“Is there something wrong with you?”
My question was met with a puzzled look.
“No…”
“Will she be okay back there?” I asked, concerned that the air coupled with Jacinda’s ongoing health issue would be too much for her.
“I’ll be fine,” she signed and mouthed to me.
“I’ve got some burlap to help,” Victor replied, helping Jacinda make her way down the steep hill.
With a frown, I surveyed our lack of belongings. Where did he have burlap?
I got my answer when we reached the rig. I looked the large vehicle up and down, noting that it was covered in a thin layer of frost as if it had been sitting here empty for some time, lacking any sign of life or activity—including the driver.
“Where is the one who drives it?”
“Right here,” Toby answered, appearing in a khaki uniform, muffler, and worn hat that he’d been without just minutes ago.
“You… what have you done?”
“Did you think I would let you go into that region alone and remain trapped outside? I needed a way in. I told you I’d make sure you came back. This was an easy solution to kill two birds with one stone.”
“We believe it was abandoned,” Victor added.
“Come on, Dove. You gotta admit this was smart.”
“Her name is Duvessa,” Scarlett snapped at him. She despised it when he called me by that pet name.
I didn’t agree. All it would take was one member of the Abaddon court to recognize him and things could quickly spiral out of control. I had no sway or power over where we were going; there’d be no way for me to protect him.
Jacinda waved a hand in the air to get his attention, asking, “Do you have a plan?”
“Course I do, and it begins with these.” He bent down and reached for something secured beneath the rig, standing again with a pair of shackles in his hands. “If you want to do this, then we need to do it right,” he began to explain.
With this sentiment, I wholly agreed. The very being who inspired fear in the most savage of men was the one I was determined to meet. There was no room for error. The risk didn’t outweigh the benefit—saving what remained of my empire.
My violet eyes locked with Scarlett’s green ones. “Are you sure you want to come with? You can stay behind with Victor. He’ll keep you safe.”
“I go where you go, in this life and the next,” she replied swiftly, acknowledging that this could very well be a suicide mission.
“And you?” I looked at Jacinda.
“Always with you,” she signed with no hesitation.
Rolling my lips together, I shut my eyes for a second, using that small fraction of a moment to prepare myself for what may come.
I held out my wrists and let Toby bind me like a prisoner.
Leaving Vita behind was something I never thought I’d do, at least not in the back of a transporter rig.
As Victor had promised, heavy sacks of burlap covered our laps and were wedged behind our backs to offer comfort in place of the chilled slate pressing against us.
He hadn’t been in possession of it, though. He’d simply borrowed from what was inside the main cab.
My eyes explored the floor, seeing old blood and deep grooved marks from those who had sat on the metal bench seats before us. I tried not to wonder too much about what their fates were, but it was somewhat of a distraction from what I would soon have to face.
The scenery was nothing to marvel over. Crumbled buildings and rotting corpses made our once flourishing utopia unrecognizable. It was as if some terrible plague had swept through and not an attack on a colossal level.
No subjects happily wandered about. Vendor stalls lay broken into pieces or flipped over in the streets. The white and gold flower insignia that flew from every mast and decorated nearly all the buildings had been forcibly removed.
By all accounts it appeared as if this were a direct attack against my father’s reign, but no insignia had been hung to replace ours.
No celebrations of a battle won had taken place. I didn’t—couldn’t—understand what the point of the attack had been. All the members of my father’s council had vanished, leaving no one to help or guide me in any direction. This was all I could think to do.
Maybe an hour after we’d crossed the threshold from Vita to the open plains that lay beyond, Scarlett shifted her body in my direction.
“Do you think we’ll find out what happened to the others?”
“I have no idea what’s going to happen when we get off this thing.”
Looking down at the thick metal coils showing early signs of rust, I wondered how many had been secured in them, whisked away to an uncertain future just as we were being. If not for my station, I would never have considered doing this, and even with it, I wasn’t sure it would be enough to save us from whatever fate the rest of our kind was being bestowed.
Going from what was essentially considered vermin to a hot commodity was a drastic change from how my kind was usually seen. My mother was dark fae, while my father had been one of nine classes of demon. Their coupling produced me, a half breed, or what was now referred to as a demi. Scarlett was much the same, only her mother was half succubus.
This mix of impure genes caused us to be dormant, thus the reason society looked at us so distastefully. We didn’t have any of the perks or prowess that came from being pureblooded or manmade as the Chimeras were. Sure, we were harder to kill than what remained of human cattle, but we couldn’t carry offspring without extreme difficulty, and we lacked in many of the areas they excelled.
It was almost cruel when one thought about it, the fact we could even exist. Even crueler were the babes killed off because of such a coupling.
What good was a powerless creature in a world all about power and prestige?
That’s how the senseless murders were justified. I was fortunate to be born loved regardless of what I was. Scarlett, too. I wish it was something I could say gave me great comfort, but truthfully it only made things worse.
Who and what I was were a direct threat to my rule. Demis did not ascend thrones—if anything, we helped procure them for another of distant relation. Even more unheard of was a queen reigning alone. Just because I had been given the rights to the throne, it didn’t mean anyone truly expected me to sit upon it.
I pulled a deep breath of chilled air into my lungs and exhaled with a quiet sigh. There were so many things working against me, so much already lost. It would be easy to cast my broken crown aside and leave this all behind.
What kept me going was my refusal to abandon everything my father had built and the values he’d instilled. Somewhere out there, I knew there were others with a fragment of hope that all would be restored. I would fight tooth and nail, down to the bone if I must, to ensure it was.
CHAPTER FOUR
The tyrant had built a formidable wall around his kingdom. There was one way in, and, if you were lucky, one way out.
I couldn’t help but wonder if my father would he still be alive right now if he’d had the same system. It was a thought I hurriedly shook away as we arrived at the entrance to Abaddon. There wasn’t time to grieve or run down the endless list of what-ifs.
Our rig was halted, a gruff demand for the registration that granted transporters entrance to this twisted region given. Unsettled nerves made their first appearance in the form of twiddling fingers and sweat.