Page 59 of Bargain with the Demon King
"Quite the strategist."
"I notice patterns. Broken people see cracks because we're made of them." She closes the book. "Your council's fractured. You could reshape everything."
"Why would I?"
"Because it's boring. Same arguments for seventeen thousand years. Aren't you tired?"
The question lands true. I am tired.
"Change requires catalyst."
"You have one. Reading your histories and cataloging your tells." She stands, stretches. The dress pulls tight across her breasts. My claws extend. "Use me. Let me disrupt things."
"You know the risk."
"Death? I'm already hollow." She moves to the bathroom. "Thank you for not crushing me when I called them idiotic."
"They are idiotic."
"Your eyes just went gold-black again. Not rage."
She disappears before I can respond. She's been studying me as carefully as I watch her.
In my chambers, I hear her through the wall. Pages turning. Then her voice: "Forty-three different eye changes today. Wonder what forty-four looks like."
She knows I'm listening. Talking to me without talking to me. My beast responds with interest.
Tomorrow she'll sit beside my throne again. Everything's different. She knows she affects me.
The soul-mark spreads across my chest. By the time it reaches my heart, I'll belong to her completely.
Through the wall: "Forty-four."
She's counting me. Cataloging me. Studying me.
The collector is being assessed by his finest acquisition, and I find I have no desire to stop her valuation.
Chapter 20
Adraya
"Three lashes each." Azzaron's voice carries across the punishment square without emotion. "Humans for provocation. Demons for excess."
The crowd presses against invisible boundaries—demons on one side, humans on the other, all forced to watch what my suggestion created. Bile rises in my throat, but I keep my spine straight. Count the gathered faces. Forty-three demons. Twenty-eight humans. All here because I opened my mouth in council.
The demon goes first—one of the lesser ones who harassed the settlement. He kneels, back exposed, and takes his punishment in silence. Black blood wells with each strike, sizzling when it hits crystal dirt. His jaw locks, but no sound escapes. Pride keeps him quiet.
The human follows—a young man who threw stones at passing demons. His screams start with the first lash. By the third, he's sobbing, red blood mixing with tears. His wife watches from the crowd, hands pressed to her mouth.
"Look away and I'll double the count," Azzaron tells me quietly. His fingers grip my elbow, firm possession rather than comfort. "You suggested this. You watch it."
"I know." My throat constricts around the words. Another demon takes position. Another human. The patterncontinues—black blood, red blood, silence, screams. "They needed to see consequences."
"They needed to see you have teeth." His grip shifts, thumb finding the soft spot inside my elbow. "Now they know."
The punishments finish. Both sides disperse, avoiding eye contact, the message clear in how they angle their bodies away from each other. The King's law applies to everyone. My suggestion made real in blood and screams.
"That was necessary," I tell myself as we walk back toward the fortress. The words taste like copper. "Both sides were wrong."
