This was the Prince of Hell everyone feared. Dark power curled sharply through the air around him while silver fire along the walls flared violently brighter.
Then he looked at me deeply. And it felt even more dangerous. Because the terrifying expression softened instantly the second his eyes landed on me.
“You would risk Hell itself for her?”
My demon answered firmly.
“Yes.”
There wasn’t even a second of hesitation before he answered, and my heart genuinely forgot how to function for a moment after hearing it.
Behind me, Nina whispered softly, “Oh he is DOWN catastrophic.”
The room erupted into whispers the second he said it. One council member was genuinely horrified while another stared at me with open fury before an older ruler seated near the thronefinally spoke for the first time, his ancient cold voice cutting through the chamber hard enough to silence everyone else instantly.
“And yet,” they said while looking directly at me, “the human does not even know your true name.”
Silence slammed across the throne room hard enough to make my stomach drop as I turned toward my demon instinctively and saw genuine alarm break across his face for the first time since we entered the palace, not anger or cold calculation but actual alarm, and the ruler noticed too before a slow unpleasant smile spread across his face. It was the kind of expression powerful creatures wore right before ruining someone for entertainment.
“You crossed dimensions for him,” the ruler continued calmly while the entire throne room stayed painfully silent around us. “You wear his mark willingly. You entered the capital beside him willingly.”
Their eyes shifted toward my demon. “And yet he has still kept himself hidden from you.”
Something uncomfortable twisted low in my stomach because beneath all the sarcasm and arguing, part of me still cared enough for this to hurt badly.
My demon stepped forward after that, his voice colder now. “Enough.”
The ruler ignored him completely.
“Do you even understand what it means,” they asked me quietly, “that a prince gave you his bond before his name?”
I opened my mouth to argue before the truth hit me hard enough to stop the words completely because I didn’t, and the silence that followed was painfully humiliating.
Around me, whispers moved quietly through the throne room while council members exchanged dark looks across the massive chamber.
Nina gasped in outrage on my behalf. “Okay, wow. We are NOT doing public humiliation right now.”
The younger brother nodded. “Actually I agree with humans.”
“That sentence still sounds illegal,” Anderson muttered tiredly.
Meanwhile I still couldn’t stop looking at my demon because I was starting to realize there were entire parts of him I still didn’t understand, not because I never wanted to know them, but because he never fully allowed anyone close enough to see them.
The ruler leaned back against the black throne behind them. “Humans truly are reckless creatures. You tied yourself to a prince whose true name you do not even know.”
I crossed my arms ready to defend myself. “Okay first of all, that sounded judgmental.”
“It was intended to.”
Rude.
But underneath the sarcasm, something sharper settled quietly into my chest. Because after everything that happened tonight, after the bond reveal and the secrecy and the hurt, this was worse in a completely different way.
Not betrayal exactly but something worse in a different way, a distance between us that felt impossible to ignore, like no matter how close we became there would always be parts of himthat belonged entirely to this terrifying world instead of me, and my demon noticed the exact second my expression changed because his own tightened afterward.
“Eva.”
The softer tone only made it worse.
