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A zreth was hungry. But that was nothing new. To be a demon was to hunger.

So when a presence prodded at the edges of his senses, he picked up an obsidian dagger and crept to the entrance of his tiny shelter—a narrow gap in the earth that he’d disguised with black scrub branches.

He squinted at the barren fields and cracked earth of the fourth plane of hell. Mountains like jagged teeth rose up in the distance, their stark faces unwelcoming and impassable, and the Great Canyon cut the landscape in half. The ever-present winds blew red sand into his eyes, and he blinked rapidly. He saw nothing. Heard nothing.

Demons were like the hells in many ways. They were both eternal and unchanging. Both violent and cruel. Both lonesome and empty.

Or perhaps that last one was just Azreth.

He crawled silently out of the cave, keeping low to the ground. Briefly, he considered dispelling his arm and summoning a magical shield around himself instead. It had been too long since he’d fed, and he didn’t want to expend the energy for both.

He glanced down at his right arm and flexed the fingers of the facsimile, their unnatural transparent magenta contrasting with the natural deep blue skin of his left hand. The magic that replaced his missing limb was a small but constant drain on his energy. It was a luxury he couldn’t necessarily afford, but he couldn’t bring himself to go without it.

The last time he’d fed had been almost two weeks ago, when a fellow outcast had ambushed him while he hunted a velraven. Azreth had gotten lucky. He’d won the fight despite bad odds. His dubious reward was a solitary meal of the other demon’s fear and pain as he bled out.

Hunger, as always, gnawed at him.

“Azreth,” called a low, feminine voice.

He relaxed a fraction. He recognized the voice—but that didn’t mean it was a friend. There were no friends among the kin, only temporary alliances.

He couldn’t see her yet, so he stayed low. “Nariel,” he replied.

She stepped out from behind a gnarled, petrified tree to his left. Her hands were at her sides, and she carried no weapons. Nariel was tall and strong, with long legs and a full chest shielded by obsidian armor, and her skin was a particular shade of deep violet that he admired more than he liked to admit.

Azreth frowned. He would have to find another place to shelter after this. Now that she knew to look for him here, it was not safe.

She looked him up and down, assessing his health. If he seemed weak, she might decide to try to overpower him. In the end, she seemed to decide he looked strong enough. “I must feed,” she said flatly, her frown unchanging. “Shall we come together?”

He nodded. They fed from each other often. It was mutually beneficial, for now.

He put his dagger on the ground. Nariel came closer, unlatching her breastplate and sarong and letting them drop to the ground, leaving her bare. Azreth felt an annoying twinge in his loins.

He had heard that sex was different for mortals. They actually enjoyed it. Nariel enjoyed it too, he thought, but not like mortals did. It was always dangerous to be so close to another demon. They were never safe. They felt no love for each other.

His sexual desire was a vulnerability. It was a commodity to be traded or stolen. And he disliked the way his arousal could come without his permission. He would have disposed of it entirely if he could, but then he would have nothing to offer her.

He let out a slow breath. There was no point being annoyed or wishing things were something other than what they were. It was unproductive.He untied his sarong and let it slip off his hips, leaving him clad only in his tall, armored boots.

Nariel waited a few steps from him, her arms crossed beneath her breasts. Her eyes tracked over his body, flicking across his angled horns and his hands. She wasn’t admiring him—she was checking for hidden weapons or spells, and for weaknesses.

She was physically bigger than he was, but he knew his magic was stronger. They would be an even match in a fight, which was why they got along. But it was generally agreed upon among demonkind that the party being penetrated was at a natural disadvantage during intercourse. She would not agree to be penetrated and pinned on her back. So, he reluctantly sank to the ground and lay on his back, as he always did.

Nariel gracefully dropped to her knees atop him, straddling his hips. Her bright eyes were on his as she wrapped a hand around his stiffening cock. The muscles in his thighs tensed, and he hoped she would think it was only from arousal and not discomfort.

“Still healthy, I see,” she said with a smirk. “For a cripple.”

He glared at her and raised his hand to the triangle between her legs, weaving a spell. “I will prepare you?” he murmured.

She nodded once. “And I you?”

“Yes.”

With perfunctory permission obtained, they pressed magic into each other. Her spell sank into him more aggressively than he’d expected. His cock went rigid and tightened painfully, and he bucked against her hand, needing to be inside something. He pushed his own spell into her, commanding her body to open for him. She clenched her jaw to hide her reaction, but he could feel it. It wafted over him like sweet perfume. Lifting him with her hand, she aligned him with her entrance and then sank onto him with a sigh.

They entered a familiar rhythm as her hands braced against his chest—a cycle of both physical pleasure and feeding from each other’s emotional energy. They did not speak, and they did not touch each other more than necessary. The wrong sort of touch could easily be mistaken for an attack.He felt his strength building and draining at once. As her pleasure built, so did his power.

He hated this—the sense of losing control. The need to thrust and climax and feed threatened to overcome him, and he feared he couldn’t stop even if he wanted to. He was torn between resisting it and submitting to it.

In a moment of weakness, he let himself reach up and hold one of Nariel’s breasts. She was soft and supple, her warm flesh giving in his grasp. Privately, he thought there was something wonderful about touching soft things. Most things in the hells were hard or rough or sharp.

Instead of rebuking him, Nariel smirked. She clenched around his cock, her thighs squeezing him. Her body undulated as she worked to wring pleasure from him.

His eyes fluttered closed and his hands clenched on her thigh and her breast as he reached climax. He thrust to her deepest point, anchoring himself to her, basking in her body. Through the haze of the orgasm, he felt her leaning closer.

And then pain ripped through him.

He roared, snapping back to reality in an instant. Her black hair shrouded his face, obstructing his vision, but he felt her sharp teeth buried in his neck, ripping violently. She clenched her jaw, cutting through flesh, and he felt his own hot blood pouring over his skin.

He tried to push her away, but she grabbed his wrists and slammed them to the ground. Her legs were tangled in his, holding him down. Her teeth were cutting through him inch by inch.

He dispelled his false arm from beneath her grasp, and she pitched forward, surprised. In its place, he summoned another, this time sharpening its fingers to daggerlike points, and stabbed it toward her.

Nariel flinched, black blood streaming from her cheek and dripping from her teeth. There was a shallow cut from her ear to her nose. Azreth struck again, fighting through fiery agony to sling a flurry of magical knives at her.

As she ducked and swatted at the knives, Azreth scrambled backward, clutching his throat. He was already too late. His neck was open from ear to ear, and he could see— hear —blood spurting from an open artery. He tried to speak, and nothing came out of his mouth except blood.

His fingers slipped in the streaming blood as he forced magic into the wound. As he focused on the healing spell, he lost control of the summoned knives attacking Nariel, and they dissolved, but the bleeding started to slow. The edges of the tear began to seal over, but then Nariel dove for him again.

He leapt backward, but her fist caught his chin, knocking him sideways. Her hands clamped around his damaged throat, and she wrestled him to the ground.

She said nothing. There was no explanation, no apology, not even any gloating. Just cruelty, fear, and hunger.

He waved a hand, magic crackling at his fingers but not quite coalescing into a spell before she hit his hand away. His vision pulsed black as she choked him, and he curled his fingers into a fist, forcing magic to bend to his will as he fought to stay conscious.Nariel drew back her fist, about to deal what would undoubtedly be a killing blow. Azreth thrust his spell forward.

A magenta blade speared through one side of her head and out the other.

She went still, her eyes suddenly empty and unfocused.Her fingers twitched on him, their hold still tight, as if they’d been frozen in death.

Azreth struggled out from beneath her and shoved her aside, gasping for breath. He let the blade dissolve as he refocused his magic on healing his throat. Slowly, his flesh began knitting back together. Coughing, he spat out a dark clot of blood and ran his fingers gingerly over the ragged gash. It was still bleeding, but it would stop soon.

Nariel’s eyes had gone cold and dark, their glow almost extinguished. Azreth considered her, scowling. He could have left her where she lay, to serve as a warning to others. But the body would attract scavengers, and more importantly, it would smell.

Snarling, he picked her up. As he stood, his knees almost gave out from under him. All the energy he’d gained from her had immediately been used to fight her, and now he was even more drained than before.

His feet slid in loose sand as he trudged down the hillside toward the river bank behind his shelter. Nariel drooped lifelessly in his arms, her head bouncing against his chest.

He had no right to be angry. This was his own fault. She’d sensed him lowering his guard, and she’d taken advantage, as anyone would have. He’d given in to the temptation to trust her, and he’d made a target of himself. It was like dangling a baby nyx in front of a velraven.

He dropped her beside the river of flame, then knelt next to her, panting from exertion. The river oozed, waves of heat rising from its molten surface.

If he thought about it, he supposed that he had liked her—as much as he could like anyone. Her presence had been a threat, but it had also been a break in the emptiness of the wasteland and the vast solitude that was his life. He wasn’t happy she was dead.

He pushed her over the edge of the bank, and the liquid fire slowly carried her away.Resisting the urge to stare after her, he waded into the fire to wash away the blood sticking to his skin.

For a long time, he sat on the river bank, occasionally clearing his throat and spitting up more blood. He watched the crimson sky churn with storms, clouds racing towards the horizon.

Sitting out in the open like this was another luxury he hadn’t earned. Anyone could come upon him and kill him before he could defend himself. But he did not look up to make sure no flying creatures were descending on him. He didn’t glance over his shoulder to make sure there was no one coming up behind him, even though he was in a vulnerable position at the bottom of a hill. In fact, he closed his eyes, shutting out the world. The bubbling of the river obstructed his hearing. If anything else came upon him, he wouldn’t know until it was too late, and he would die.

Survival was tiresome.

And yet, when he heard a sound to his left, he spun, ready to fight for his life again.

The sound was an odd hissing, like steam jetting from a volcanic vent. Upriver, a shimmer had appeared in midair. Before his eyes, it grew, the sound increasing to a harsh whine.

The shimmer turned into a window to somewhere else. Wind and magic poured through it, hitting Azreth in bursts. Through the window, two male faces appeared, staring back at him. They were close together, almost fighting over space to peer through the small opening.

They were mortals.Azreth stared at them in disbelief.

The taller of the two lifted his chin, glaring out at Azreth imperiously. “You. Come here.” He said it like an order. Awfully presumptuous, considering Azreth could probably crush him with one hand. The man thought he was safe behind whatever magic he’d used to open the window.

He was not the first demon to be summoned by a greedy mortal. Naturally small and fragile, mortals lusted for power the way demons hungered for lust. Their mages only reached across the planes into the hells when they wished to enslave a demon.

That was what he’d heard. But he had never been so lucky as to see it happen. This was the sort of opportunity that came only once in a lifetime.

He walked closer. The mortals shifted, practically vibrating with excitement and fear. Avarice shone in their eyes as he stopped in front of the window.

“Good,” the taller one said, approving of his obedience.

The shorter man wore a plain black robe and was shaved bald. But the taller one wore elaborate clothing with metal and fur details and many different colors of thread. His long hair was perfectly cleaned and combed, smoothed with oils or tonics. Azreth wondered if he was someone of high status, or if all mortals had the time and means for such frivolous things. Maybe they were all this arrogant, too.

Both of them were pale and small. Frail. Breakable.

“I have an offer to make you, demon,” the taller man said. “Serve me here in the mortal realm, and I will ensure you never go hungry. Would you like that? To have unfettered access to an entire plane of mortals? Come to me, and you can kill and feed to your black heart’s content.”

They thought they were clever. And they thought he was an imbecile.

They were right about one thing: he wanted them. How could anyone resist the opportunity to go to a plane where emotion ran free and wild, waiting to be devoured? It was a thing demons dreamed of.

The only problem was that mortals were clever about their summonings. There would be a cage waiting on the other side of the portal. That was how mortals worked. They summoned demons to trap them and force them into service—until the demon found a way to escape their servitude, at least.

Azreth looked around at the stark landscape—his awful home. He looked downstream, where Nariel had sunk beneath the flames of the river. He thought about the times he’d starved for weeks, the surprise attacks by other demons in the night, having to lie on his back and grit his teeth through feedings, and all the betrayals from kin he’d wished he could trust.

What was hell if not one enormous cage?

Perhaps even a life in a mortal’s cage would be better than a life in the hells. Or at least, it couldn’t be worse.

After all, demons were ageless and infinite. He could wait a long, long time for his freedom.

The taller mortal glanced over at the shorter one. “Does it understand? Perhaps they don’t know our language.”

Azreth stepped forward. The mortals started and backed away as he climbed into the window.