“Your future King here has a plan!” he announced proudly to the hoard. The discontented rumblings from below only made that knotting feeling in my stomach worse.

“You will listen!” he roared over them, and for the first time since they’d started their tantrum, they fell silent. I swallowed hard.

“Tell them your plan,” Father muttered out of the corner of his mouth.

“So …” I began, then paused to clear my throat. Hellen huffed out a derisive laugh behind me, which had the opposite effect to what she would have intended. Words began bubbling out of my throat.

“Through thorough research, I have discovered that modern humans are a ridiculously covetous and consumerist-driven society. They have developed systems by which they can spend money they have not yet earned on things they do not wish to wait for, and repay their debt in instalments,” I began. The demons below growled their impatience.

I hurried to explain the ‘FiendPay’ system and how it worked along similar lines, but instead of them offering money they didn’t have, they would offer their soul. And instead of making repayments, they would be forced into torturous tasks, under the mistaken belief that they had a chance of achieving the tasks and repaying their debts, earning their souls back.

“I believe in the short term, we can fuel the Pit through these torturous interactions in the Human Realm,” I explained. My hand slipped into my pocket, feeling the warmth of the piece of Jemma’s soul in there. I could bring it out, could show them that even without me directly torturing her, I was already harvesting her misery.

But something stopped me.

It’s too soon, I told myself. I don’t have enough evidence. I don’t want to get their hopes up.

I needed to explore this more with Jemma Bliss.

I clutched the Token in my fist like a talisman. “And when they inevitably fail in their four tasks, their soul becomes the property of Hell, and upon their deaths, it defaults to us. We lock Heaven out of a chance to steal them from us.”

The roar that blasted its way up from the Pit was deafening. But it wasn’t angry. It was vicious, and excited, and bloodthirsty.

“Your prince is rolling out this ‘FiendPay’ program as we speak!” Father announced. My chest jolted, and my gaze darted nervously to him. He met my eyes for a split second, shaking his head minutely.

He wanted me to help him lie to them.

“In-indeed!” I agreed as Father gripped my arm and raised my hand above our heads to a renewed thunder of cheers and horn smashing.

“Now, back to work!” Father cried and immediately turned his back on them. My head was spinning as I hurried to follow him.

How had this gone from a barely formed plan, to a trial run, to ‘your prince is rolling out his scheme as we speak’?