Page 20 of Bargain with the Demon King

Adraya

"There's been unrest near the eastern settlement." Azzaron delivers this without inflection. "I need to verify the reports."

I don't ask what kind of unrest. Don't ask about the settlement. Just follow when he moves toward the door because motion requires less effort than resistance. My legs work. That's something. Or nothing. The distinction stopped mattering when Chad's grunts rewrote my entire history.

The twilight necklace sits cold against my throat despite body heat that should warm it. Twenty-three steps from my chamber to the fortress entrance. I know because counting gives my brain something to do besides replay wet sounds and narrow hips and "she's never coming back."

"You're counting again."

"Better than thinking."

"Is it?"

"Thinking leads to remembering Chad's ass pumping into someone who actually fits in his hands. Counting leads to numbers. I prefer numbers."

The air around him crackles, a low hum of ozone that wasn't there a second ago. "Perhaps we should visit him again," he says, his voice a low grind of stone on stone. "Let you count how many pieces I tear him into."

"Pass. One viewing of Chad's enthusiasm for other women was enough.

" I follow him to the courtyard where Shadowsteeds wait.

Their unnatural stillness makes the bones in my ankles ache, a deep, resonant wrongness that travels up from the ground.

"Besides, you'd make it quick. Chad deserves to live a long life knowing exactly what he is. "

"Which is?"

"Forgettable."

The word sits between us, small and sharp.

He helps me mount the Shadowsteed, and I catalog the contact despite myself—his hands spanning my waist completely, the controlled strength that lifts me without effort, the heat that bleeds through fabric.

His thumb drags across my ribs as he withdraws.

I don't know if it's deliberate. Don't want to know.

"Can you ride?"

"I can sit on a horse-shaped thing while it moves. Same as I can sit anywhere else while existing."

"Your enthusiasm overwhelms."

"Funny. Chad said the same about my optimism. Right before explaining how exhausting positivity becomes."

We ride in silence through the canyon paths. The landscape blurs past—those too-green fields, the lakes that reflect nothing real, the mountains that fold into themselves. My body moves with the mount's rhythm automatically, muscle memory from when I cared about staying balanced.

"Three hundred and forty-two." I announce after twenty minutes.

"What?"

"Steps. Your demon horses take precisely identical steps. Even their breathing follows patterns—in for four, out for four. Everything here is rehearsed. Calculated. Even the wildlife."

"Does that disturb you?"

"It's honest. Better than Chad pretending spontaneity while calculating which lies would keep me convenient."

The settlement appears between one thought and the next, carved into a natural hollow in the canyon wall.

Wood and stone buildings that should look wrong here but don't. Gardens with vegetables growing in crystal-flecked soil.

Smoke rising from chimneys. Laundry on lines, moving in wind that shouldn't exist.

Humans. Not servants or pets or soul-bound prisoners. Families.

"What is this?" My voice scrapes out raw.

"Humans who stayed after their contracts ended.

" Azzaron dismounts in a single, unbroken motion, landing without a sound, as if gravity is merely a suggestion he chooses to obey.

His hands find my waist again, lifting me down.

This time his fingers press harder than necessary into my hips. "About sixty families now."

"They chose to stay? Here? In Hell?"

"Hell is relative." He watches me process the impossible. "Some had nothing to return to. Others found opportunities here they'd never have in the mortal realm. A few fell in love with demons."

"Love." The word burns my throat. "Right. Because that works out so well."

"Better than loving mortals, apparently."

The accuracy makes me want to scratch his eyes out. Or laugh. The distinction blurs these days.

A woman carries water from a well, humming. Children chase each other with wooden swords, shouting about slaying demons. Two old men argue outside what might be a tavern. A couple tends their garden, the man making his pregnant wife laugh.

"They're thriving." Not a question. An indictment.

"Disappointing, isn't it? When strangers succeed where you failed."

"I didn't fail. I was failed. There's a difference."

"Is there? Or is that just something we tell ourselves when we choose wrong?"

Before I can respond, a small girl detaches from the playing children. She approaches fearlessly, holding a flower—pale purple, one of those demon realm plants that never wilts.

She extends it toward me, gap-toothed and smiling. "Pretty ladies should have pretty flowers."

I stare at the flower. At her small hand. At simple kindness that expects nothing. My hand won't move to take it. The commands from brain to fingers get lost in the hollow where my ribs meet.

The silence stretches. The child's smile wavers. "Don't you want it?"

"I—" Nothing comes. What do you tell a child? That flowers don't fix betrayal? That kindness is wasted on empty things?

"She's tired," Azzaron says, materializing beside me. He takes the flower from the child, then moves behind me. His chest presses against my back as he reaches around to tuck it behind my ear. His fingers graze my temple, trace my jaw. His breath disturbs my hair. "But she appreciates the gift."

The child beams and skips away. I touch the petals—soft, real, absurd against my unwashed hair.

"She thinks I'm pretty."

"Children have excellent taste."

"Chad said I was too much flesh to handle properly."

Azzaron's stillness radiates violence. "Chad's opinion became irrelevant the moment he shoved you toward a sword."

"His opinion was never relevant. I just didn't know it yet." I step away from his heat, from the solid presence that threatens to anchor me. "Show me more of this impossible place."

We walk deeper into the settlement. The women at the well notice me immediately, whispers starting. "The King's mortal," one says. "The one from the dinner," another adds. They know what happened in that hall, how I came apart while demons laughed.

"They're talking about me."

"They always talk. About everyone. It's what humans do when their own lives bore them."

"Did you bring me here to show me humans can be happy in Hell? Some kind of object lesson?"

"I brought you here because staying in that room counting ceiling cracks was killing you faster than I prefer."

"You prefer a slower death?"

"I prefer no death. But you seem determined to test that preference."

An old woman sells bread from a window. A young man repairs a roof. Children play games with glowing crystals. They're alive. Building impossible lives in impossible places.

A couple passes—woman human, man demon. Small horns, ash-pale skin, movements wrong for mortality. She laughs at something he says. He looks at her like she invented joy. Their fingers intertwine, his claws careful against her skin.

"That shouldn't work."

"Most things that work shouldn't." Azzaron watches them. "That's what makes them interesting."

The demon notices us, bows deep, pulling his wife down. She goes but rolls her eyes at the protocol. When they rise, she looks at me with recognition—one broken woman to another.

"You're her. The one who—" She stops. "I'm Senna. This is Vazril."

"Adraya." My name feels borrowed.

"Would you like some tea? I just made a batch with herbs from both realms. Tastes like honey and lightning."

"We're not staying," Azzaron answers, saving me from remembering how to decline.

Senna catches my hand as they pass. Her fingers are warm, human, real. "The betrayal," she whispers. "The wondering if you were always too much or never enough. It gets easier."

She doesn't wait for response, just squeezes once and disappears with her demon husband who holds her like she might evaporate.

"She knows."

"Everyone knows betrayal. It's the universal human experience."

"You sound experienced."

"Seventeen thousand years of watching mortals destroy each other and call it love provides experience."

We leave as evening paints false warmth across the settlement—dinner smells rising, families gathering. I look back once, watching lights kindle, hearing laughter that shouldn't exist.

"They're happy."

"Some of them."

"After everything they lost?"

"Because of everything they found." He helps me mount again, hands at my waist, then sliding to grip my thighs, adjusting my position on the saddle. "Loss and gain aren't opposites. Sometimes they're the same thing."

"Pretty words from someone who thinks love is selfishness wrapped in lies."

"Perhaps I'm reconsidering."

"Why?"

"Because someone recently showed me there might be exceptions." He mounts his own steed. "Even if she's too broken to remember being exceptional."

The ride back passes in taut silence. Something shifted—fragile and dangerous to examine. Not hope. Never hope again. But recognition that humans adapt. That some thrive where they shouldn't.

The flower stays in my hair, ridiculous against unwashed tangles. But I leave it. A child thought I deserved beauty. Senna saw through devastation to something salvageable. An entire settlement proved Hell sometimes offers better terms than Heaven.

"Wait." Something occurs to me as we enter the courtyard. "The unrest. The reason we came here."

"What about it?"

"We never investigated it. Never even asked about it."

Azzaron's expression doesn't change. "It must have moved on before we arrived."

"Convenient."

"Very."

We look at each other, and for the first time since Chad, I almost smile. Not quite. But the ghost of it threatens.

"Thank you," I tell him.

"For what?"

"For the nonexistent unrest. For showing me I'm not the only fool who made bad bargains."

"They didn't make bad bargains. They made complicated ones." His hands lift me down, but this time he doesn't release me. His palms rest against my ribs, thumbs tracing the edge of my ribcage. "There's a difference."

"Is there?"

"Bad bargains destroy you. Complicated ones transform you." His eyes hold mine, gold burning through black. "Which was yours?"

"Still deciding."

"Good." He releases me, but his heat lingers. "Indecision means you're still fighting."

I return to my chamber wearing a demon flower, carrying Senna's warmth on my palm. The ceiling still has seventeen cracks. Everything exactly as I left it.

But something shifted. Fragile. Dangerous.

I'm still broken. Still empty. Still counting everything except the days since Chad shattered me. But sixty families sleep peacefully in demon lands tonight. Senna chose a demon over her own kind and seems content.

That's not hope. Hope is a liar I'm done fucking.