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The doctor spared one more look at Jade. “I’d like to continue to follow her progress, if you wouldn’t mind, your Highness. And tend to her burns as soon as it’s safe to move her.”
“I’d prefer that, in fact. But she does seem to require lengthy sleeping periods when she’s injured.”
“I’ll leave my visits to your discretion, then.”
Davian experienced a moment of hesitancy as his concern for Jade’s condition caused him to wonder whether he and Sheena could aid in nursing her back to health this time. Her wounds were much greater this evening than with the broken hand and wrist.
But as her breathing turned steadier with sleep, not as labored as it had been previously, he said, “Please come by late morning. That should give her some time to heal more—you’ll likely be able to remove the stitches at that point.”
“Very good.”
Davian saw Schaeffer out of the cottage and then noticed the bottle of wine on the accent table in the living room. He found a collection of small juice glasses in her tiny kitchen and poured a hearty amount of the merlot into one. He sat bedside, trying to gauge Jade’s improvements.
The laceration on her chest still appeared angry and red, despite being laced up. He couldn’t see if she’d made any headway with her back, since she lay propped against the pillows. From the way she occasionally squirmed on the bed, he deduced not.
He sipped the wine and tried to get his anxiety under control. When he felt he could speak calmly and rationally—without his deepest fears of whether she’d live or die edging his tone—he leaned close to her and spoke. It was a gamble when trying to help her recover, like every other chance he’d taken along that vein. But perhaps his voice might keep her fighting…
“I told you I’ve regretted the result of the war,” he quietly said. “But I didn’t tell you why.”
He pulled in a full breath. Held it in his lungs for a spell. Then exhaled on a long stream, steeling himself for another confession.
“My great-grandfather attempted to rally the first revolution against the humans in the late 1300s. His reign, however, eventually passed without any success toward his mission. Centuries later, my grandfather felt he was in the position to take up the quest, when settlers came to North America and the territory wasn’t so heavily populated with humans. Sometime thereafter, my father followed suit with his plans for war. All three failed in mobilizing a substantial—and cohesive—enough force to accomplish their goals. Or persuade others of military influence and importance to rise up and join the movement across the continents.”
Davian sipped before continuing.
“Transporting demons from landmass to landmass in order to build armies proved too challenging an effort to undertake. The vampires couldn’t resist the human blood on the ships that crossed the ocean. The shifters couldn’t survive the captivity. And other preternatural beings had difficulty going undetected. There were many demonic possessions during those times and most of the passenger ships began carrying priests on board to perform exorcisms.”
Sailing the Atlantic from Europe to America in the mid-1800s had proved difficult for Davian as well, mostly because he’d abhorred the isolation and lack of physical space.
“The demon world hadn’t been able to form a war strategy with all the disjointed factions and their idiosyncrasies. Not to mention their various politics that couldn’t be reconciled or coalesced. Each group had their own idea of the power they purportedly possessed and how significant they thought their kind was. Unity had not been possible.”
With a sigh of irritation over the demon drama, he told her, “Then I came of age, so to speak, around my two-hundredth birthday. I studied the potential of the demon community for a long time and it suddenly fell into place for me. I realized that every type of demon also requires what humans thrive upon—leadership. Whether the dominant political stance is fully agreed upon or not, every species looks to a leader to guide them. I merely had to find common ground to band them all together.”
Jade stirred and her head rolled toward him. She didn’t open her eyes, but she said in a scratchy voice, “You told me you didn’t agree with any of this.”
He brushed his fingers over her cheek. “I didn’t. Yet it was my destiny, according to my father, to discover the key to unleashing the demons on the human world in order to conquer it.”
“What was the common ground?”
“You’ll cringe at the irony of this.”
She licked her lips, reminding him to dab balm on them, which the doctor had also left. “Tell me.”
When he was done with the moisturizer, Davian let out a hollow laugh and said, “Freedom.”
That one word held numerous connotations.
“For the demons,” he continued, “if we usurped human power, the various species wouldn’t have to hide in the woods or attempt to conceal their true identities to avoid being hunted by slayers—or become caged, experimental subjects for government research or private agencies. They could roam the lands and take advantage of everyday life without always looking over their shoulder. They only had to follow a few simple rules when the conflict was over, and I found a vast portion of them in agreement with my laws, because they no longer felt threatened by the human populace.”
She was clearly groggy, but asked, “Why destroy all the cities? Burn the buildings?”
Davian winced with more regret. “I never advocated that sort of mass destruction, but it went well beyond my control. Demons are simple creatures. We don’t care for modern technology or advancements. Most immortals hoped to restore the region to the way it had been even before the Pilgrims arrived. We like nature, not skyscrapers. Fresh air, not smog.”
“Pictures,” she said. “I’ve seen pictures of the brown layer along the horizon. It’s rather disgusting.”
“Doesn’t exist anymore. But then again,” he said, reflective, “neither do a lot of the comforts your kind was used to.”
“Hard to miss what you never had.”
