by Lizzy Ford
“Likely. I assumed command and gave orders not to allow any of Lord Osmond’s Immortals to enter the castle. Thus far, the order is standing. No one can portal in but those Immortals loyal to the Council.” Lord Fieri glanced at the wall nearby, as if the castle were listening to him.
“How long can we sustain what we’re doing?” she asked.
“We’ll be crushed by noon.”
Fucking demons, she thought. “First things first.” She drew a deep breath. “Peace,” she summoned, hoping her eldest brother hadn’t been dragged to Hell with the rest of her brothers.
Andre materialized within seconds.
“I need your help,” she told him. “Unless you’ve been sidelined by Darkyn?”
“I have not,” Andre said, features tight. “Tell me what you need.”
“We need to broker a cease fire with Lord Osmond,” she replied. “Ideally, I sit down and discuss a truce. I haven’t gotten much farther than that, but I trust you and whatever concessions you need to make for him to sit down with me.”
“Of course.”
“Take Lord Fieri with you.”
The general was too disciplined to reveal his emotions, though he stiffened.
“Quickly!” she said and entered the war chamber again. Trusting them to follow through, she joined the aide de camp at the table and peered down at the monitors containing information and footage she didn’t have time to decipher – except that her soldiers appeared to be a disorganized mess.
Stephanie hadn’t had enough time to learn anything of battle strategy. She knew several people who could help her: Kris, Wynn, Rhyn, Fate, and possibly Kiki. All of them were off limits.
But someone else was fair game.
Stephanie turned around and shifted away, agitated by Trayern’s presence at her back. He’d once told her she could negotiate with someone uncooperative, play off their fears or what they wanted, or in his case, force them to do what she wanted. Trayern would only respond to one approach, and it wasn’t negotiation.
She met his gaze and smiled. “Trayern, my favorite demon. Do you remember my friend Karma?”
He growled, eyeing her, but made no snarky response like she expected.
She whispered a summons for Karma.
The goddess appeared and looked around. The aide de camp fell away from Stephanie’s side, affected by the wild energy surrounding the goddess.
Karma eyed him in return. She brightened at the sight of Trayern.
“No balancing,” Stephanie said.
“You’re alive!” The goddess exclaimed. “What’s all this?”
“I need you to keep an eye on Trayern and ensure he does what I want him to.”
Karma smiled. “Karma is good at this.”
“Yeah. I know.” Stephanie shook her head. “Don’t balance him unless I say to, okay? We want him to work for us.”
“Can I balance him after?”
“Not if he does what I say.”
“I hope he doesn’t.”
Trayern was bristling, and his fangs lengthened. With bitter triumph, Stephanie sensed he was unsettled, if not worried, for the first time since he’d been assigned to her.
“This will cost you, Immortal,” the demon said.
Stephanie nudged Karma, who grabbed him by the back of the neck.
“You have a choice, asshole,” Stephanie said. “You can do what I tell you, or Karma can balance you right now.”
“Karma loves demons,” hissed the goddess.
Trayern glared at Stephanie.
“If you think I won’t do it after you shredded my throat, think again,” she added calmly. “At no point was I told you were off limits. Your boss set me up, and I’m going to use every tool at my disposal, including you, to prevent him from fucking me over completely.”
Trayern didn’t move.
Stephanie glanced at Karma, whose hair went black with warning.
“Your choice,” Stephanie stated. “Work for me or deal with Karma.”
The demon smacked away Karma’s arm. Trayern pushed Stephanie aside to reach the table.
“Your rules are simple. Defend the castle. No one dies,” Stephanie told him.
“Fucking Immortals,” he muttered.
Stephanie motioned the aide de camp over. “Do whatever he says.”
“I’ll make sure he plays nice,” Karma said, hovering near the demon. “Both of them.”
The Immortal officer took a step back.
Stephanie moved away from the table. Within seconds, Trayern was barking orders at the remaining four officers under her control. She watched, hands trembling from the amount of adrenaline coursing through her veins. She’d been forced to call upon unlikely allies, but there was no way she could direct a battle on her own. She had no intention of risking the lives of everyone she cared about by trying to be a hero.
She watched the battle unfolding on the monitors. Immortal officers flashed in and out of the chamber, relaying orders as fast as Trayern could give them. Within ten minutes, the Immortal guards began to shift their positions. In some places, Trayern rerouted the guards, and in others, he bolstered the amount present. It wasn’t people alone who changed positions, but weapons and boxes of supplies. Trayern stripped and redistributed everything from people to canteens.
“Why did you put all of those guys right there?” Stephanie asked, pointing to a gathering of two dozen guards in a hallway with no windows or doors. The soldiers appeared as confused as she was.
Trayern batted her arm away. He pointed to a different screen without looking at it.
She leaned forward. The angle was terrible, the images blurry.
“Someone called in a favor,” he said. “Watch.”
A bolt of fire lit up the screen. It was bright enough she had to look away. It smashed into the side of the castle – directly beside the confused soldiers. It was followed by half a dozen of Osmond’s troops charging through the sudden opening.
The soldiers fought off the invaders with ease and formed a wall in the gap.
“How the fuck did you know that?” Stephanie breathed.
Trayern lifted his chin toward another monitor filled with battle reports scrolling too fast for her to read let alone process what they said and react.
Stephanie hated to admire a creature like Trayern, but in that moment, she did. Had she attempted to manage the war raging outside the castle, she would’ve failed, and the invaders would have charged in through the hole and defeated them from the inside out. Trayern was brilliant at battle strategy and a fierce warrior.
She found herself praying once more that not all demons were like Trayern and Darkyn, or the Immortals didn’t stand a chance of combatting a second invasion as large as the original one many millennia ago. The second breach had ended in a gentlemen’s agreement, from what she’d learned. The first? Absolute chaos reigned for centuries before Wynn was able to unite the Immortal clans and finally force the demons back into Hell.
The current Immortal numbers were a tiny fraction of what they’d been long ago. What stopped the demons from trying again? They had to know the Immortals couldn’t fend off an invasion.
The answer bubbled up from the depths of her mind: Wynn, Kris, Rhyn. They had to have known their people couldn’t survive or repel an outright confrontation. Deals, favors, and manipulation became the tools used to protect the human world. Stephanie no longer resented Wynn for being willing to coerce, extort, and hurt others.
She began to understand his lessons in a deeper sense than she had before. Faced with personnel shortages and an ever-present threat, the leaders of the Council had been forced to be aggressive in their manipulation of the game they played against Darkyn. They had to make concessions and deals with deities, to decide when and where to make a stand, and to accept the reality that it wasn’t possible to save everyone. They had to plan shrewdly for the long game and react swiftly and forcefully in the short term, because anything less would weaken them in the eyes of those wat
ching and expose Immortals and humans alike to danger.
Her people deserved her compassion, and would receive it, but keeping demons and deities in check required a certain level of cunning and manipulation. She had to become an immoveable roadblock to any external threat; she had to become more like her father.
Stephanie crossed her arms, focusing on the issue at hand and not the concern in her mind of how she transformed into the person her Immortals needed her to be. She possessed an advantage the former Council leaders had not: her connections to four deities – Fate, Chaos, Karma, and Peace – whose permanent existence in her life would serve as an additional warning to anyone who wanted to fuck with her people.
Watching Trayern, she realized she’d strode into the middle of the ongoing game between Hell and the Immortals and needed to find her footing quickly.
There was some satisfaction in using Trayern to manage a battle in which Darkyn had purposely crippled her.
“You want a new job?” she asked the demon.
“Fuck you, half-breed.”
After a few more minutes, Trayern’s changes began to result in a coordinated, competent effort. The soldiers and weapons were where they needed to be, when they needed to be there, and no more surprises pierced the defense. The battle turned from a chaotic struggle to what appeared to be a stalemate where Osmond’s troops could make no headway into the perimeter.
“Good,” Stephanie murmured. “This almost makes up for you murdering me.”
“You have fangs,” Karma said, staring at Stephanie. “Why?”
“Because she’s a fucking demon now,” Trayern responded with too much amusement.
“A partial demon,” Stephanie corrected him. She pressed her lips together to hide her tiny fangs. They cut the inside of her lips, and she grimaced.
Karma was gazing at her curiously.
“It’s a long story,” Stephanie said, self-conscious.
“Stephanie,” Peace’s soft voice came from behind her.
She whirled, holding her breath in case he had no good news to relay.
“He’ll hear you out,” Andre said. “Lord Fieri stayed with him as a token of good will.”
“You mean hostage,” she said.
Andre smiled. “Come. He’ll meet us at the Sanctuary.”
“Karma, Trayern, be good,” Stephanie said over her shoulder. “Don’t let him follow me, Karma.”
“I got this!” Karma said cheerfully.
Trayern growled.
Stephanie trailed Andre into the place-between-places and through a yellow door.
Thirty
“I can do this. I can do this,” Stephanie whispered as she walked beside her brother.
They emerged onto the Caribbean island. The night was balmy, and warm light poured out of the open doors of the fortress on a hill. Evacuees from the castle were crowding into the Sanctuary.
Her eyes went from them to the small party awaiting her. Lord Fieri stood to the side and the elderly Lord Osmond nearby, flanked by three of his Immortal soldiers.
Stephanie joined them. Peace stood beside her, a calming influence on everyone present.
I don’t want to destroy us all. The fear, hidden in Lord Osmond’s subconscious, left her feeling guilty for not learning more about how to lead before being forced into the position. She should have replaced Wynn the day she met him, had she known what needed to happen.
“Thank you for agreeing to meet me,” Stephanie started awkwardly. “What exactly is it you want?”
“An end to your family’s rule,” was the quiet response.
“You had no intention of insurgency at the dinner,” she observed. “I imagine Wynn’s theatrics became your motivation.”
“The latest in a long line of horrors.”
The volcano Wynn had been feeding had finally erupted. “Will you walk with me?” she asked and indicated the beach. “Just us.”
Lord Osmond nodded.
They started away together. Neither spoke until they reached the beach and were out of earshot of the others. She slowed her walk so the elder could match her pace.
“I know you don’t want our society falling apart,” she started. “I know you care about your people.”
“I do,” he confirmed. “Either your family destroys us, or this war does. I have to take the chance I can save my people, once the fighting stops.” There was heavy sorrow in his voice.
Stephanie gazed at him, sensing both his resolution and his reluctance.
“I want to change the way we do things,” she said, eyes on the moon hovering in the night sky. “Our society can’t be transformed by violence.”
“If there had been any other alternative, I would have chosen it,” Lord Osmond said gravely. “Your family abandoned us after years of terrorizing us.”
“Yeah. I get it,” she murmured. “There was a greater threat. One I’m not sure I should discuss, since it was inside the family.”
“If you want me to humor any agreement or cease fire you propose, you will tell me what was important enough that your whole family abandoned their duties.”
Stephanie glanced at him. With Wynn, she had been forced to be honest. Lord Osmond couldn’t read her mind, but the truth seemed like the safest bet in this circumstance, too, after years of Wynn and Kris manipulating everyone. If anything, he deserved it far more than Wynn or Darkyn ever would.
She told him about Wynn’s plan and the threat to Immortals and deities alike, if he became the god he aspired to.
Lord Osmond listened intently, gaze on her face. Whatever his thoughts were, he kept them to himself.
“I’m not Wynn or Kris or Rhyn, and none of them will ever oversee our people ever again,” she continued, returning their discussion to the original focus. “I don’t believe in violence to settle disputes, and I don’t believe in oppressing my people. I do believe if I’m not in the position I’m in, our world and the human world are both lost. I’ve heard this from what I’ll call the most reliable source possible.”
“Your mate,” he guessed. She sensed the elder was assessing her.
“Yes.”
“If Fate foresaw this …” Lord Osmond’s words were hushed. “We are damned either way.”
“Not necessarily. I’ve been considering how to make things better since I discovered Wynn wanted to appoint me his successor,” she started.
“You think you can make amends for tens of thousands of years of pain?”
“No,” she replied and stopped to face Lord Osmond. “But I think I can ensure no one suffers during the next ten thousand years and we don’t risk exposing our people or humans to the demons waiting for us to fall apart.”
“What do you propose?”
“One representative from every clan joins the Council as an advisor and advocate of his or her respective clan.”
Lord Osmond didn’t immediately respond. Stephanie searched his features, encouraged that he wasn’t walking away.
“Full voting rights,” she added. “We’ll make decisions as a community, not as a dictatorship. The advisors will perform duties alongside my family, equals in every way. My family retains its seats on the Council, and in the leadership position.”
“Your family is the reason order is disintegrating.”
“My brothers and Wynn will behave,” she replied firmly. “They become my responsibility to rein in.”
Lord Osmond frowned. “You won’t make them pay the consequences for their actions.”
“I don’t even know how they could make up for thousands of years of stupidity.” She paused. “What is your suggestion?”
“No voting rights for five centuries for Wynn and your brothers, and trials, whereby the community decides all of their fates.”
“I can’t do that,” she murmured. “I’d agree to no voting rights for five centuries. As for the trials …”
She studied him, sensing him stiffen at the prospect she was about to close ranks with her family. She was – to an extent.
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“Wynn will go to trial. He’s caused the most damage.” And done the most good, she added silently. It would be impossible to condemn Wynn without acknowledging he was the only reason the Immortals had survived this long. “In exchange, my brothers will not go to trial. You and I will preside as co-judges, along with Peace.”
Lord Osmond looked at her hard. “You believe yourself to be unbiased towards your father?” he challenged.
“Honestly? No,” she replied. “If anything, I want him locked away forever so he doesn’t try to fuck over the world again. But Peace has a very measured outlook and the ability to see the greater impact of what decisions we make on our society. He will be fair, and I believe you will be as well.”
“Fate must be present.”
“You would trust my mate?” she asked, surprised.
“I would trust his vision of the Future. As much as I despise Wynn, I’ve been around long enough to know the importance of his role in preserving this world. Whatever we determine, Fate will confirm if we’ve made a decision that will endanger our people,” Lord Osmond said. “In addition, the advisors – one from each clan – will witness the trial to ensure it’s fair.”
“I can agree to that,” she replied. “You were kind to me at the dinner party before Wynn started murdering people. I don’t think you want our society to fall apart any more than I do.”
Stephanie’s heart pounded at the thought she was not only making decisions as the leader of an entire race of creatures, but transforming their society, starting the first day she was in charge.
Lord Osmond said nothing for a long moment. He was pensive rather than defiant.
Stephanie waited, her confidence fluctuating.
“Wynn and Kris never would’ve humored me,” he spoke at last.
“I’m pretty sure they would’ve crushed any insurgency,” she agreed. “We are on the cusp of a new era, I think. Our society desperately needs to transform. I was serious when I told you at dinner that times change, and people need to as well. The Immortals deserve better than what they’ve gotten. I can promise you I intend to ensure change happens.”
“We will need to work out parts of this,” he said. “How long the advisors serve, their duties, compensation for the soldiers lost in this fray.”