(The Devil)
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 tha
