Page 1 of Taken by the Twins (Sombra Demons #7)

CHAPTER 1

RED

LUCIAN

I see red .

In our future. In our past. Whenever the visions come to me, featuring my twin and I instead of any other Sombra demon in our realm, everything I see is tinged with red… and after nearly three millennia as a seer, I still don’t know what that means.

And that is frustrating because, between Damien and I, we know everything .

We are the doppelseers. Two male demons born of the same essence, we were blessed by the gods with the gift of sight. What I see, Damien knows. What Damien senses, I understand.

Except for red .

It wasn’t always red. For so long, the future was shadowed. We see all, except for that which concerns my twin and I in particular, until the day it changed—and now it’s all the same fiery shade hiding what I desperately want to see.

Red has meaning to my brother and I. After all, it is the color of Sombra. With its two moons—one gold and one dark—and the reflection of fire burning endlessly in the ash fields, ours is a shadowy world that is as red as the cast that covers my visions now whenever I focus on the single prophecy that I’ve waited nearly thirty centuries to see come to pass.

Damien and I together, a faceless female between us as she takes our cocks, takes our essence, takes our power… and, finally, as part of a trio, we are whole.

But while I’ve existed all this time by remembering the fleeting sensation of pleasure, of how it’ll feel when I finally work my length inside of my one true mate’s cunt instead of stroking it quickly with my hand just to find some relief, I don’t see her . I don’t know who she is. And Damien… he needs the relief even more than I do. Bottled up tightly, always on the verge of losing the last vestiges of the purple in his gaze, when my twin is sensing the twisted future for our fellow Sombrans or doing favors for the duke himself, Damien lives and breathes red…

Red like fire.

Red like love.

Red like need …

We need our mate. All Sombra males do, but as the doppelseers… we’ve existed longer than any other demon in our realm because our life will only truly begin when she accepts us as hers.

It’s been nearly thirty centuries since our wait began. Three millennia spent waiting—and, at long last, it’s almost over.

Though a slightly different shade, red is also the color of our demon skin, when we turn solid and step out of our individual shadows. But though the female I dream of and Damien longs for is shielded from her males, one thing has always been clear to us both: our one true mate is no demon. She is a mythical human female from the legendary world of the mortals, and the reason our wait is as long as it is is because she didn’t exist until a few decades ago.

Damien saw her in his visions first. When she was born, he knew, though we had to then accept we’d have to wait until she was mature enough to receive us, and for the matefinder spell to connect us. Even so, Damien sensed her essence before I first saw the shadows shift to red in my own visions.

In his unique way of sharing what he sees, Damien spoke of a dying ember, a spark that would ignite us both, then snuff out quickly like the fires in the fields that end up suffocated by the mounds and mounds of ash on the edge of the shadows unless she chose to bond herself to us both.

My twin has a tendency to speak in riddles. It is a consequence of our birth. He is closer to the realm of gods than any other demon in Sombra, and he sees much farther than the respected seers that serve their individual clans.

The doppelseers serve Sombra, though our loyalty is first to Duke Haures, the ruler of our world. We are the ones who pushed him to oust King Yelios after we sensed that our mate would be a mortal—and that Haures would be the first to claim one of the human females as his own.

That happened three decades ago; both Haures’s claiming of his duchess, and the certainty that mine and Damien’s female finally existed. After our lengthy wait, the bound Grimoire du Sombra with the matefinder spell inside its pages did what I knew it would: it gave Haures’s mate the ability to call the duke to the human world, setting into motion the prophecy we made so many centuries before.

Susanna found him. She summoned him, and she mated him. Once our female has the grimoire in her possession, she will do the same for us.

Gods willing, that is. Damien and I saw the dark-haired female as she welcomed Haures into her body and her heart. When it comes to our own mortal, there is no certainty that she will.

But she must . If not for my sanity, then for my brother’s...

Every demon exists with one purpose in mind: to choose a mate, love them, claim them, and share their essence with them. Our essence is designed to be given away, but only once; unless, of course, you are a rare demon twin like Damien and I. It is our most fervent wish to find our one true mate, though some demons settle for any female that will have them.

Damien and I have always known that we must wait for her . For the one soul who would eventually welcome two males in her heart and her body. No one else would accept the doppelseers as her future, and if she doesn’t… we might not have one.

Because if she doesn’t accept the both of us? Damien will perish, and without my twin, so will I.

We are the doppelseers. Our powers are both vast and unique, but they are not limitless. Damien saw that Haures would find his mate in a dark-haired human female who would rule by his side in Mavro, while hiding behind the shadows that Haures sacrificed in her name long before she ever existed in her mortal world.

Haures is a bondmaster. Only by combining his rare gift to sense and manipulate bonds with our ability to see what is to come were the three of us able to create the matefinder spell all those centuries ago. But while he sacrificed his shadows to have enough magic to create the verus amor spell powerful enough to open a portal into a magicless world, he used his inherent strength to rule Sombra while enforcing his first law.

The human world has always been off-limits. Since Damien saw that an alliance between our realm and theirs would lead to the ruination of Sombra, Haures was careful to keep the rift between worlds closed—until the future duchess, Susanna, called him to her, setting into motion the events that would lead to our mate calling us to her side.

She would be the seventh. A powerful number in the realm of magicks, the seventh female would be ours … and apart from the color red, that was all I could see about our one true mate.

Of the two of us, I see the clearest. I always have, but never when it involves Damien and me. Then, my visions are as confusing and hazy as my twin’s, and I’m left with a vague impression of my human, the sense that time is slipping right through my claws, and the color red.

It is the gods’ way of ensuring that the doppelseers are not forewarned, though after nearly three millennia, I have learned ways around it.

That is why, for the last ten gold moons or so, we have taken every chance we can to visit the small town of Nuit, on the farthest edges of Sombra’s shadows. In this small village, there are two human females who live with their demon mates: one who is with spawn, and the other who has recently chosen to stay in Sombra with her mate, Glaine of Duke Haures’s guard.

The female who is with spawn is not the one spoken of in the prophecy. Only the first mortal female who bears a child who is part-human, part-demon is mentioned, and that pale-haired female is currently with the Nuit healer, Azazel.

We have perhaps one gold moon until her child is here, or even two if the gods favor us with extra time to meet our mate. After all these centuries of waiting, we’re on the cusp of seeing long-awaited prophecies unfold: both the one that worries Duke Haures, and the one that means everything to me. Our visions always allowed that the female fated to belong to my twin and me would be the seventh mortal to use her human magic to cast the verus amor spell and visit Sombra.

But if the spawn is born and there is no more Sombra…

No. I will find her. I will claim her.

And I will do so for Damien—and for my people.

This eve, we have requested to meet with two of Haures’s guards: Dagon, who no longer serves Haures as he’s moved to the human world to be with his mate; and Glaine, head of Haures’s guard who resumed his position after being left in chains and put into the duke’s infamous dungeons in Mavro. Knowing that they would only bring their mates if they were also invited into the doppelseer’s cabin, we are all crowded around a fifth demon as he bows his head over a large scrap of parchment that Haures gave us for such the occasion.

The fifth demon is Malphas, a golden-eyed artist who once called Nuit his home. Like Dagon, he lives in the human realm with his mate, the pale-haired human, Shannon, who is fated to be the first mortal to birth a demon spawn in Sombra.

Malphas doesn’t often come to Sombra. Only when his human mate needs to visit with the healer. The visits are more frequent now that she is at the end stages of carrying her mate’s spawn, preparing to welcome the child into both worlds, but since she is not yet laboring, we sent out the invitation for Malphas to visit us as well.

Two cycles ago, I waited until Damien rested, then marched out into the shadows myself. I don’t carry a weapon, not like Glaine and his shadowkiller blade, gifted to him by Haures himself. I have no need to since my white eye allows me passage in the shadows for a small amount of time.

Besides, over the millennia, I have had need to risk facing the creatures who lurk in the depths. Without the ashbalm flower to keep the bond open between my twin and I, he’d be fully demonic in no time. And while I can only imagine how much clearer my visions would be if I had two purple eyes, the mark of a mage, I don’t regret anything I’ve done to protect my twin.

I stewed him the leaves of the ashbalm, adding the flower itself to my concoction, then watched him drink. It’s no demon wine. Damien won’t admit how foul it tastes, but if the result is that I keep him with me, I will brew the drink for him every time.

The benefit to giving Damien the ashbalm flower? It extends his powers, and with the bond strengthened between us, I see better.

The last time we tendered an invitation to the two human females—who act like they are kin, though there is no shared blood between them—I saw something peeking through the red. A hint of green, a color so unusual to Sombra that I had to search for the word to explain to Damien what I envisioned, plus white, a color we know all too well, having been in a centuries-long agreement with Duke Haures.

After discussing it with Damien, we came to the conclusion that, at long last, our female’s essence was reaching through worlds to find us. With the Grimoire du Sombra still in the human world, it was our hope that the magic in the book would lead it to land in our future mate’s grasp.

That is all we can do. Before, whenever Damien and I could see the future and know who the next human mate would be, Haures had a hand in making sure the book fell into their hands. He had a human male on earth that he used, a male he met through the duchess, and the servant placed the book specifically in the reach of the female who needed it next.

From the mortal Shannon all the way to Glaine’s mate Billie, the matefinder spell has been used to fulfill the main prophecy that has shadowed Duke Haures’s millennia on the throne.

But we don’t know who our female is. We couldn’t arrange for her to receive the grimoire—until the red faded, and we realized it only did when Glaine and Dagon’s mates—Billie and Sierra—were near enough for Damien and I to read their essence.

Before the guard bonded to his human, we tendered them an invitation to our lair. As unique as our powers, bespelled by the doppelseers before our mage powers faded until all that was left was our sight, the cabin made of ashwood travels all of Sombra. We are never still. Never in one place. But because of the prophecy, we knew that Glaine’s female was important.

What we didn’t know? Was that, when we met her, she would be red .

Not on the outside, of course. It was her essence that caught my attention, but all it told me was that—at some point—she knew our mate.

Then Sierra visited, and the sensation grew.

Damien could feel it, too. And though he’s been quiet lately, lost in his own head, he offered to open himself up to the clan artist to illustrate what the both of us see. I agreed. We’d have to do it together, letting Malphas inside our twin bond to draw the flash of her face we glimpse whenever the other two human females are near.

If they know her, if they recognize her, we will be one step closer to claiming her.

A name. It starts with a name…

Billie and Sierra are human, not demon. Their essence belongs to their mates. Since they are not of Sombra, our ability to share the twin bond with them won’t work, so we had no choice but to involve the artist.

Luckily, he was more than willing to help us while the healer tended to his mate.

Damien senses the whisper of our mate’s essence more easily than I do. The logical twin, I need to see . Much more in tune with his demonic nature, he feels —and however he does it, it works. Using the four colors of giz we gathered for Malphas—red, green, white, and black—he draws on the parchment until a stunning rendering of a red-haired female with red lips, green eyes, and colorless white skin is pouting back at us.

“There,” Malphas murmurs, setting down the chalk. “This is the female that the doppelseers have put in my head.”

“Red,” whispers Damien, his white eye glowing much brighter than usual.

“Fucking hell,” explodes the female with the braid. Dagon’s mate, Sierra. “That’s Tandy .”

Tandy.

“Tan-dee.” I taste the name between my fangs as I murmur it softly. I like it. “You know this female?”

“Know her?” She waves her wee hands at herself, then Glaine’s female, Billie, she of the big gold hair, a similar color to Malpahs’s craftsman-colored eyes. “We used to be in a band with her!”

Glaine’s female leans around Malphas’s shadows. “Holy crap. That’s the spitting image of her.”

I frown. “The drawing is of a smiling female. She is not expectorating.”

They share a look that makes it clear that there was some sort of miscommunication between their Sombran and my native grasp of my tongue.

Dagon’s mate shakes her head. “I don’t know about all that, but that drawing… it’s Tandy. I’d recognize her anywhere.”

“She is your friend?” I ask.

“Yeah… I wouldn’t say that .”

Damien’s white eye is still glowing brightly. Before the other males in the room can notice, I feed a little of my essence down our shared bond to bring Damien back around while closing it off from Malphas.

Damien’s purple eye flashes, and my twin snarls around his fangs as his innate magic overwhelms him once my essence settles in his veins. “A creature with no legs, who crawls on its belly in the dirt, and takes that which doesn’t belong… that is who you think she is.”

Dagon’s mate wrinkles her strangely smooth brow. Without the ridges I expect from a fellow demon or demoness, it’s unprotected and more colorless than a Sombran’s solid shape or shadows. “What was that?”

It wasn’t a prophecy. Courtesy of the doppelseers’ twin bond, if Damien was using our innate gift to take his visions of the future and share them in the only way my twin can, I’d be aware of it even if I didn’t understand what he sees. But while my main power is seeing things before they happen and putting them plainly if I can, Damien can simply understand things about those he reads.

And what he read from Dagon’s mate is enough to have his white eye flaring again.

“A ‘snake’, Sierra,” offers Glaine’s mate. “He’s telling you that he’s picking up on you calling Tandy a ‘snake’ in your head.”

Snake. I do not know this word. It must be a human translation, but based on what Damien said to her, I imagine one of the groundcrawling jamda creatures that slither on their bellies as they nip at a demon’s heels while he’s in his solid form. Solid black except for the glowing white eyes that all shadow creatures have, the jamda is a nuisance.

And this human says the same of my female?

“Are you an empath?” I ask her. “Can you read others?”

“Who, me? Nah.” Glaine’s mate shakes her head, all that human hair bouncing wildly as she does. “I’m just an old pro at reading my way around a contract. It took me a while to figure it out, but Damien’s riddles are like the Sombra demon version of legalese. A lot of words to say a little, and once I figured that out, deciphering what he says sometimes became a lot easier.”

Glaine beams. “That’s my Billie. Such a clever mate.”

She is. At least, for a human, she is, but I already knew that. At Duke Haures’s request, when Billie and Glaine were traveling on the edge of the shadows, working their way toward Nuit, we kept an eye on their journey.

And then I saw red, and Damien sensed that the sixth mortal to bond with one of our kind would lead us to the seventh, and we moved our home out of the shadows before inviting the human and her guard to stay with us so that we could get a better read on her essence.

She is clever… and for the first time in centuries, I feel hope.

Hope that the time to take our mate is here at last.

Hope that, with Damien’s hold on our shared essence growing more tenuous by the cycle, she can save him.

Hope that she can love us both, and possibly even save me .

And then, only when the doppelseers are whole at last, can we hope to save Sombra from the fate we foretold millennia ago—and that, with the upcoming birth of the first human-demon spawn growing closer and closer, we might not be able to avoid.