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I held my bulky purse to the side so it didn’t get crushed. I’d acquired a couple of them since our last foray into the infernal realm, and I was still getting used to the amount of space they took up in social situations. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
“Thought about it, though,” Nico said as he shook Fox’s hand.
He grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. “Too much pomp and circumstance for you?”
Nico simply grunted in response, which only made me grin. Never much to say, that one.
“Sorry we’re late,” Jax said as he shook Lan’s hand. “Who knew my brother never learned to tie a tie properly?”
“Hey,” Hudson said, butting in to shake Lan’s hand as well. “I was a little distracted at the time.”
Nimue shot me a grin. “I wonder who was distracting you?”
One of the lower-level directors called us to order, and everyone began taking their seats. Nico sat beside Jax, who sat beside me with Hudson on my other side. Beside him sat Rye, then Nimue, Lan, and Fox. And I put my bag underneath my seat where Tempest could peek out without being observed.
My coven had properly thanked the Wildes coven — and several other covens besides — for rescuing us on the battlefield last week, but I still couldn’t believe how close we’d come to not surviving that mission. Nico told me how bad Jax’s head wound had been, especially without a drop of magic left to heal him. It sounded like the cavalry had arrived just in time.
I, of course, had no memory of it, being unconscious when it happened. It had apparently taken Rye and Eli working together to fix all my broken parts, and even with all their magic, I’d still needed my coven-mates’ blood to awaken. It had still taken me and Jax the better part of this week to recover completely. Throwing what was left of four vampires’ magic at a disembodied devil hurt.
But it had worked. Ty was dead, taking Andras with him.
“We are gathered here today to celebrate the near-total closure of Charlotte’s threshold to the infernal realm,” a reg authority figure said into the voice amplifier artifact. The regs were accustomed to that much magic, at least.
Cheers rang out, and he cleared his throat to indicate he was hardly done.
“Although the portal remains open, it is as small as these portals historically were before the Year of Rending. This one is no bigger than one green on the old Carolina Golf Club, the site where I’m told a brave demon hunter coven lost their lives defending us at the very beginning of the Year of Rending. The Flidais coven was the first of many to fall that year.”
He mispronounced Flidais, causing Nimue to grumble under her breath, which I could hear from three seats away. The reg then droned on and on about honor and duty and how demon hunters had served well, sacrificing themselves and yadda yadda.
Maybe I would have believed him more if I thought the regs actually cared for witches’ lives at all. I had to wonder whether this particular one had any hand in ushering La Cora and Cyrene into power, which they’d used to murder even more of us than the demons themselves.
“That is why we have decided to continue funding the DHA at its current level for the next two years, at least until we can ascertain whether the portal will remain stable,” he went on.
He got a round of applause for that, as I knew several demon hunters had been concerned about the potential loss of their jobs. At least now they had two years to figure out what they might move onto next, if the new leaders of the DHA downsized. As his stilted, monotonous speech continued, I zoned out, remembering the last time I was this bored — which was during one of the many repetitive and tedious meetings we’d had with said leaders in the past week.
We’d been summoned to DHA headquarters to formally report our intel. We’d done a full debrief and shared everything we’d learned from Ty/Andras and our own observations, covering topics such as the behavior of magic within the infernal realm, how a devil’s compulsion seemed to work, how we’d thwarted it, and so on.
We also emphasized how important it was not to allow anyone to go near portals alone, lest they be seduced into becoming another devil’s host. Andras may have been the one to expand our threshold, but who knew if there might be other devils waiting to take his place and fill the power vacuum of that realm.
I’d also dealt with a lot of speculation around the nature of my bond with Tempest, but I’d refused to let anyone put us through any sort of tests. She’d protected me, and now it was my turn to protect her.
But she’d insisted on coming to this ceremony with us. She didn’t want to be separated from me ever again, she said. And so she stayed in my bag beneath my seat. It was hard enough to get people to accept that vampires weren’t all bad.
My coven had decided to let others continue fighting that battle here in Charlotte. On our way to the ceremony today, we’d finally decided what our next steps were together. Tempest had no objections to moving away. I personally couldn’t wait for a fresh start.
“We’d like to invite them to the stage now,” the reg said, jarring me out of my thoughts. “Will the Salvos coven please join us?”
The crowd went wild, cheering for us. I was honestly kind of shocked, but the Wildes coven whistled and cheered right along with them, grinning up at us as we ascended the stage.
Now Bao Preta stood at the podium and spoke into the voice amplifier. “When Demetri Foster told me about the insane mission he’d sent these four on, I couldn’t believe they’d agreed to go. But that’s what makes the Salvos coven heroes. They knew what needed to be done, and they knew they were the only coven who could safely cross the threshold to do it. Our eternal thanks to the Salvos coven!”
The crowd cheered again as Bao handed Demetri a medal. He came over to me and draped it around my neck, where it joined all my other charms and artifacts on pendants.
“I always knew that if anyone could pull this off, it would be you,” he said before pulling me into a hug. “You’ve always been too stubborn for your own good.”
I awkwardly hugged him back and then stepped away as quickly as I could. I’d never had a father figure in my life, and a part of me wondered if this is what it might feel like to make a father proud. I wasn’t sure what to do with that thought, but Demetri had moved over to give each of my coven-mates a medal next. They didn’t get hugs, though.
Then we went down the line, shaking Circe’s hand, then the other directors’ hands, then Preta’s, followed by a bunch of reg authorities whose names I’d never learned, and then three representatives from the OIB.
