Page 19 of Bargain with the Demon King

"No?" She laughs, the sound sharp enough to cut glass. "Then what am I?"

"Disappointed." The meat hovers between us. "There's a difference."

"Disappointment suggests I expected better. I didn't. I expected Chad to love me the way I loved him. I expected the bare minimum, and he still went lower." She takes the meat, chews mechanically. "That's not disappointment. That's stupidity."

"That's humanity." I offer her wine, which she accepts with hollow automation. Her fingers brush mine on the goblet, and even through her numbness, I feel her pulse quicken slightly. "You believed in love because you're capable of it. He wasn't. That's his failing, not yours."

"Pretty words from someone who thinks love is just wrapping paper on selfishness."

"Perhaps I'm reconsidering that position."

She actually looks at me then, really looks, and for a moment something flickers in her eyes. Not hope—she's too far gone for hope—but curiosity. The scholar in her that can't resist a puzzle. "Why?"

Because you brought me dinner for three centuries of solitary meals. Because you found beauty in soul-stones and songs in demon markets. Because your breaking is breaking me. Because I just freed your soul without meaning to, my hand acting while my mind drowned in memories of your laugh.

"Because you're teaching me there might be exceptions."

She's quiet for a long moment, mechanically eating what I hand her.

The silence between us isn't comfortable, but it's shared.

Two creatures existing in the same space, breathing the same air, pretending things are simpler than they are.

Her thigh presses against mine through the twisted fabric of her dress, warmth bleeding through despite everything.

"I threw a tray at a servant today." She says it conversationally, like discussing weather. "She was bringing breakfast and I just... threw it. Drew blood. Who does that?"

"Someone in pain."

"Someone broken."

"Someone surviving." I touch the twilight necklace where it rests against her throat, adjusting the chain though it doesn't need adjusting.

Her pulse jumps under my fingers, quick and vital despite her emptiness.

"You're still here. Still breathing. Still counting cracks and eating when forced. Still warm. That's not nothing."

"It's not something either." She curls tighter, but she's eating, and her shoulder presses against my chest. "The court's right. I've lost my spark. The optimist in me is dead. Chad killed her."

"Then become something else."

"Like what?"

"Whatever you want. You're free to choose."

The words hang between us, weighted with meaning she can't grasp. She's free. Actually free. She could walk out of this fortress, return to the mortal realm, build a new life far from Chad and demons and broken promises. She could leave right now if she knew.

She won't. Not because I'm keeping her, but because she has nowhere else to go. The thought should satisfy me. Instead, it makes me want to give her reasons to stay that have nothing to do with emptiness.

"Azzaron?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you. For the food. For not leaving me alone with the cracks."

"Always."

The word escapes like a vow, like a threat, like the kind of promise that reshapes kingdoms. It hangs in the air between us, heavy with meanings I'll never admit and she'll never ask for.

She doesn't notice—already turning back to her wall—but the word takes root in the space between us, growing into something neither of us is ready to name.

I stay until she falls asleep, her breathing evening out, her body finally uncurling from its defensive position. One hand reaches toward me in sleep, fingers curling into my shirt. Even unconscious, she seeks anchor. Even broken, she reaches for me.

Only then do I return to my own chambers, where the dust of her soul-stone still glitters on my untouched dinner.

Evidence of my greatest crime and my only honest choice.

My horns have grown another inch since dinner, responding to emotions I refuse to name.

The beast under my skin settles only slightly, still pacing, still wanting to return to her room and curl around her like a shield against the world that hurt her.

The council thinks she makes me weak. They're right. But they're also wrong. She makes me weak the way fault lines make mountains weak—creating spaces where impossible things might grow. Creating potential for change in structures that seemed permanent.

She could leave now. Walk out. Return to her mortal world.

She won't. Not because she's bound, but because she's broken.

I did that. I'll fix it.

Even if fixing her destroys everything I've built. Even if saving her costs me the kingdom I've ruled for seventeen thousand years. Even if the only way to bring back her light is to let her burn me alive.

My hand still tingles with the ghost of crushed crystal. The greatest crime a Demon King can commit, done without thought, without plan, without hesitation. Just my hand closing on its own while I remembered her laugh.

She's free. She just doesn't know it.

I'm the one in chains now. Not of iron, but of dust and memory and the ghost of her laugh. Each soul-mark on my skin is a link in a chain I forged myself, but hers is the one that has finally found my throat.

Seventeen thousand years of taking souls, and hers is the only one that took mine in return.