“Would you dine with me this evening? I imagine after so many months away you must be starving for good company,” Orith asked, her voice breathier than it needed to be with our quick pace. Halls flashed by us as I strode straight to Xannirin’s study at the rear of the palace. Orith’s father no doubt put her up to this. Even if I almost felt sorry for her, I didn’t deign to respond.

“Rokath,” she pleaded, using my given name. No one called me Rokath without my permission. Everyone referring to me as Halálhívó added to the enigma of my figure, which was entirely intentional. In fact, very few people knew my real name.

Grem snarled as her hand latched onto my wrist. I shook it off.

“No,” I said, imbuing my tone with as much violence as I could muster, which wasn’t hard given who I was. My boots squealed against the polished tile as I slammed to a halt and spun on her. Orith flinched as I towered over her. The veil she wore could barely be called sheer with how much of her face I could see. Which was entirely intentional. “I have no interest in you. Tell your father to stop throwing you at my feet like a fallen female. I do not need you to bear my brood.”

Her cherry eyes flashed with hurt, and her mouth popped open in protest, but I was already striding away, hoping to the fucking Weaver that she stayed where I left her. When the only sound that echoed off the white washed walls was the clicking of my hounds’ nails and my own frustrated breath, I finally relaxed my jaw.

It was no secret that I had a temper, one that had gotten me in trouble more times than I could count in my centuries of life. But that rage was what made me the Halálhívó, the deathcaller, and the greatest leader of the Demon army to ever exist.

Even if it kept me isolated.

Two sentries were posted outside the doors to Kral Xannirin’s study, and both stepped aside as I approached. They held their closed fists to their foreheads, then jerked them away as I stepped past and into the bright, cluttered space.

“Halálhívó,” my cousin greeted me, looking up from the stack of papers in his hand.

I closed the door behind me, then dropped to one knee and rested my head on my forearm. “My Kral.”

“How many times do I have to tell you that is unnecessary?” he sighed, papers rustling as he laid them down.

I rose, and then we embraced, clapping each other on the back. “It is good to see you, cousin.” I stepped away and snapped at my dogs to settle by the door. They obeyed immediately, mirroring each other as they sat on their haunches, red eyes fixated on us.

“Oh come on, let me get a few pets in before you force them to be all stoic like you,” Xannirin protested.

I rolled my eyes, then jerked my head in Grem and Zeec’s direction. When Xannirin dropped to his knees, the black beasts bounded forward, Zeec releasing a bark as he tackled the ruler of the Demons. Their tongues cleaned whatever crumbs they could find from his beard and face, and he laughed as he tried to push them away.

“You brought it on yourself,” I grumbled, sinking onto an oversized chair. Sweat beaded my brow, and I pulled off my helmet, nearly sighing with relief as a breeze trickled through an open window and caressed my face.

“You’ll keep dogs but not females,” Xannirin shot back, rising to his feet and ordering the hounds back to their posts.

“And you’ll keep females but not dogs,” I shrugged, fingering the buckles on my armor and letting it drop to the floor on either side of me.

“Yes, but you and I are the same in that we’ll never marry a bitch,” he grinned, circling behind his desk and sitting. He propped one foot, then the other on the onyx wood before tucking his hands behind his head.

I snorted, running a hand over my bare scalp. “Then what is all this for?” I gestured to the window beyond, where smoke trailed from open fires, laughter and childish screams filled the background noise, and the barest scent of garlic wafted on the breeze. All pungent reminders of where I was not. Guilt gnawed at me for leaving the front behind to return to Uzhhorod.

“I have millennia of life to sire and name an heir. That doesn’t mean I need to marry to do so, despite what the priestesses tell our people.” His burgundy eyes sparkled with amusement, and I rolled my own, leaning back and crossing my arms over my chest. “What’s the latest from the front?”

I didn’t waste time on idle chatter and preferred to get straight to the point, which my cousin definitely knew. “The Angels have marched up to Lutsk now. They’re pressing us down through the Paks Desert, which means they are only a six weeks’ ride to Uzhhorod.”

While to some that might seem like plenty of time, to me it wasn’t nearly enough. The pressure of keeping the Angels from overrunning the Demon Realm was immense, and I alone bore the burden. Every move, every battle, every moment made a difference.

Mistakes weren’t a luxury I could afford.

“And what of the new recruits?” he questioned, tearing me from my spiraling thoughts.

“They should arrive in a few weeks. I want to organize them by eye color and power rank. The cardinal, crimson, and scarlett are dispensable. The ruby, garnet, and maroon are not. Those in between, we shall see. They need to be protected at all costs if we want to win.” I didn’t need to mention that our biggest loss stemmed from the male who could create sickness, and that his capture by the Angels was one of the reasons our army had been so thoroughly routed over the past year. The Angels never revealed if he was alive or dead, and if he was still alive and in their control, he needed to be recaptured or killed. I couldn’t risk him unleashing another plague that would wipe out massive swaths of the population. He was, after all, the reason for these conscripts from the far flung parts of the Demon Realm.

“Do you have no hope for more burgundy eyed soldiers?” Xannirin asked, lifting one black brow toward his long hair. Unlike me, he kept his hair shoulder length, opting to tie back half of it to keep it off his face.

“Even if the Százados manage to find any, they’ll likely need extensive training to wield their powers during battle,” I grumbled. While burgundy, the most powerful of all Demon eye colors, was most common in the noble houses, it was still rare—even rarer the further one was from the capital. Eye color wasn’t completely hereditary, since our power was Fates-gifted, but breeding seemed to have some impact on the outcome regardless. The secondary magic that burgundy-eyed Demons possessed was unique, powerful, and they were usually the lone wielder of their abilities.

Xannirin could speak with spirits that had passed on to other worlds but had not yet been reincarnated in another form. It was damn near useless on the battlefield, but extremely helpful with court politics. Once when we were young, he’d accidentally stumbled upon a Kral who had died in a world he called Earth. He’d told Xannirin about his conquest of a continent he called Europe and his subsequent modernization of his kingdom. My cousin told me he talked with the male for hours, and much of his desire for conquering all of Keleti was inspired by this conversation.

I possessed the ability to reanimate the dead. The warrior we’d lost to the Angels could create targeted plagues. My second-in-command crafted thick black ropes that not only suppressed the movement of whomever was bound in them but also locked down their magic so they were helpless to escape. I could name every rare power the Giver offered the Demons for the last three hundred years because that was what made me the best leader of the army the Demon Realm had ever known.

I planned on using every drop of dark magic to my advantage to ensure I became the most infamous general in the history of Ravasz.

But my issue was time. With the Angels surging into our realm and their control increasing by the day, I needed new recruits faster than they were coming in. For now, I’d have to settle for retaining the most powerful magic wielders behind the front lines and having their new comrades take the brunt of the Angel’s advance.