Page 49 of Bargain with the Demon King
"Perfect." He steps back, removing his hand. "She knows what to do."
The mare continues her impossible movement, and suddenly I'm alone on a demon horse beside a lake full of broken souls. The metaphor is too obvious to acknowledge. But without Azzaron's touch, something shifts. The mare feels my weight differently, adjusts her gait to match my awkward rhythm.
"Oh." The word escapes soft. "She's listening to me."
"They always listen. Most riders are just too loud to hear it."
The mare picks up speed slightly. Wind I haven't felt in weeks whips my hair. The ground blurs. My stomach drops then soars.
And then—a sound rips from my throat, sharp and rusty. A bark of air that my own lungs don't recognize. It takes me a second to place it. A laugh. Small, broken, and utterly involuntary, but real.
The mare's ears flick back, and she extends her stride. Faster now, flowing across the impossible landscape while soul-lights scatter in our wake. Another laugh bubbles up, larger this time, pulled from somewhere I thought Chad had killed.
"I'm riding a demon horse!" I shout to no one, to Azzaron, to the escaped souls in the water. "I'm terrible at it but I'm doing it!"
"You're magnificent." His voice carries across the distance, and when I glance back, he's watching with an expression I've never seen before. Like he's memorizing this. The exact pitch of that almost-laugh. The way my body relaxed for ten seconds. The precise moment something cracked in the numbness.
The mare slows, circles back to where Azzaron waits. When she stops, my legs shake too badly to dismount. He lifts me down, hands lingering on my waist, thumbs pressing into my hips.
"I laughed." The words scrape out raw, wondering. "I didn't think I could anymore."
"You did more than laugh. You commanded a Shadowsteed."
"Barely. Mostly I just held on and hoped."
"Most demons can't even do that much their first time." His expression suggests this surprised him too. "Can you walk?"
"Probably." I test my legs, find them functional. "Though I might count steps more carefully."
"An improvement over ceiling cracks."
We gather the remains of our meal as darkness deepens the eternal twilight. The walk back feels different—not lighter, but less dense. Like breathing through cotton instead of concrete.
"She listened to me," I say suddenly. "The mare. Even though I had no idea what I was doing."
"Most creatures recognize honest intent over practiced skill."
"Chad never listened. Not really. I'd talk and he'd wait for his turn to speak."
"Chad is an idiot."
"Chad is worse than an idiot. Idiots can't help themselves. Chad chose not to listen."
"Yes."
We walk in comfortable silence until the fortress looms. He leaves me at my chamber door, that careful three feet between us restored. But something shifted. The numbness has cracks now, places where other things might seep through.
My room feels smaller. The box on my nightstand draws my attention—Azzaron's gift from days ago, still wrapped in that color-shifting paper. My fingers find it without conscious decision.
Inside, nested in black velvet, sits a crystal vial no bigger than my thumb. The contents glow—not demon light but something pure. White. Familiar. A folded note rests beneath it, his handwriting sharp and precise:
You mentioned missing stars. Once. Barely a whisper over dinner when you thought I wasn't listening. I went to your world last night. Stood in a field where no one would see a demon king playing with light. Caught these from your actual sky—not memory, not illusion. Real starlight from the world you knew. Keep it sealed. Look at it when the twilight feels too heavy. Proof that light from one realm can exist in another, even if it can't shine the same way. —A
My hands shake as I lift the vial. Stars. Actual stars. Trapped behind crystal so I can see them whenever the darkness gets too thick. Not for romance. Not for possession. Just because he heard me whisper about missing them and decided that was worth a journey between worlds.
The starlight swirls inside its prison, pure white against the black velvet, against the eternal twilight of my window. Proof that foreign things can exist here. That light doesn't have to die just because it's been transplanted.
I don't open it. Opening it would mean losing it, watching it dissolve into nothing. Instead, I hold it to the window, watch trapped starlight overlay demon twilight. Two impossibilities existing in the same space.
