Page 23 of Bargain with the Demon King

Adraya

"The archives require attention." Azzaron delivers this with the same conviction he uses for actual demon law. "Centuries of records need reviewing."

"Thrilling. Death by paperwork instead of heartbreak. At least it's variety." I follow because following requires less energy than refusing. "Chad always said I read too much anyway. Guess I can put that useless skill to work cataloging demon bureaucracy."

The twilight necklace sits against my throat, neither warm nor cold, just present.

Twenty-eight steps from my chamber to wherever he's leading me.

I count because counting keeps me from thinking about other numbers—days since Chad, hours since I ate properly, minutes since I felt anything besides hollow.

"Do demons even keep records? Or do you just remember every soul you've stolen with perfect recall?"

"Both." He opens a door I haven't seen before, older than the others, carved with symbols that shift when I don't look directly at them. "Though stolen implies theft. I prefer collected."

"You prefer many things that aren't true."

The door swings inward, and my automatic response dies in my throat.

Not archives. Not ledgers or contracts or the bureaucratic nightmare I'd prepared for.

Books. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands.

Shelves stretching up into shadow, every surface covered in spines of leather and scale and materials that shouldn't exist. The smell hits me—paper and age and that particular scent of stories waiting to be read.

"This isn't archives."

"No."

"You lied."

"Yes."

My feet move without permission, carrying me deeper into the impossible library.

My fingers trail across spines, reading titles in languages I know and languages I don't. Fiction.

Poetry. Histories. Myths. Everything I used to disappear into when the world got too heavy.

When Chad got too distant. When I needed to be someone else for a while.

"'The Maiden's Lament,'" I read aloud, surprising myself. The words actually register. "I know this one. The heroine dies for love, thinking it noble. Chad said it was stupid. Said dying for someone was the ultimate weakness."

The name doesn't strangle me. Just sits there, fact without feeling.

"Was he wrong?"

"No. But he was also the kind of person who'd say that while shoving me toward a sword, so his opinion lost some credibility."

I pull the book from the shelf, open it. The words stay still. They make sense. My brain accepts them without the forty-three attempts required by the soul-stone text.

"I can read these." Wonder bleeds into my voice before I can stop it. "The words work again."

"Stories are different. They have their own power. An agenda. They draw you in." His voice carries something that might be amusement.

I move down the row, muttering titles. "'Songs of the Shadowed Court.' 'When Demons Loved.' That one's definitely fiction—demons don't love."

"Perhaps you haven't met the right demons."

"I've met exactly one demon who matters, and he's currently tricking me into libraries pretending it's work."

My hands find books without conscious choice—romance where love conquers everything, adventures where heroines save themselves, poetry that makes pain beautiful. I gather them against my chest, armor made of pages and possibility.

"Take whatever you want." His voice stays carefully neutral, but I hear something underneath. Hope, maybe. Or calculation. With Azzaron, they're often the same thing.

"I don't want anything."

"You're holding seven books."

"These don't count. These are..." I search for words that won't admit to wanting. "Distraction."

"Take them anyway."

I clutch the books tighter, their weight familiar in ways I'd forgotten. In my old life, I'd read three books a week, sometimes more. Chad called it escapism. Said I should focus on reality instead of fiction. Funny. His reality was the biggest fiction of all.

"'Twilight's Embrace,'" I read another title.

"I used to love this one. The hero's this brooding nightmare who secretly protects the heroine without her knowing.

She thinks she's surviving on her own strength, but really he's been destroying her enemies in shadow.

Chad said it was manipulative. That protection without consent was just another form of control. "

"What do you think?"

"I think Chad wouldn't recognize protection if it carried him to safety after literally dying for him." I add the book to my pile. "I also think I'm taking this one specifically because he hated it."

"Spite as a selection method. Interesting."

"Spite's all I have left. Might as well use it for literature."

We stay in the library longer than necessary.

I wander, touching spines, remembering who I was when I first read them.

The girl who believed love conquered everything.

Who thought Chad's distance was depth, his coldness was complexity.

Who made excuses for every disappointment and called it devotion.

"That girl's dead," I tell a book of fairy tales. "But maybe her taste in fiction survived."

Evening comes—or what passes for evening in eternal twilight. Back in my chamber, I spread the books on my bed, each one a small rebellion against the void. I pick up 'Songs of the Shadowed Court,' opening to a random page.

"The demon lord knew three truths: mortals broke beautifully, love was just weakness wearing costume jewelry, and his halls would echo forever with elegant emptiness. Then she arrived, dragging optimism through his doorway like a disease he didn't know he was desperate to catch."

I almost laugh. Almost. The words blur, but I keep reading, and miraculously, I retain them. My mind engages despite itself, following plot through pages.

A knock at my door—soft, servantile. Dinner. The servant girl I bloodied enters carefully, sets the tray down, flees before I can apologize or throw anything. The food steams, elaborate as always. My stomach actually responds with interest instead of revulsion.

I stare at the plate. Then at the adjoining door. Then back at the plate.

He's in there. Sitting alone at his table with his own meal, probably brooding about whatever demon kings brood about. Three centuries of solitary dinners before I showed up. Now he's back to that routine because I'm too broken to maintain our ritual.

The loneliness of it settles into my chest next to all the other hollow spaces.

Before I can think myself out of it, I pick up my plate. My feet carry me to his door. I don't knock—we're past that pretense. The door opens under my hand, and there he is, exactly as predicted. Alone at his table, meal untouched, staring at nothing.

His head snaps up when I enter. For a fraction of a second, surprise flickers across his face—there and gone, replaced by careful neutrality. But I saw it. The Demon King, caught off guard.

I set my plate across from his. Pull out the chair. Sit.

Neither of us speaks. He watches me like I might bolt, might shatter, might explain this deviation from my established patterns of wallowing. I offer nothing. Just pick up my fork and eat.

He follows suit after a moment, and we share the meal in silence. Not the suffocating quiet of my recent days. Not the weighted pause before violence. Just... quiet. Companionable, even.

The food tastes better than it has since Chad. Not good—nothing tastes good anymore—but better. My throat accepts it without protest. Across from me, Azzaron eats with that same inhuman grace, but his shoulders have lost some of their rigid control.

I chose this. Choose to be here instead of alone with my books and ceiling cracks. Chose his presence over solitude. The weight of that decision sits between us, acknowledged but unexamined.

When my plate empties, I stand. Still no words. They'd ruin whatever this is—this fragile thing that might be companionship or might be mutual loneliness or might be something neither of us wants to name.

His hand twitches toward mine as I pass, then withdraws. The phantom heat of that almost-touch lances up my arm, a shock to nerves I thought were dead. I carry that phantom heat back to my chamber, where books wait on my bed.

I curl up with 'Twilight's Embrace,' the twilight necklace pulsing warm against my throat—responding to something I refuse to name.

The words flow into me, story taking root in the scorched earth Chad left behind.

My mind follows the narrative of someone else's beautiful disaster, their pain that doesn't leave me hollow, their hope I can observe without feeling.

Tomorrow, I'll count steps and pretend mirrors don't exist. But tomorrow I'll also walk through that adjoining door again. We both know it. The pretense of maybe is just another story I tell myself, thinner than the pages I'm reading.

Through the wall, I hear him moving. Not pacing—something slower, more deliberate. The sound of someone handling glass carefully. Or perhaps crushing something that shouldn't break.

I turn the page, lose myself in fictional demons who are somehow less dangerous than the real one separated from me by a single wall. In stories, broken things become beautiful through suffering. In reality, maybe they just become sharp enough to cut anyone who tries to hold them.

The book holds my attention until my eyes burn with exhaustion.

For the first time since Chad destroyed everything, I fall asleep thinking about tomorrow's dinner.

About the way Azzaron's claws almost touched me.

About the weight of choosing to seek the monster's company when I could have chosen solitude.

It's not hope. Hope is for girls who believe in wildflower boys.

This is something else. Something with teeth.

And tomorrow, I'll feed it again.