In an instant, visions flashed through my mind and I recognized the first one immediately. I’d seen this memory in Misa’s mind at the beginning of this mess. At the time, though, she’d pulled away so I couldn’t see more. Now, it became clear.
Azar and Misa wanted to change the path of their world, protect and make it different—better. But Magnus was set in his ways. Yes, they could have defeated him, but then Pye would have taken his place. This would have been worse. So, that’s where I came in.
Misa planted the idea into Magnus’ head to have Pye destroyed. Then, with him out of the way, they put the plan into motion to destroy Magnus. They believed I had all the qualities of a supreme leader and no longer wanted to live in the realm of evil. They would have stopped Magnus’ hold over me earlier if they hadn’t needed me to bond to him first. It guaranteed that I was next in line to rule.
The visions stopped and I released Azar’s hand. Stunned, shocked—I was speechless.
Kyden stroked my arm in a soft touch. “All right?”
I glanced at him. Still unable to speak. This was all very serious, but to be truthful, I had no idea what to say. Off all the things that I thought this might be about, this had never once crossed my mind.
They chose me to lead. Me.
“Nexi, you have to say something.” Zia’s voice filled my mind.
I glanced at her. She gave me a nod of encouragement, to say whatever needed to be said, but still I couldn’t. I seriously drew a blank. I’d never been without words before or so completely dumbfounded.
Misa cleared her throat, broke the silence. “Um…Lady…I mean to say, Nexi, needs some time to process. Let’s give it to her.”
Just like that, every warlock, demon, and witch stood in unison and left the auditorium. All that remained were Misa, Azar, Zia, Talon, and Kyden.
When the final Supe left the room and the door closed, Zia ran to me, hugged me with every ounce of her strength. “I didn’t think it was going to turn out this way.” Her voice hitched. “I love you, Sweetie.”
Still, I stood speechless.
Zia leaned back, then glanced worriedly at Talon. The Master of Guardians, and Kyden’s father, had just released his son from a tight embrace. He looked a lot like him—had the whole ‘slay my dragon’ thing going on. “I think she’s in shock,” she said.
“Help her.”
Zia glanced back to me, kept her hold tight on my arms, and released her magic. A rush of ease filled me.
I exhaled deeply, then gave my head a shake. It relaxed me enough to ground myself again, but I was still unbelievably shocked. Clearly, Zia didn’t want to take away the sense of what was going on here, knew I needed it to make good decisions, but took the edge off.
“So…” I hesitated. Everyone looked at me, waited for me to continue. “You do know that I’m a White Witch?”
Misa nodded, a sweet smile spread across her face. “Yes, we know.”
“And you do know I won’t accept Black Magic, right?”
“Why do you think I didn’t allow you to accept it after the bonding ceremony? We don’t want you to change.” Azar smiled.
Now it made sense. At the time, he suggested that Magnus and I wait until we were alone for me to accept Black Magic. With all types of sultry promise, Magnus had agreed. A deep shudder erupted within me as I remembered the way he looked at me then, the way I felt and wanted him. Just yuck!
I shifted my focus away from thoughts along that line and got back to business. “Why?”
“We like how you are,” Misa responded.
I gave my head a shake, tried to understand all this, but nothing seemed to make sense. “I’m so confused.” I gave my temples a good, hard rub.
Misa laughed. “What’s there to understand? I told you repeatedly that we’re not what you think we are. Yes, we’re demons and must siphon souls to feed our world and our magic, but we disagree with our past leaders. We don’t want innocent souls taken.”
I had to laugh at the idea of such insanity. “You’re good evil guys?”
“Makes you like us, right?”
I did remember when she’d told me this awhile back but I thought she was totally nuts. The truth was, now, I did like her. Demons are the pure essence of evil and she denied her very own soul to live in kindness. That definitely put her on the side of the good guys. Still, none of this made any sense.
“Honestly, why have you chosen me? There were lots of powerful witches and warlocks here tonight. You could have picked any of them.”
Misa’s smile was shrewd. “Not as powerful as you. With you leading, it puts us in a position of great safety. No one can go up against you, which will keep our world and our wants, protected.”
Before I could process that, Zia said, “She’s right, Nexi. You’ve grown undeniably strong. You shielded Kyden against Magic—used your shield on another. I still don’t believe it.”
My magic always did seem to be stronger with emotional motivation behind it so it really didn’t surprised me anymore that my powers exploded when I needed them most. Besides, my mind just couldn’t break away from how insane this all was. “But I have no experience with leading anything. I’m only twenty-four years old for gosh sakes. I can’t do this.”
Azar placed a hand on my shoulder, his smile kind. “You were born to do this and we’ll be here to guide you.”
I waited a good ten breaths as I let my mind process the situation. It wasn’t going to go away and would happen whether I liked it or not. So, as they say, better face the music and find out exactly what they wanted from me. “Lay it on me then, what do I have to do?”
“First, we need to establish rules that your minions must adhere to.” Misa informed.
Suddenly, a horrific thought came to mind. “I don’t have to live here, do I?”
“You are the Ruler of the Underworld. You can do whatever you like—the rules are yours to make.”
My gaze met Kyden’s, relief palpable in my tone. “Well, that’s a bit of good news.”
“Indeed.”
“You can assign yourself minions to handle your daily duties, and to look after the world for you, if you don’t wish to live among us.” Misa continued.
Okay, easy decision. “I appoint you.”
“Me?” Misa gasped.
“Well yeah, you seem to know lots. You’ll do fine.” Better than I could do, and oddly, I trusted her. Yeah, I trusted a demon, never thought I’d see the day.
She started to bow, but I grabbed her arm quickly. “Please don’t. That’s just too weird.”
“As you wish, my…” she stopped herself and smiled. “Nexi.”
I smiled in return. Whoever guessed that I’d find a friend in Misa? I would never have thought it possible. Friends come from unusual places, and I couldn’t deny that when I looked at Misa, all I saw was a friend.
“We’ll be in nightly contact with you about situations that arise and matters you must deal with. It’d be my pleasure to act as your Siren to assist you and deal with most of the trouble without you. The role is normally given to a witch, but times have changed now, haven’t they?” Azar cut in.
“Great.” Maybe my involvement wouldn’t be as much as I thought. These two seemed to know what the hell they were doing. “So, you’ll only come to me if something really serious comes up?”
“As Siren, I’ll deal with anyone who goes against the laws you put forth. We’ll detain them here. Then, weekly you’ll need to come so they can stand before you.”
I sighed loud and proud. There went my whole plan to let everyone else handle it thing for me. “All right, got all that, so what do we do now?”
“We need to bring everyone back in so you can set in place the new rules.” Misa stated.
My gaze hit on every face here. “Er…I hope you are all going to help me with this?” I was glad to get a nod from each of them in return.
Half an hour later, we had rules to set the Underworld to rights. The crowd piled back into the auditorium and took their seats. Misa gave me a quick nod to begin.
“Here goes.” I said to Kyden, who gave my hand a squeeze before letting go. Nerves rattled me. Public speaking was never my strong suit. So, I made it quick.
“Rule one: No more taking innocent souls. Anyone who does will face destruction. Understood?” Every head nodded so I continued. “Only humans who have done something wrong, murder, rape, you know that kind of stuff. Those souls you can drain, and do whatever you want with, but that’s it.”
When a Demon drained a soul, it didn’t actually kill them, just weakened their life force—took a few years off. If they ruined lives, who cared that they’d die a little early. I sure didn’t.
“Rule two: If a human asks for something in return for giving his soul,” Which was how the majority of the souls were taken—given freely in exchange for something. “You cannot do anything evil. Got it? No hurting others, stealing, murder, anything that falls into those categories.”