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 theverus amorspell 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 beours… 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 theverus amorspell 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 demonwine. 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 theGrimoire du Sombrastill 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, bespelledby 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 bered.
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…