Page 175 of Last Gift: Supernatural Battle

Kyros’s throat worked. “He knew he would die. Much makes sense about the last few weeks.”

I nodded.

Basilia slipped up behind him and briefly squeezed my shoulder. “Tempest…”

Her loss of words was understandable. What words could express all we’d witnessed and endured? I replied, “Basilia.”

We made it.

She dipped her head, then rested a hand on Kyros’s back. “We must tell your brothers and sisters. We must check on your mother.” Her voice was soft and filled with unshed tears.

Kyros blinked. “My mother?—”

“Will be okay,” I told him. “Your father had taken care to ensure she would survive.”

The two Vissimo looked at me.

“Your mother already knows. She would have known for some time.” There was no way she could have missed him pulling at the strands of their mating bond to distance himself so that she might live on without him. I’d never have thought it possible, and maybe it wasn’t for those of us less than six hundred years old.

Kyros wanted to believe me. And didn’t.

“Go and care for your family.” And your kingdom, I added silently.

Basilia led Kyros away, and Andie limped up, supported by Sascha.

She noticed me looking at her claws and fangs. “I can’t shift all the way back yet. I pushed myself too hard. I’ll be fine.”

“I’m glad, Luther Queen. Sascha?”

He scanned our surroundings. “I can’t believe we made it through that. I don’t believe it’s over.” The Luther placed a hand over his chest.

I wanted to do the same. There was a churning discomfort there at the power of the silence covering the knolls. The silence was oppressive, nearly. The wind was gone, for instance, even though a storm had whipped around us during the battle.

That the fight was over didn’t seem possible.

“I couldn’t get to the demon king,” Andie said. “A force of his red soldiers carried him away.”

I followed the jerk of her head and then blinked to focus on a faint streak of red—many threads in a group—that disappeared to the closest gate. “Yes, they took him back to their realm. I don’t foresee he will be a problem for us.”

“We’ve got to collapse the gates and rifts,” Wild said as he joined us. “The doors are all closed again, but this is our best chance to figure out how to drive the demon king’s gates and rifts—or those of any future demon ruler—back to the north mountains.”

“Agreed,” Sascha grunted. He glanced at me. “The old magus who sacrificed himself. You knew him.”

“I did,” I replied, my heart panging. “I respected him greatly. As did my grandmother. I would not have survived the wave of demons coming to the surface without his sacrifice.”

He and King Julius kept me alive.

Us all.

“What you did,” Andie said, shaking her head. “I don’t understand any part of how you controlled them, but thank you. We could have lost the day and everything without you.”

And yet I wasn’t sure if it was the gore or the obvious loss of life or just that I’d expended impossible amounts of energy, and I wasn’t in the best mental state, but what I’d done didn’t feel like nearly enough.

The foreign covens would know of my demon nature, but that didn’t bother me.

I’d killed so many supernaturals, but that didn’t bother me.

“We need to collapse the gates and push the rifts back to the north mountains,” I repeated Wild’s words. Then, even if the weak king was replaced by another in time, they’d have no access to attack us again without another several hundred years to get themselves in position.

---