Page 165 of Last Gift: Supernatural Battle

I opened a portal and stepped through onto the knolls high above, Wild and the others close behind. King Julius stepped through last.

And most of us got our first look at the demon king then.

I’d seen him in a memory not long ago. This was the first time seeing him in the flesh. The enormous man had long black hair that was braided tightly against his head in a way I’d associate with Vikings. Ink symbols covered most of his torso that was bare. He wore only loose trousers that were tight at the hips and ankles.

The demon king was a fighter—a tower of trained muscle. He had the confidence of knowing the exact limitations of his ability. I knew it because I’d had that once. Before discovering my demon and then gaining the quipu in my mind’s eye. Regaining that confidence would take me years, and I envied the loss of it now, even though my strength had greatly increased since.

This man killed my grandmother. My mother. My twin.

Black smoke poured from me as pure violence singed through my veins. Not a trace of smoke escaped him, however, and not a single red scale was present either. He looked almost entirely like any of us, and I understood this was a show of power. The demon king was telling us that we weren’t worth the defense his scales provided.

“You have grown since I slaughtered your ancestors,” the demon king spoke.

That he’d spoken our tongue and not his took a beat to register.

I replied, “You’re about to find out how much.”

“Tell me,” King Julius said silkily, almost appearing to glide forward. “What kind of coward sneaks into a queendom to conquer it?”

The demon king had been assessing the seven of us, but the others must have seen how he tensioned toward Kyros’s father.

He tilted his head to look at King Julius. “A smart one. Only pride would see me do it any other way.”

“Dignity and pride mean little to a demon,” Julius answered.

“They mean little to a demon who will win.”

The Vissimo king had circled in front of our line and stood directly before the demon king now. “Yet by losing them, you have acknowledged you are willing to lose something, and so you show weakness. You could have refused to lose in any capacity and win all. You did not.”

Something flickered in the demon king’s gaze, and I saw a fiery red glow deep within him for the first time. “Do you seek to fight with words, great king?”

“Nothing so foolish.”

The Vissimo was there one second and gone the next. A seismic boom tore at the knolls as the two kings collided. Andie gasped, and Kyros and Basilia both stepped forward, their eyes not leaving the fight before them.

The Vissimo king was fast. Fast beyond reason. My eyes and quipu sight could barely track him. But the demon king didn’t need to match him for speed.

He possessed magic.

Scales of the richest red appeared on the towering male’s neck in a solid band, and red smoke poured from his body and outward.

Wild cast his power forth to light the knolls, and the light poured through the red smoke, allowing those of us without Vissimo vision to glimpse the clashing shadows within.

Julius’s roar spliced through the air, and the demon king’s followed.

“We should do something,” Sascha said. “But how… fuck, I’d get in the way.”

We’d all come to the same conclusion.

“Tempest?” Wild asked.

I took a breath. “I’m worried to look. If I peer at the quipu, I don’t know if it will lock me in.”

“Do you have a choice?” he asked.

My body was shaking, and I had an inkling Wild had already put together what I’d just realized. “Maybe not.”

I groaned as threads erupted in every which direction, including under and above my feet. I gripped the sides of my head, and Wild caught me as I was driven to my knees by the force of inside attack.

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