“She must’ve gotten all her bad traits from her mother! I mean, your dad’s a bit how ya going, but Hellen … she’s something else!”

“Those elemental demons can be bloody … bloody, can’t they?”

“I bet SJ’s mother was …”

I sighed, letting their speculations about my female parent wash over me. It had been a topic that had haunted me for much of my childhood, but as I aged, I chose not to care any longer that she was a stranger to me. If she even still lived.

Exhaustion weighed heavily on me, and the heat of the Soul Token in my pocket was only draining me further, as if it was somehow sucking my overwrought emotions into itself.

I replayed the moment this morning that had changed everything … when her body had been under mine, and she’d been begging to suck me, to take me into her.

And I’d looked down at her, and something inside my chest had … expanded. And now it wouldn’t stop this pulsing thud beneath my ribs.

And at that very moment, her expression had gone from feisty, cheeky, seductive … to shocked. Vulnerable. Closed off.

I was certain that in the very same moment I’d been feeling … feelings, she’d been remembering that I was the bad guy. That she had been ready to taste me, to wrap those sweet, plump lips around me—the devil sent to make her life a living Hell. To snatch away her soul and feed it to the creatures of the Pit.

Yes, she’d made all sorts of noises about me staying, about me returning to her outside of FiendPay-related business … but that was all bravado, wasn’t it? She was just trying to make me think she wasn’t terrified of what I was doing to her.

I was beginning to realise I didn’t have the stomach to do it to her. I couldn’t break her … because it would very likely break me, too.

How had my happiness become so entangled with that of the feisty little human so quickly?

I had a pretty good idea, but I wasn’t going to let that thought come to fruition. It led only to my bitter disappointment when it was unrequited.

Three weeks. I had to come up with an alternative plan in the next three weeks. And in the meantime, maybe this farce of a ball was something that I could feign interest in. It was a perfect excuse to postpone acting on task three with Jemma.

Maybe Father would appreciate me taking a more active role in planning the festivities.

Anything to keep my mind off the pretty pink-haired piece of perfection up in the Human Realm.

That decided me. I stood, striding to the door. Beezle and Bub’s yapping abruptly ceased, and soon they were trotting along beside me as we traversed the corridors of the castle, heading in the direction of the throne room.