Page 44 of The Princesses of Ruin (The Princesses of Ruin #5)
Chapter forty
Alastair
T here’s warmth against my side. Wiggling, wracking warmth.
Sobs fill my ears.
I tighten my arm around her. “Why is my wife crying?”
Lily gasps, pushing herself up from the crook of my arm. She moans my name in agony and collapses on my chest. I cradle her and kiss her head. Her hair is tangled and dirty, but I love the smell of it. The smell of her.
I bury my face in her hair and drag her against me. She yelps in pain and my eyes snap open.
My arm…
I loosen my hold on her and gape at my right arm fully consumed by my demon form. The claws are pricked with red blood. Lily cradles her shoulder with her other hand.
Her face is puffy and tear stained.
“My wife, I’m so sorry,” I say, my voice deep like the demon’s.
“No,” she sobs. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for what I’ve done.”
I raise my other hand, horrified to see that it’s not the demon’s, but my own. How have I become this creature that is half me, half monster ?
“What’s happened?” I ask, cradling her damaged shoulder.
“I made a deal with the duskwalker,” she whispers.
Another tear escapes her red eyes and drops onto my chest.
“Whatever it was, we’re alive now, and…” I look around me. We’re in the Nest, though I’m not sure where. “We’re home. You got us home.”
Her face scrunches in deep, soul-wrenching pain, and she collapses on me again. I hold her as she wails, my heart breaking with every second I don’t know how to help her. I have to help her.
Finally, her tears cease. She lays on me for a long time, the silence punctuated by little sniffles.
“I sold our daughter to him,” she whispers, and I’m not certain I heard her right.
I swallow. “Our what?”
She takes a deep breath and looks down on me. “I’m pregnant. It’s a girl. I traded her freedom for our lives.”
Joy is laced through with rage, fear, and horror. The demon isn’t just close to the surface now, he’s with me. He’s out in the open and I can’t control the violent emotion that wraps me in a stranglehold. Breath doesn’t sate the fire in my lungs.
I don’t know what to do.
“He’ll return for her in twenty years, and she’ll have one chance…”
“What chance?” My voice is heavily distorted with wrath.
Lily leans away from me. “She will get to fight him, one on one. If she wins, she’s free.”
“And if she loses?”
“He takes her.”
Sickness claws at my insides. My demon hand snatches her by the neck, and she yelps again. I grab my right arm with my left and pry it off her. Tears roll down her cheeks and I remember. I was dying in the snow. The duskwalker had eaten my arm. It was eating me, and she was killing herself.
The fury in me subsides. She made a deal to save us all. My brave, selfless, horrific, monstrous wife.
“The child would’ve died with you in the snow,” I say, cradling her cheeks and wiping her tears. “You didn’t take away her life. You gave her a chance. And us. You saved us.”
She cups my hands, pinching her eyes shut to hold in her sobs. “This fucking prophecy…Why us? Why our child? The gods hate us.”
“No, my love, they don’t,” I whisper, pulling her close to kiss her crown. “They chose us because we’re the only ones strong enough to withstand this. I know you’re scared, but our child will be trained in every combat style possible. We’ll make sure she’s deadly. She won’t lose.”
“And if she does?” she whispers.
“We’ll kill him.”
Nausea punches me and I groan, swallowing vomit.
Lily holds up her wrist, then grabs my demon arm. There’s a matching pair of pact brands in gold, green, and red encircling them.
“When?”
“While you were at the edge of death, you agreed,” she says, kissing the mark.
“Then it was not just your choice, but mine too.”
She shakes her head, her lips coasting over my wrist. “You didn’t know what you were agreeing to. You were delirious from blood loss.”
I capture her face and her gaze, locking her into my stare. “We’re in this together. Always.”
“And your demon? What does he think? ”
“An emotional fuckwit who will learn where to direct his rage or I will rip him from my body,” I say with a snarl directed at my right arm.
She chuckles softly and kisses my wrist again. “I’m so sorry.”
“Stop,” I say, dragging her close once more. “Stop apologizing for keeping us alive. I assume we got the antler as well?”
“We did.”
Relief hits me anew. We have what we need to destroy the impending threat.
“We will figure out what to do with this duskwalker when we’ve handled the dark goddess,” I say.
We lay quietly for a long time. The wind whistles outside the window, ushering in a storm. The stairs creak overhead every few minutes as Spiders come or go from the dormitories.
“How is she going to defeat him?” Lily whispers.
I thread my claws through her hair and gently grip her head so I can pull her off my chest. Silent tears streak her face. This is vexing her deeply. She feels responsible, and my demon’s reaction to the news was not helpful.
“We can’t kill the beast?” I ask.
“‘To do no harm’ was the exact phrasing, I believe,” she says with a scoff as she traces her brand.
“Imprisoning it is an option.”
She raises an eyebrow at me. “Our runes did fuck-all last time.”
“And now we have twenty years to make better ones,” I say.
There’s a gusty rattling along the side of the Nest and then a heavy thud at the front. Spiders are shouting and scrambling about screaming something about a—
“Alyse,” Lily cries and scrambles off the table.
She runs to the door and pulls it open. The third princess is on the other side, her face wind-chapped and tear stained. They throw their arms around one another and collapse to the ground, both sobbing.
I realize I’m fully nude and find the closest shred of clothing to cover myself before getting off the table.
There’s a pair of ripped pants thrown over a chair that serves fine, and I see all the additional changes as I pull them on.
The injury on my leg is now fully healed, and so is the hole in my chest, but they’re both demon skin, never to be mine again.
I turn to see Kazimir looming over Alyse, his face…
His mask .
The silver urictsa mask he wears on missions over the Wall is blackened and burned, scars of lightning ripped across it. The skin at his neck is red, and not from the frosty storm.
But behind the mask I can see his pained eyes. A longing to make Alyse’s tears stop, just as I’ve felt for Lily. Something has happened to them, too. Something terrible.
“How far along?” Lily asks.
Alyse sniffles. “A few months.”
“Fuck.” The word grunts from my mouth unbidden.
Lily climbs to her feet on wobbly legs. I lurch forward and help her as she grabs Alyse’s hands and helps her to stand, too.
“Shall we go see what our dear eldest monster did on her journey?” Lily asks.
Alyse bobs her head a few times. She likely already knows, but the women being together will be good.
Alyse puts her hand on Kazimir’s chest and whispers to him before kissing the chin of his mask.
He grips her hand, holding it tightly as the women leave, releasing it only when both their arms are fully extended .
His hand flops back down to his side and his head drops to his chest.
“Things didn’t go well?” I ask.
“Perfectly fine,” he mumbles. “We have a dragon scale, and a dragon in tow who believes my child is his property.”
I grunt another curse. Fucking demon just lets everything fly now.
Kazimir looks up at me and his eyes narrow. “You’re the very picture of comfort.”
I look down at the loose cotton pants slung low on my hips. “Apologies. It was all that was nearby.”
“I meant the arm,” he says. “Permanent?”
I nod. “Yours?”
He tugs on his mask and winces before dropping his hand back to his side. “I hope not.”
“Let’s see if we can do something about it,” I say, desperate to accomplish anything of worth.
“Adrik?” he asks, his voice pitched with worry.
“I heard him speaking. I believe he’s well, though I’m not sure where—”
“The lab,” we both say at the same time.
He scoffs. “We’ve been spending too much time around one another.”
I shrug. “Just enough time, I think, to become family.”
Emotion glitters in his eyes, but he swallows hard and banishes it.
“Let’s go get this fucking thing off.”