Prologue The First Bargain #2
He was a monument of flesh and shadow, standing well over six feet tall, with shoulders as broad as the doorway of her home.
His form was one of breathtaking, masculine perfection, yet every line of it screamed its inhumanity.
His skin was a canvas of shifting colors, swirling from the deep bronze of ancient statues to the slick black of obsidian, with faint patterns like forgotten script moving just beneath the surface.
He was naked, his powerful musculature sculpted with an artist’s precision.
But it was his face that held her captive.
Features of impossible symmetry, a jawline that could cut glass, and lips that seemed carved for both cruelty and kisses.
His eyes, when they opened to look at her, were chips of volcanic glass, black and depthless, until they caught the dark candlelight and a flicker of amber fire burned within them.
He took a slow, deliberate step toward her, and he did not walk so much as flow across the ground, his movement a liquid, predatory grace that was utterly silent.
A voice entered her mind. It did not come through her ears, but bloomed directly in the center of her thoughts, a resonant, multi-layered baritone that vibrated through her skull. “You have called me from my prison.”
Terror was a physical thing, a hand of ice that seized her throat and clamped down on her lungs.
Every instinct screamed at her to scramble away, to run back to the village, back to the simple, understandable brutality of her husband.
But she couldn’t. The desperation that had driven her here was an anchor, holding her fast. She looked from his terrifyingly beautiful face to her bleeding hand, the source of this conjuring, and found a sliver of resolve.
She pushed herself up from her knees, her legs shaking so badly she feared they would give out.
She met his gaze, a feat that took every ounce of her will.
Her own voice was a dry, reedy thing in the crushing silence.
“I have,” she whispered, then cleared her throat and said it again, louder, firmer.
“I have. I seek judgment.” She held her hand out, not in offering, but as a statement.
“Against the man who breaks my body and my spirit.”
The entity’s perfect mouth quirked. He began to circle her, his movements fluid and unnervingly silent.
The strange blue-black light of the candles caught the shifting planes of his body.
He stopped behind her, and she felt a wave of cold radiate from him, raising gooseflesh on her arms. He was so close she could feel the displacement of air as he moved, could smell his scent - an intoxicating mix of rare incense, sea salt, and something wild and elemental, like the air after a lightning strike.
He observed the torn fabric of her saya, the angry red marks on her back.
He circled back to face her, his obsidian eyes lingering on the split in her lip, the dark bruise on her cheek.
He raised a hand, his long, elegant fingers tipped with nails that were like polished jet.
For a horrifying second, she thought he would touch her, but he stopped a hair’s breadth from her face, his fingertip tracing the shape of her injury in the air.
A phantom touch that was more intimate, more violating, than any blow she had ever received.
“Judgment is costly,” his voice echoed in her mind. “The scales must be balanced. What do you offer in exchange for the unmaking of a man?”
Here it was. The heart of the bargain. She had rehearsed this in her mind, but the reality of it, of him, was overwhelming. She took a breath, the cold air stinging her lungs. She extended her bleeding palm, the cut a vivid red slash against her skin.
“My blood,” she said, her voice gaining strength. “My devotion.” She paused, then offered the final, most crucial piece, a name that had come to her in feverish dreams, a word of power she had not understood until this very moment. “And a name. I name you Maruz. Judgment Bringer.”
The being stopped circling. He stood directly before her, his head tilted in what might have been curiosity. A slow smile spread across his features, and the sight was more terrifying than any display of rage. It revealed teeth that were just a fraction too sharp, too predatory, to be human.
“Maruz,” he tasted the name, his internal voice giving it a sibilant hiss. “It has been an age since I was given a name by a mortal. I accept it. And I accept your offering.”
He reached out and, this time, he did touch her.
He took her wrist, his grip surprisingly gentle yet inescapably firm.
His skin was cool and smooth as polished stone.
He brought her bleeding palm to his lips and licked the blood from the cut.
Ligaya gasped, a jolt like lightning striking her spine.
The act was shockingly intimate, a branding.
Where his tongue touched, her skin tingled and the pain of the cut vanished, leaving only a thin, white scar.
“The terms are these,” his voice was now a low, seductive whisper in her thoughts.
“I am bound to this plane for one season - from this full moon until the first rains of the monsoon. In that time, I will render the judgment you seek. When the season turns, I must return to the nethermost halls that serve as my cage.” He released her hand.
“Unless another call is made. Another woman, another offering, another judgment sought. That is the only thing that can extend my stay in your world.”
He leaned closer, his fiery amber gaze pinning her. “Do you accept these terms, summoner?”
She was bound to a monster. She had invited a nightmare into her life to drive out another. But looking into the beautiful, merciless face of Maruz, she felt not regret, but a surge of wild, triumphant power.
“I accept,” she said, and sealed her fate.
They descended from the cliff together, Maruz guiding her through the moonlit forest with the silent confidence of a creature who could see in perfect darkness.
As they passed beneath the boughs of the great balete tree that marked the edge of the clearing, his form shifted.
The change was subtle, like watching the light change at sunset.
The otherworldly iridescence of his skin muted to the deep, even tone of burnished copper.
The razor-sharp perfection of his features softened just enough to appear human, though his beauty remained a breathtaking, unsettling thing.
He was still a god or a demon walking the earth, but now he wore a disguise that might fool a mortal eye in the forgiving darkness.
A simple length of dark cloth had appeared, wrapped around his waist like a tapis, preserving a shred of modesty she hadn’t realized she was grateful for until it was there.
He walked beside her, his silence a comfortable weight, unlike the oppressive hush of his arrival.
His presence was a shield; the shadows seemed to deepen around them, making them invisible to any late-night wanderers.
When they reached the edge of the village, he stopped her with a light touch on her arm.
His skin was still cool, but it no longer felt like stone; it felt like living flesh.
“Go home,” his voice was a soft vibration in the air, no longer booming in her mind. “Bolt the door. Do as you have always done. Wait for him.”
Ligaya looked up at his face, cast in shadow and moonlight. Fear warred with a dizzying sense of anticipation. “What will you do?”
A slow, merciless smile touched his lips, a fleeting glimpse of the inhuman being beneath the handsome mask. “Your husband will face judgment tonight.” The words were a promise, laced with an ancient hunger.
He melted back into the shadows of the tree line, vanishing so completely it was as if he had never been there.
Only the faint, lingering scent of incense and sea salt proved it wasn’t a dream.
Ligaya hurried through the sleeping village, her heart a frantic drum against her bruised ribs, and slipped back into the small nipa hut that had been her cage for five years.
She bolted the door. The familiar act felt different now, charged with new meaning.
It was no longer to keep the world out, but to trap a beast within.
She lit a single oil lamp, the small flame casting long, dancing shadows that writhed like living things.
She sat on a woven banig mat in the corner, her back against the wall, and waited.
An hour later, she heard him. Mateo, stumbling down the path, singing a bawdy Spanish tune horribly off-key. The door rattled as he fumbled with the latch, his curses loud and slurred. He finally burst in, reeking of tuba and sweat. His eyes, bloodshot and cruel, scanned the small room.
“There you are, you useless bitch,” he snarled, his gaze locking onto her. “Where did you run off to? Did you think you could hide from me?”
He stalked toward her, his bulk filling the small hut. He was a mountain of rage, his face flushed and ugly. Ligaya remained seated, her hands clenched in her lap. The fear was there, a cold, familiar knot in her stomach, but it was overlaid with something new, something sharp and watchful.
“I asked you a question!” He stood over her, his shadow swallowing her whole. He drew back his hand, the heavy rings on his fingers glinting in the lamplight. Ligaya flinched, an involuntary, conditioned response.
But the blow never landed.
From the darkest corner of the room, a deeper shadow detached itself from the others. It rose, unfolded, and solidified into the form of Maruz. He stood behind Mateo, utterly silent, his presence sucking all the warmth from the air.