“I missed you, too,” I respond.
Rowan clears his throat. “Were we invited by accident, should we step outside and pretend this never happened?”
“No,” I say, turning back to them. “Stay. I need all of you.”
The humor fades.
We gather around the long table beneath the high windows. I remain standing.
“I learned something,” I begin, “and it has unsettled me deeply.”
Ashford watches me closely now.
“I need to get away from Charles,” I say. “Before the ring tightens again. Before whatever is tightening around us breaks completely.”
Rowan nods once, as if that part is obvious.
Then I simply come out and say it, “I need to contact the devil.”
Silence.
Aileen shoots to her feet. “No, Fastrada!”
Rowan stares at me. “Tell me you are joking.”
Ashford does not move. He simply studies me as though measuring whether I am serious.
“What did you learn?” he asks.
So I tell them.
The bargain. The promised soul. The generations of queens weighed and rejected. The cracked iron door in the chapel.
“The only way to be free of Charles,” I say, “is to change the bargain. If the pact binds the throne, then I need to break the pact, and the throne loses its foundation. Charles loses his divine excuse. The strain on every queen ends.”
Rowan shakes his head slowly. “You cannot renegotiate with the devil. That is not how that works.”
I look at Ashford. “You found the man who enchanted the ring. You know how to find those who do not want to be found. Whoever he serves—even if it is not the devilhimself, it is someone close to that circle.”
Ashford’s expression hardens slightly. “If he worked for the devil, why would he help you? The devil does not solve problems for people.”
“He solves them for himself,” I reply. “Perhaps I am more useful alive than dead.”
“You are gambling with your soul,” Aileen whispers.
“I am gambling with it either way,” I say.
I meet Ashford’s eyes again. “Either he rejects me, and I end up like the others—sick, discarded, perhaps dead. Or he claims me. Neither outcome is appealing. But at least one of them is final.”
Ashford’s jaw tightens. “He cannot take your soul without your consent. Even scripture says that.”
“I do not believe in scripture anymore,” I answer quietly. “You said it yourself—religion is built by men. Men who were just as frightened as Charles’s ancestors. What do they truly know?”
He does not like that, but he does not contradict me.
“I have one chance to set this right,” I continue. “One chance to end it, not just for me, but for every woman who might come after.”
Aileen’s eyes fill with tears. “I cannot be part of that,” she says. “I love you. I will stand by you in almost anything. But I will not barter with Hell.”
