Chapter Four #7
“Wow, Ronin, that’s...” I couldn’t help it. I was genuinely touched by the offer. That he’d move someone he knew for less than a month into his home. That he’d recruit his father to help protect me and my sister. Despite myself, all my annoyance and resentment toward the guy melted away.
Ronin isn’t a bad person. Yes, he has a massive ego to go with being a powerful, pampered prince, but he acts the way he does because kindness, friendship, and manners weren’t in his vocabulary growing up. If I had a hellish upbringing, I doubt I’d be a ball of sunshine either.
“Thank you,” I said clearly, “but I can’t leave. It’s not that I want to stay in the academy, it’s that I have to be where Lucifer can reach me, and I assume he can’t slither in and out of Ignavia as he pleases.”
“You assume correctly.”
I inclined my head. “He’s the only one who can give my sister her memory, her personality, her soul, and her life back. We can’t go beyond his reach, and I have a feeling he wouldn’t sit quietly if we do. The last thing I’m going to do to repay your kindness is kick off a war of the Houses.”
He cocked his head. “Kindess? What’s that?”
I heaved a sigh. “I don’t want to say it, but leaving won’t work and going without protection won’t work, so I’ll do it, but you have to explain it all to me first. What does it actually mean for me to be your”—my lips refused to supply the word—“sub,” I said instead.
Ronin went back into his room, leaving me to follow. After telling Dora to lie down and rest for a bit until they struck the gong, I did.
“First thing,” Ronin began, reclaiming his seat in the armchair, “is that sub is short for submit. It creates a bond that links us almost like the bond the mutts have with their fated mates, but unlike theirs, we cannot see into each other’s minds or read each other’s thoughts.”
“That’s good,” I muttered.
“On my end, I can use the bond to subject you to excruciating, tortuous pain that will have you begging to submit to my will,” he dropped, blowing my eyes wide. “And on your end of the bond, all the fear and pain that you feel is transmitted back as pure pleasure for me.”
“That’s not good!” I blared. “Are you kidding me?! Did a complete sadist think this shit up!”
“I suspect so,” Ronin replied mildly. “You’re in a place where sadism is celebrated, mortal. Shouldn’t you know that by now?”
My lips peeled back from my teeth. Again, I knew he was just giving it to me straight and direct, which is what I asked him to do, but a part of me still wanted to punch that know-it-all smirk back down his pouty mouth.
“Still...” I whispered, backing away. “This bond is even more horrible than I knew it had to be. It gives you incentive to hurt me! To beat me, force me, and make me afraid of you, because you’ll be getting off on it the whole time.”
Expression darkening, Ronin rose up. “Let me make something very clear to you, Hunter. I have neither the desire nor the inclination to beat or hurt women. With or without my glamour, all throw themselves at my feet for the mere gift of getting me off,” the man said with no trace of irony or humility.
“When I ripped your hideous mole off your face and drowned you while you were attending my bath, I did so believing you were a man. If I’d known you weren’t, it wouldn’t have happened. ”
I pressed my trembling lips tightly together, staring at him with hard eyes. Even so... I was beginning to believe him.
“My only interest in the sub bond is that it will alert me when you’re in pain or feeling extreme fear,” he went on.
“Yes, it will do so in the form of pleasure, but at least it’s more reliable than hoping the next group of attackers is also too stupid to take your phone from you before jumping you. ”
I flinched. I knew very well the outcome would’ve been different if I’d broken my phone on Kazuya’s head and been left with no way to call Ronin. No one was coming to save me, and there was no way out.
I squeezed my eyes shut, fists balling. Why pretend like I have options right now, when I really don’t.
“A contract,” I blurted.
“Excuse me?”
“I want a contract,” I said louder, quickly seizing on the idea.
“Like the one Lucifer offers. One that lays out the terms of this sub bond thing. You promise to never use it against me or to force me, and in exchange, when I get my hands on this all-powerful hallow magic, you’ll get first crack at it before I hand it over to Lucifer.
” As the words tumbled out, I nodded to myself—feeling more assured by the second.
“There’s got to be something you want that not even your face can get you. If the power of the All Hallows is really as amazing as Lucifer thinks it is, then granting your wish will be my payment for protecting me and my sister until the end of all this.”
I held out my hand. “Deal?”
Ronin shook. “Deal.”
Just like that, the knot in my chest loosened as Ronin snapped the contract into existence.
As promised, the terms were straightforward—he protected me and Dora from all threats demonic, vampiric, fae, and all the others in between, and in exchange, I’d use the power of the All Hallows to grant his wish.
The terms also stated that I could end the bond whenever I wanted.
That done, we signed in blood—his inky black and mine ruby red—and then he pressed our bleeding fingers together as he chanted the spell for the sub bond.
I hissed, pain rippling through my thumb and traveling down my arm. “Ahh!”
Agony blossomed in my shoulder. Snapping down, my eyes widened as a black mark wiggled and grew on my skin—slowly and painfully becoming a rune-like tattoo.
“My true name,” Ronin said, “and here...” He shifted, letting me see the mark that had taken up space on the same place on his body. “Yours.”
“I... can’t read it,” I confessed, squinting at the squiggly marks making up the second-worst tattoo I’d seen in the last thirty seconds. “Does it say Charlotte Hunter?”
“No, it says She Who Sets The World Ablaze To Light Her Way.”
“Uh...” I blinked, genuinely stunned. “That’s my true name? My goodness, who the heck named me that?”
He laughed. “No one gave you that name. It’s simply the name written on the strings of destiny that guide your fate. We all have a true name, although most of us don’t discover what it is until it’s too late.”
I glanced down at my new tattoo. It still smarted something fierce, but the pain was starting to ease up. “What’s your true name?”
Ronin smiled. “Belphegor, The Devourer.”
“Oh. I—”
“And now it is done,” Ronin said, turning away—contract in hand. “From this moment on, you are bonded to me in mind, body, and soul, Charlotte Hunter, which means I can finally do—”
Ronin dropped the contract and snapped his fingers. It caught fire in a furious burst of heat that ripped a scream from my lips. It was ash before it crumbled to the floor.
“—this.”
“What the hell are you doing!?”
Ronin laughed. Loud, raucous guffaws that made something in my soul shrink and hide.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” Throwing himself back, Ronin plopped on his armchair, propping his worthless chiseled chin on his loathsome fist. “The contract wasn’t worth the parchment it was written on.
Who knows why you thought a piece of paper could bind a demon’s hands the way it does a fallen angel, but that little pantomime got you to agree to the bond, so...
” His ruby eyes glittered. “I gave you the show.”
“But... but...” I backed away, hands shaking. “But—”
“But, but, but,” he mocked, fake pouting at me. “Aww, you look so confused. It’s quite adorable. You mortals wear all of your emotions on your face, it’s astounding—and just a little bit sexy.”
I almost threw up in my mouth when he winked at me. “But we have a deal!” I screamed, finally finding the words. “You said— You promised—!”
“I promised what? That I’d be your devoted lackey and bodyguard for the indeterminate amount of time it takes for you to find a power that doesn’t exist and grant my wishes like a fairy?
” Ronin laughed. “Hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but I have no unfilled wishes. All that I want is mine, and now...” His eyes darkened. “So are you.”
I gaped at him, jaw working. The enormity of the mistake I just made kept growing bigger and bigger—crushing my throat under the weight of his widening smirk.
“So,” he said, crooking his finger to beckon me closer. “Let us get down to the true terms of this arrangement.
“Strip.”