Page 41 of Bargain with the Demon King
"Someone broken."
"Someone surviving." I touch the twilight necklace where it rests against her throat, adjusting the chain thoughit 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 handreaches 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.
Chapter 15
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."
