Chapter 30 She Is His
(The Devil)
Is it too late to take her back? The thought slashed viciously through him, sharp enough to make him freeze mid-step. The air tightened, the winds of Hell curling inward as though preparing to drag the answer out of him.
The thought slashed through him before he could stop it. He could still return her. He could leave her at the edge of the village. Pretend she’d outrun him. Pretend she had won. Pretend she was nothing to him.
He paused.
The entire realm seemed to hold its breath with him. The screaming wind curled around his legs like hungry fingers, tugging at him, urging him back or urging him forward—he couldn’t tell which. Thunder rolled in the distant, smoky vault above them, a low, ancient warning. And the mark on his arm burned hotter, reacting violently to the idea of release, rejecting it with a fury that wasn’t entirely his.
Images slammed into his mind—her waking alone at the forest’s edge, hand pressed to a bite she didn’t understand; her village shrinking away from her like she was cursed; the mark between them pulling, howling, with the distance. The ache that flared in his chest at the thought was answer enough.
The screaming wind curled around him like hungry fingers. The sky above rumbled with distant thunder. The mark on his arm burned.
The girl shifted in his hold, her cheek brushing his chest, her breath warm and shallow against his skin.
The tiny motion struck him harder than any blade. Something twisted beneath his ribs—deep, sharp, unbearably alive. Too alive. Her warmth bled into him, tugging at instincts he had buried centuries ago. Instincts he’d thought dead. The flame inside her pulsed once, a faint golden shimmer flickering beneath her sternum—an answering beat to the burn in his arm. Not a coincidence. Something older. Something binding. Something he didn’t want to name.
No.
The word wasn’t spoken aloud—it didn’t need to be. It rolled through the stone, the air, the molten rivers, swallowed instantly by the realm that understood him too well.
He wasn’t taking her back. She had stabbed him. Hit him. Defied him. Bit through her own fear to curse him to his face. She had awakened something in him that should have stayed buried. Something dangerous. Something possessive. And Hell approved. He felt it in the tremor of the ground, in the quickening pulse of the world’s molten veins. The realm wanted her. But he wanted her more.
She was his. And he wasn’t giving her up.
Not to the village. Not to dawn. Not to fate. Not even to the Pact itself. The Pact had bound him to centuries of sameness; she had undone it with one night. He would not hand that back.
He walked on.
Hell stretched endlessly—like a living creature breathing around him. Shadows moved between the rocks, whispering curses in long-dead tongues. A river of boiling tar churned nearby, glowing faintly red beneath its thick surface. The stench of sulphur thickened as he passed.
A chorus of distant wails rose and fell with the shifting air, like the realm exhaled misery in slow, rolling tides. Hot winds scraped across his skin, carrying the metallic tang of fear and the faint sweetness of rotted hopes. Stone ribs arched overhead—natural or carved, it was impossible to tell—forming the suggestion of a colossal spine, as though the underworld itself were a beast slumbering beneath his feet. Occasional bursts of blue flame coughed from cracks in the ground, casting brief, eerie light that painted her face in ghostly hues before plunging them back into red-shadowed gloom.
Her nose crinkled weakly in her sleep, her fingers curling into the skin of his chest. He looked down at her, unable to stop the way his eyes lingered.
Sweat dampened her brow. Dirt streaked her cheeks. Blood—hers and his—clung to the torn straps of her dress. Her pulse fluttered delicately beneath the bite he had given her, the mark still reddened and swollen.
That pulse pushed against his thumb as if seeking him, a soft, maddening rhythm that tugged at the deepest parts of him—parts he no longer acknowledged, parts he thought long dead. The sight of her bruised throat sent a growl up his chest like a rising storm. His fangs ached—not from hunger, but from memory. From the echo of her taste. From something too raw to name.
His fangs ached at the sight. He tore his gaze away and kept moving. Every time he forced his eyes forward, the mark burned hotter, as if punishing him for pretending she was anything less than the centre of this night.
As the palace came into view, the air shifted—fewer screams, more heat, more magic. The towering obsidian structure rose from the molten pits surrounding it, jagged as broken glass and faintly glowing from within. Every window was a sliver of firelight.
The very stone hummed at his approach, vibrating faintly beneath his steps as if acknowledging the power coiled inside him—and the unconscious human he carried. Veins of glowing magma pulsed up the palace walls, like arteries feeding a monstrous heart. Even the molten pits calmed as he passed, the waves smoothing as though bowing. The great chains anchored in the magma—relics of ancient wars—rattled once and then fell still, links glowing faintly as if tasting the change in their lord.
The guards stationed at the door—a pair of horned, shadow-forged creatures—bowed deeply as he passed.
“Your chosen?” one rasped. He did not answer. He owed them no answer. His silence was sharper than any spoken threat; both shadows flinched, lowering their heads further, their forms thinning with unease.
He swept past them, entering the vast hall of black stone lit by braziers of blue flame. The floor echoed beneath his steps. He could feel the eyes of unseen servants watching from alcoves, but none dared speak.
Good. They should fear him. Especially now. Especially with the mark on his arm still burning, still shifting, still responding to the fragile mortal in his arms. Whispers skittered along the rafters anyway, carried by hot drafts of air: rumours beginning in real time, stories twisting themselves into legend before the night had even ended.