stephanie swung her legs over the bed.
“You’ll see when you go home.”
“Wynn? Fate?”
“As part of their deal, they have to stay here until dawn.”
Stephanie studied her. “This is a test, isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so, and Darkyn is an unforgiving teacher.”
“Fuck.” Stephanie rose and wobbled. “I take it if I lose this one, we all go to Hell.”
“Pretty much.” Deidre smiled. “You can do it. Wynn chose you for a reason. Fate believes in you.”
“I can’t talk to them before I go, can I?”
“Nope. But you can take your guardians.”
Stephanie rolled her shoulders back. She’d never thought of her task taking over the Council as particularly easy. Overwhelmed already, she also understood the stakes were far greater than before. Wynn had buffered her. Fate had guided her.
Alone to prove she could lead, she was starting to feel pretty fucked. Her heart raced, and she went over the few lessons she’d had time to learn.
“Are there any rules to this game?” she asked. “Aside from the consequences of failing?”
“Only that you can’t talk to Wynn or Fate. It gives you wiggle room, but you’ll have to think fast. Darkyn’s likely to have more surprises waiting for you.”
“What is the test?” Stephanie asked, growing uneasy.
“You’ll see.” Deidre stood. A black portal yawned open. “You should probably hurry.”
Stephanie followed Deidre through the black hole and stepped into the portal room of Hell, where she’d snuck in and out of once before.
Deidre stood to the side, smiling, though the skin around her eyes was tight.
How bad was it if Deidre was worried?
Stephanie swallowed hard, unable to imagine what chaos awaited her. She went to the dais and a demon opened the portal. Trailed by Trayern, she strode into the place-between-places and through the yellow door beckoning her.
She emerged at the lake. The air was chilly, and the moon hung close to the horizon. The Hell dress did nothing to protect against the cold autumn morning.
“Demons!” the shout came up from behind her.
She whirled. A dozen Immortal soldiers barreled toward the lake, armed and ready to kill.
But it wasn’t them that had her attention. The clash of swords and sounds of fighting came from the forest. Beyond the potential attackers, she saw what Fate had warned her about.
Immortals fighting Immortals.
“Oh, fuck,” she whispered.
Darkyn hadn’t opened a breach. He’d provoked the Immortals into fighting among themselves. It was a genius move; if her society destroyed itself from within, no one would be there to stop the demons once Darkyn did open one of the breaches.
Caught in her internal panic, she could do nothing but stare towards the castle, the direction from which the fighting came.
“Immortal!” Trayern grabbed her arm and yanked her back. An arrow caught the hem of her dress. The demon yanked it free and shoved her behind him. Unarmed, he stood in front of her.
“Demons!” another cry went up. More soldiers followed.
Stephanie looked around, alarmed, before realizing the Immortal guard was talking about Trayern – and her. Dressed like a demoness, with a demoness’ fangs. Further, the Immortals charging towards them bore a sigil other than that belonging to the Council, which all Immortal guards in the fortress wore.
These soldiers belonged to the usurpers. She was a target whether or not they thought she was a demon.
She summoned a portal. It opened – and fizzled.
“Your boss fucked us!” she snarled at Trayern. “Mithra! Do you actually do anything?” She demanded, glancing towards the guardian angel leaning on his cane.
“Fucking worthless … angel.” Trayern deflected the sword swipe of the first soldier to reach them. He smashed the Immortal in the face and yanked weapons from his grasp. Raising his sword to murder the downed Immortal, Stephanie gasped.
“No!” she cried. “You will not murder my people!”
“Your people will murder us!” Trayern snarled.
“No!”
He released a frustrated sigh and smashed the hilt of the sword into the Immortal’s head before striding forward to meet the next attacker. Four of them swarmed him.
Stephanie flinched and backpedaled, too stunned to know what to do.
“Does that rule go for me, too?” Mithra asked. “Can I kill them?”
“No, you cannot!” she replied.
He walked towards her deliberately, unhurried as usual.
Stephanie watched Darkyn’s trusted lieutenant take out four Immortals with ease that dashed any other doubt she had about why Darkyn trusted him. Muscular and athletic, Trayern could fight as well as think.
Immortals spilled from the forest in another direction. Loathing herself, because she didn’t know what to do, or how to defend herself, Stephanie moved closer to the demon.
Mithra shifted direction, unconcerned about the Immortals racing towards them.
Trayern was muttering curses under his breath at the Immortals in general and her in particular.
“Trayern,” she said, eyes on their flank. “Maybe you should give me a sword.”
He dropped the last Immortal in front of him and turned to face the new threat. He was breathing hard and armed with two swords, his bright eyes blazing.
“N
ot murdering requires more precision than killing,” he snapped. “You want everyone to live? You let me fight.”
“We need to return to the castle,” she said. “I have to stop this war.”
“One thing … at a … time, Immortal,” he said between strikes at the first two Immortals who reached him.
Uneasiness spread throughout her. If one demon did this much damage to her troops, what would all the demons in Hell do?
Or was Trayern special, as Fate had claimed?
Stephanie had no intention of dying this night but couldn’t help praying no other demon in Hell fought like this one.
Her gaze went to the path leading away from the lake into the forest. It was clear, aside from the Immortals Trayern had rendered unconscious who had charged from that direction.
The Immortals had the numbers to keep Trayern occupied for a day. No one could fight that long, and she couldn’t let this war claim more Immortal lives.
Heart racing, Stephanie spotted the one weapon she knew she could wield. She darted forward, scooped up a club, and ran for the trail. Reaching it, she slowed enough not to trip over the roots and rocks she couldn’t see in the dark forest.
She was halfway up the trail when an Immortal blindsided her. She fell in a tangle of limbs and brush. Clinging to the club, Stephanie staggered to her feet before the Immortal, who searched for the sword he’d dropped.
“I’m so sorry about this,” she whispered and then smashed him over the head with the club.
The Immortal dropped, and Stephanie lowered the club, silently thanking her athletic sister for teaching her some basics about self-defense and how to swing a bat.
Trayern charged up the trail behind her and paused when he reached the Immortal.
“You can’t follow instructions, can you, Immortal?” he growled.
“This is a test and I’m not going to fail it! Keep up, demon!” she shouted in return and took off running.
He cursed her once more and raced after her. She’d made it ten steps before Trayern snatched her arm and whirled her. He raised his sword with the other hand and blocked the axe strike that would have cleaved her in two.
Stephanie’s breath caught. Two seconds later, the Immortal was disarmed and unconscious, and Trayern was glaring at her.
“You did this.” She pointed to her throat. “You have no right to an attitude!”
Branches cracked from the forest around them. More figures emerged from all directions – dozens of them.
Stephanie drew closer to Trayern, who was growling low in his chest.
“You need to … slow down,” Mithra said. His cane supported him as he walked. “I can’t help if you don’t slow down.”
“It’s about fucking time!” Trayern tossed his sword and took her arm. He tugged her towards the ancient angel, ignoring the crowd of Immortals headed towards them.
Stephanie didn’t resist. Trayern pushed her in front of him and rested a hand on the angel’s shoulder. Mithra, panting from effort, leaned away from his cane.
“If you’re going to do something, now would be good!” Stephanie said, alarmed to see the Immortal army closing in.
Mithra sighed and lifted his cane. He touched it to the ground.
A wave of power rippled away from them, rendering every Immortal for a hundred meters unconscious and bending the trunks of trees. The trees snapped back into place. At the epicenter of the wave, Stephanie, Trayern and Mithra were unaffected.
Silence fell around them.
“Wow. I take back everything I said about you,” Stephanie murmured. “Great work, Mithra. Now we just need a fucking portal.”
“Tell the fortress to grant you access,” Mithra advised. “Darkyn has no sway on sacred grounds, but the leader of the Council does. Darkyn wants to see if you can handle your new position, and to test your limits. If you don’t prove him wrong, this is the last night for Immortal-kind.”
Shaken by the assessment, Stephanie looked at him then back. Mithra had thus far been completely useless. He made up for it in five minutes.
She glanced at Trayern, who wasn’t about to betray his lord by confirming anything Mithra said.
“Believe you are in charge, and the power and Immortals will believe as well,” Mithra finished. “This is your destiny, Stephanie.”
Her heart flipped over in her chest. If she failed, she didn’t just fail the Immortals, but Fate and all of humanity. Too much hung in the balance for her to question herself. Everyone from Fate to Andre to Wynn and Mithra believed in her.
There were no second chances.
“Portal. Now,” she directed, facing the direction of the castle.
A hole in the fabric of space and time yawned open beside her. Stephanie ran into it, followed by her guardians. She darted through the yellow door beckoning her and emerged in the corridor outside the war chamber.
The guards outside opened the doors for her, and Stephanie walked into a chamber as chaotic as the halls – with only seven officers present.
The moment she set foot into the war chamber, it fell deathly silent.
“Where is everyone?” she asked. The first time she’d entered this chamber, there had been over two dozen soldiers.
“Gone,” answered the aide de camp present during Wynn’s simulation.
“What do you mean? Killed in battle?”
“Disappeared.”
Holy fuck, she thought, beginning to understand how naïve she had been assuming she could deal with Darkyn. “My brothers?”
“Also disappeared,” was the tight response.
Darkyn. No one else would stack the deck against her so blatantly.
In her best Wynn impression, she spoke loudly and clearly. “I need someone to bring me up to speed. Quickly.”
One of the officers moved, then another.
“We thought all of you were gone,” the aide de camp said.
“I’m here,” she said with calm and confidence Wynn would have approved of. “Tell me what’s going on.”
The aide de camp motioned toward the table filled with computer screens.
“Insurgency, my Lady,” he started. “Your disappearance, followed by Lord Wynn’s, provided the opportunity for Lord Osmond to convince others to join him in his plot to overthrow the Council.”
Lord Osmond. The elderly man who had sat beside her at the dinner where Wynn beheaded eight of his guests. Neither she nor Wynn had picked up on Osmond’s betrayal, which led her to believe he’d formed it after witnessing the atrocities of dinner.
“Thus far, forty of our guards are dead, and several dozen of theirs.”
She looked up at the aide de camp at this statement, unable to process the idea of a hundred Immortals dying in the short time she was dead. She’d laid the groundwork for this catastrophe. The extent of how poorly she had miscalculated sank into her. She had saved Wynn but was losing the Immortal community.
Never again, she vowed.
The aide de camp rattled off more stats of the number of Immortal guards available, weapons, and other details that went over her head.
Darkyn had taken her bait and fucked up her world in a way she didn’t know if she could recover from. She had anticipated the demons rupturing the second breach. Demons would have drawn the Immortals together to fight, which she had counted on.
Darkyn had created a much worse situation.
“What are your orders?” someone asked her.
The eyes of everyone in the room turned to her.
Stephanie drew a breath. “Evacuate all non-combatants out of the castle,” she replied. “From here on out, our Immortal guard use non-lethal force. No one else dies today.”
“Pardon?” asked one of the highest-ranking men, a general from what she recalled of their ranks.
“The cycle of violence stops with me,” she said firmly. “We aren’t killing our own people. It’s fucking insane. Darkyn is counting on us destroying one another so he can break through the breach and invade unchallenged.”<
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“My Lady –” another objected.
“No. One. Dies,” she repeated.
Those in the chamber were silent, still, as if waiting for her to change her mind. At long last, the general nodded towards two men by the door. They dashed out of the war chamber.
“Second, we’re sending an emissary to Lord Osmond to discuss a truce,” she said.
Skepticism was on the faces of those in the room. These men and women were willing to slaughter their own people for the purpose of victory; force was the only tradition they understood. It had never occurred to them to talk to their enemy.
That ends today, too, she vowed silently.
“General …” She indicated the highest-ranking officer.
“Lord Fieri,” the helpful aide de camp near her supplied.
“Lord Fieri, if I can have a minute of your time,” she said and went to the door.
He followed her. They stepped into the hallway.
“If I may,” the tall Immortal began, “A truce will weaken you in the eyes of the Immortals.”
“I care more about a demon invasion,” she replied. “My father and brothers may have resorted to violence in this situation, but I will not.”
“Very well,” he replied. “What do you propose?”
“We talk, like civilized beings. I know why Osmond and the others are disgruntled. Rather than continuing the oppression my family is notorious for, I plan to change our society, starting today.”
“You assume Lord Osmond will play by your rules,” he replied. “If we are massacred before you can talk him out of his attempt at a coup, then your concern about preventing a demon invasion won’t matter.”
She paused, hearing the truth in his words. “You’re right,” she said finally. “We’ll continue fighting, without killing, until something else is worked out with Osmond. Are your chief battle planners confident we can hold the castle?”
“They’ve disappeared, along with our armorer, logistics personnel and several others who are critical to a sustained defensive effort. We can’t contact our reinforcements, either. Our current position is that we won’t survive long without additional weapons and personnel.”
“I’m guessing with no one in charge, Darkyn snapped them up,” she muttered.