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I don’t. Ican’t. I’m willing to sacrifice his trust in me for the chance of summoning my mate.
And that’s what I am going to do.
I have the book. I’m in the human realm so the veil between worlds won’t keep me from her. All I have to do is manifest her, then give her the mate’s promise to mark her as mine. Once she does the same, I have until the first gold moon to convince her to accept me as her forever mate and then it won’t matter that I betrayed Duke Haures.
For a chance at my forever, I’d do that and more.
As a shadow, I can control how much of me appears before I melt into the darkness surrounding me. Right now, I’m so faded that no one peering down the alley would see me at all. With the book nestled on top of my bent knees, crouching down to the strange dirt of this world, it disappears with the rest of me.
I can still see it. Waving my hand over the front cover, the pages flip until it stops on the only spell I need.
Verus amor.
The true love incantation.
With the exception of two words scrawled in ink in the strange human lettering, the rest is printed in Sombran. The second part of the spell is the mate’s promise that every mature Sombra demon knows instinctively, but the first part…
My eyes gleam in excitement, lighting up the yellowed page as I begin to read the manifestation spell out loud.
The wind picks up halfway through the cast, sending my long hair whipping around my face. Usually, the elements don’t affect me when I’m in my shadow form, but this isn’t a normal wind. This is magic, and I have to brace my claws in the earth to keep from being knocked over as I finish the spell.
I immediately launch into the mate’s promise, the vows—“My soul will be yours… my heart is in your hands…”—getting lost in the wind as I finish offering everything I am, everything I will be to the single female meant for me.
Now, I went into this cast understanding that there was a chance it would fail if only because my mate does not exist just yet. Another reason why human mates are as revered as they are considered forbidden fruit is how they are not immortal like my kind. At nine centuries old, she could have been born and lost long before I even knew to be searching for her. Perhaps, she was not even born yet. My wait might have to continue—
—and then something happens and, one way or another, I know that the spell at leasttook.
Instead of whipping around me, the unnatural wind cuts right through me. It slices through my innards, it stabs at my heart, it seizes all of the breath from my lungs before it bursts free from my eyes, momentarily blinding me.
The dark consumes me. I lose all direction, only knowing that I’m falling for a split second before the wind lifts me up, grabbing me, pulling me away from the alleyway and into a portal that is not mine.
The last thing I hear is the thud of the now solid book hitting the ground before I’m swallowed up by the wind.
* * *
Time losesall meaning as I whirl before, suddenly, I’m being flung forward and, the wind finally dying down, I’m standing on my feet.
The first thing I notice once I am is that I have not left the human realm. More than that, wherever I am, I’m indoors now.
The space has a bed, furniture made from wood, and a large oval piece of reflective glass that shows the room in reverse. Not a scrying mirror like we keep in the School of Mages, but something similar.
And there, in the center of the bedding, is a slumbering human female.
Her hair is as dark as her skin is fair. Her features are elfin rather than the strong nose and jaw belonging to a demoness. She smells of something slightly sweet and faintly milky, and from my first inhale, everything in me stills.
“Oh.” I shudder out a breath at the sight of the beauty lying on her back. “Was ever a male as lucky as I?”
She doesn’t react, and I raise my voice a little more so as to wake her gently.
I’m in my shadow form in case I frighten her with my much larger, different appearance. Though I don’t worry that I will. All of the human females who were fated for a Sombran demon seem quite pleased with their males.
So shall my mate.
I already find herexquisite.
“For nine centuries, I dreamed of this moment,” I breathe out. “Won’t you wake, my mate, so I can see the color of your eyes?”
In Sombra, we all have bright, shining eyes, but the color gives us an insight to what a demon or demoness will grow to be. Those with purple are destined to be mages, while green belongs to the soldiers and the guards. Gold are usual for the craftsmen, while red is meant for those who hunt and kill, such as Nox.
