Page 44 of Bargain with the Demon King

"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?"