by Nadine Mutas
“I want,” I snapped, “to not spend the rest of my days locked up by myself like some caged animal. I’ll go mad!”
His dark power whispered behind him, forming a shadow outline of his magnificent wings. “This might be a good moment to mention that I also have a dungeon.” He bared his teeth as well. “Perhaps you’ll be more appreciative of your current lodging if I show you the alternative.”
Threats, threats, and more threats. I’d about had it. “You married me,” I shot back. “You agreed to this farce, you took a vow to be my husband, and now you’ll just shove me aside? You’ve known about this contract for twelve years, and this is the best you can do? If you couldn’t find a way out of this with all your demon powers—” I gestured wildly at him “—then maybe you should just suck it up and actually play your part and allow me a life instead of isolated captivity!”
His skin was aflame. As if underneath, his blood was lava, the surface cracked in some places and revealed a molten core of white-hot rage. My eyes widened involuntarily, my pulse stuttering. I’d have taken a step back—finally—if my muscles hadn’t been locked in some kind of fear-induced paralysis.
“You,” he snarled, his beautiful features contorted in fury, turning him into a vision of angelic vengeance, “are the one who ruined this.”
Was it suicidal that overlaying the terror pounding through my blood was the insane urge to reach out and touch his lips? Taste his skin again? I might burn myself, but I suddenly had a complete and utter understanding of the moth that gleefully dove into crackling flame.
Absent-mindedly, I licked my lips. His eyes dropped to my mouth. His nostrils flared, the cracks in his skin burning brighter.
“You had plenty of opportunity to avoid this mess,” he said, his voice reminiscent of the dark smoke forming his shadow wings. “And I certainly gave you enough chances to do so. You could have married any of the men who pursued you, and if you’d stayed married until past your 25th birthday, the contract would have been null and void.”
Like a bucket of ice water, his words shocked me out of the weird mix of fear and lust. My thoughts stumbled over each other, my brain drawing the connections faster than I could keep up.
Six proposals. That was the tally I’d racked up. At the tender age of twenty-five, when most women were maybe getting close to receiving their first proposal of marriage—if any at all—I’d had six of my former boyfriends ask me to marry them over the years.
It had started with the first guy I’d dated seriously at seventeen. At just a year older than me, he was heading off to college when we’d been together for six months, and he popped the question before he left.
Needless to say, that was the end of that relationship.
The next guy I went out with, once I was in college myself, asked me after four months of dating. I ran as if my ass were on fire.
After that, the proposals came even faster. The last man I dared to go out with, just a few months ago, went down on one knee and presented me with a ring on our third date. The result was me having a panic attack and him desperately waving at me as I sped away in the ride I called.
If there was one thing that made me run for the hills in a relationship, it was the prospect of marriage.
Dumbfounded, I stared at the smoldering demon in front of me. “That was you, wasn’t it?” I whispered. “You forced them to propose.”
“Force.” He scoffed and curled his lip. “Demons can’t make humans do their bidding. All I did was put a suggestion in their minds, and they did the rest.”
“You manipulated them!”
My head roared with the rush of blood. All this time, I’d thought my exes were crazy, infatuated, obsessed, I’d thought there was something wrong with me for attracting creeps who were obnoxiously clingy. And all this time, they’d been perfectly fine until a demon messed with their minds—because of me.
“Damn right I did.” He glowered at me. “And if you’d just taken one of them up on the offer, we wouldn’t be in this predicament, would we?”
Oh, so it was all my fault? Hell fucking no. “You could have just told me! Why didn’t you come to remind me of the contract sooner? If I’d known I needed to get married, I’d have gotten hitched all right!”
I would have annulled that sucker right after turning twenty-five, of course. No way I’d have stayed married. I suppressed a shudder.
“I wasn’t allowed to interfere with your decision,” the demon snapped, his teeth gleaming in the flickering light of the torches. Was I hallucinating, or had his canines sharpened?
“Oh, but you could manipulate everyone around me?”
“Only the subject of the covenant is off limits.”
The covenant. That fucking, arcane, life-destroying pact whose exact contents still eluded me. Frustration built inside me until I wanted to scream. “What else does it say?”
He tilted his head. “You really don’t know.”
“No!”
For a moment, he stared at me with an expression I hadn’t yet seen on him, like I was a particularly interesting species of insect that he wanted to dissect with thorough, scientific focus. Then one corner of his mouth tipped up, a sly gleam in his eye.
“That must be vexing,” he drawled.
Bastard. He wasn’t going to tell me, was he? Well, I could shoot right the fuck back.
“You know,” I said, putting my hands on my hips, “you might have tried to manipulate your way out of the contract, but all you did was ensure that we’d end up here.”
He narrowed his eyes. “What?”
“I hate the idea of marriage.” I leaned forward. “I have since I was fourteen. If you’d done your research on me, you’d know that. You’d know that springing random marriage proposals on me would make me abandon that relationship faster than your wings catch fire. By manipulating the men in my life to propose one after the other, you made sure I never had a long-term relationship with the potential to naturally change my mind and let me accept the idea of real commitment with strings attached.” I gave him a smile that was all teeth. “You ruined this.”
The look that flashed across his face would have been comical under different circumstances. For a second, a glorious second, real surprise flickered over his features, mingled with disbelief and bafflement. I had an inkling that his control rarely slipped, that he usually kept his true emotions on a tight leash and only showed a calculated version of himself, allowing rage and aggression out but suppressing anything else.
It would make sense for a demon raised in Hell, I guess.
So this little slip, this brief glimpse at a raw, untempered reaction, was a glimmer of victory in a war I hadn’t realized I was waging. It gave me a weird kind of satisfaction.
His expression shuttered in the next instant, the cracks of fire in his skin closing up before my eyes. How surreal to see cinematic special effects in real life, my brain supplied helpfully.
“Enjoy eternity alone,” he murmured as he stepped back, drawing the shadows into himself again.
He was at the door before I could shake myself out of my stupor.
“Wait!” I called out.
Too late.
The door fell shut behind him, and a horrible click sounded with the finality of a nail being driven into a coffin.
My breath hitched, and I rushed to the door. Pulled on it. To no avail. It didn’t budge.
He’d locked me in.
I pounded on the metal. “Azazel!”
My answer was silence, the only sound that of my own labored breathing, the pulse in my head, and the crackling of the torches.
That motherfucking bastard.
I’d expected obvious torture, instruments of pain, the punishment of burning. I’d feared being flayed alive or chewed up by a hellhound, maybe being subjected to an endless rerun of the Cats movie.
I had never entertained the idea of being tortured with solitary confinement.
I was an introvert by nature, I did well with being alon
e, doing my own thing, enjoying the quiet.
But even the most reserved person needed some form of connection. Input beyond books and her own thoughts.
I would wither away here, driven to insanity by the stifling silence of my separation, by the tricks my mind would start to play in an effort to find something to do. I had seen what happened to zoo animals whose exhibits were too small for their wild nature. Broken gazes, numbed instincts, mindless pacing within a tight space that defined their existence.
A poem I’d once read by Rainer Maria Rilke resurfaced from the depths of my memory, about a panther staring out through bars into a world he couldn’t grasp anymore, his vision filled only with the limits of his own enclosure. Pacing in ever tighter circles, his mighty will paralyzed, any and all memories and impressions that make it through the fog in his mind find their death in his heart.
I remembered being moved to tears by the words, by the image they painted.
That same helplessness and despair now crawled through me, drawing the picture of my own future in the same forlorn strokes.
A dry sob wanted to claw its way out of my chest.
No.
I would not cry. Not for myself. I’d already shed tears for my mom, for the people I cared about and the loss they’d suffer with me gone, but I would not weep for my own future—because I would make sure it didn’t resemble that of a panther crippled by captivity.
If that cantankerous douche of a demon thought he could just put me in storage here like a package and I would take it with wet eyes and a sniffle, he had another think coming.
I would find a way out of these rooms. I had literally all the time in the world—or Hell—to figure out how to slip out, and once I did, I would make it my newly eternal life’s mission to be an unrelenting pain in my reluctant husband’s ass. I would not be shoved aside and ignored. This was my life now, and while I never wanted this marriage, I would make sure the man—or demon, as it may be—who was my supposed life partner would give me the minimum of attention I deserved.
Anything was better than being neglected and forgotten like a gift you didn’t appreciate but couldn’t throw out.
But first—rest.
It wouldn’t do to start plotting my escape in my current state. I needed to be sharp, and right now, I felt like that one time I’d gone on a study marathon the night before an important exam because I’d procrastinated for weeks and had to cram a semester’s worth of learning into eight hours.
I’d made it and gotten an A, but I felt like roadkill afterwards. The kind that had marinated in the desert sun for a few days.
The events of tonight held enough excitement for an entire year, and I hadn’t had a minute to catch my breath and relax. My eyes hurt, my lungs were parched, and my limbs dragged as if weighted down with lead.
I shuffled over to the bedroom, into the adjacent bathroom—which indeed featured a toilet, hallelujah—and rummaged around in the vanity. I found a set of toiletries, much to my surprise, and did the bare minimum of getting ready for bed.
As soon as I hit the mattress, the torches simmered down to a faint glow. Neat. Eyes heavy, I shimmied deeper into the pillows and blankets, sleep beckoning with a velvet touch.
Tomorrow, I’d start my prison break.
Chapter 4
I slept like the dead. When I finally woke up, it was with an overwhelming sense of confusion and foreboding, like a slimy knot of sludge wedged in the pit of my stomach.
Gasping, I sat up, squinted into the semi-darkness. My brain was still half-tangled in the strange, immersive, and desolate dream I’d had, the pictures and feelings lingering and mingling with the reality that greeted me.
I’m in Hell, and my demon husband just locked me away like some bothersome pet.
Oh, yeah, that.
The anger simmering on low flamed up again, infusing me with the energy to swing my legs over the edge of the mattress and hop out of bed. Time to get cracking.
I had no idea how long I’d slept, what time it was—did they even keep time down here?—but I felt rested despite the vague sensation of dread ticking underneath my skin. I’d dumped my bag on one of the armchairs in the bedroom the night before, and now I pulled out my phone.
12:16 pm.
At least in Pacific Time. Back in San Francisco, it was noon now, and I should have shown up to work hours ago. My boss had undoubtedly called me, and my mom...should have read my message by now.
I unlocked the phone and checked my calls and messages. Nothing.
Because the little bar at the top said, No service.
Of course not. Would have been too much to hope for this thing to work down here. At least it was on and hadn’t blown up in an explosion of sparks. Yet.
The battery showed 54%. I swallowed. How long until it gave out? My finger hovered over the Photos app. I had hundreds of pictures in there, among them a few of my mom, several of me and Tay, a handful of other friends. Some videos too. These pics and recordings were the only link I had left to my old life, to the people I cared about and had to leave behind.
I could look at them now, swipe through them in an effort to make sure I remembered all the little details of their faces, remembered the moments when the photos were taken. Because at some point, I realized with a broken breath, I’d forget.
If it was true that I could visit Earth and see them again, this wouldn’t happen that soon. But it depended on whether I was actually allowed to visit, and how often. In light of Demon Douche’s insistence I stay in these rooms, and his menacing parting words, I had the sinking feeling his statement of “You can visit” had been more of the theoretical sort. The academic difference between “Can I…?” and “May I…?”
I’d had a teacher in high school who was determined to teach us the correct use. Anytime a student raised their hand and asked, “Can I go to the bathroom?” Ms. Lawson would smile sweetly and say, “Of course.” When the student approached her desk and held out their hand for the hallway pass, she would sit back and raise her brow. “Why would I give you this pass? You haven’t actually asked me for it.” “But I did!” the student would protest. And she’d say, “No, you asked whether you were generally able to go to the bathroom, and while you are physically in the condition to do so, your question did not cover whether you are allowed to go.” So, grudgingly, the student would mutter, “May I go to the bathroom?” and Ms. Lawson would hand them the pass with a smile on her face.
Perplexingly, not many students liked her. I could hardly fathom why, as I was sure she was super fun at parties.
I stared at my phone in my hand, weighing whether I wanted to open the fresh wounds of losing the people closest to me by browsing the Photos app. My stomach rumbled and made the decision for me. I had to eat, and then there was mischief to plot, so drowning in feels would have to wait for later.
I set the phone to flight mode to save battery, put it back in my bag, and went to the bathroom to shower.
The decor was pretty modern compared to the more medieval feel of the other rooms—for which I was eternally grateful. The thought of having to use sanitary facilities from the Middle Ages made my skin crawl.
The walls and floor were tiled in a soothing combination of light earth tones, the vanity dark wood topped with a stone sink. Opposite the toilet was the shower, a large area enclosed by glass, with what looked like a rainforest shower head hanging from the ceiling. A shelf held an arrangement of toiletries, and there was even a little bank jutting out from the tiled wall to sit down or prop up a leg.
All right, Demon Douche got points for providing me with the nicest bathroom I’d ever had in my life. Not that it made locking me in solitary confinement okay.
I stripped off my underwear and stepped into the shower. When I picked up one of the shampoo bottles, I froze.
It was the exact same brand that I used. But not just that—it was the exact same bottle. I knew because the cap was half broken and one corner of the label was coming off, curling in
a very particular pattern.
Heart racing, I picked up another bottle and examined it closely. This was the conditioner I used, and it was half empty, just like the one I’d had at home. Next I spotted my razor on the shelf, the blades looking exactly like I remembered them from my last use—with tiny shavings stuck between.
I whirled around, stepped out of the shower and opened the vanity. Instead of the generic set of toiletries from last night, I discovered all the products from my own bathroom at home, neatly sorted into the drawers and cupboards.
Son of a—
On a whim, I marched back into the bedroom and threw open the doors to the large armoire. It was filled with my clothes. I distinctly remembered I didn’t pack these. I didn’t pack anything, what with having to scramble out the window in the desperate attempt at outrunning a demon and a contract from Hell.
I peered into the living room. The rest of the stuff from my apartment—not much though it was, considering I’d moved a couple of times and hadn’t accumulated any knickknacks—was scattered across the tables and shelves.
Well, well, well. Looked like someone had gone back and scooped up my modest belongings and brought them here. I wondered if that someone was my grudging groom himself or one of his underlings.
Didn’t matter much, of course, because the point was that he’d made that decision. He’d offered that I pack my necessities, but I flouted that and ran instead. For what it was worth, he could have considered his offer forfeit. With the argument we’d had last night, he could have just let me stew here with whatever generic stuff he’d provided.
If he were petty, he would have.
And yet, he’d made sure I would have my stuff here, something familiar in Hell.
I didn’t know what to make of that.
My eyes fell on the covered trays on the small dining table in the corner. Right. Food. The hole in my stomach definitely demanded to be filled—after I’d scrubbed myself clean.