Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Your fiancee.”
The words come out flat and hollow, like all the air has been sucked out of them somewhere between my brain and my mouth. Mal flinches as if I’ve struck him.
“Izzie—”
“You had a fiancee.” I’m backing away now, my feet moving of their own accord, putting distance between us that I desperately need.
The mirrors reflect my shock back at me from every angle—pale face, wide eyes, hands that won’t stop trembling.
“Two hundred years ago, you had a fiancee, and you never thought to mention that?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Complicated?” A laugh escapes me, sharp and bitter. “That’s what you’re going with? Complicated?”
He reaches for me. I step back.
“Please.” His voice cracks on the word. “Just let me explain.”
“Then explain!” My own voice bounces off the studio walls, too loud, too raw.
“Explain why Azrael knows about her and I don’t.
Explain why you’ve told me about the contract, the bracelet, the Dance of Accord—but never once mentioned that you were going to be married.
Explain why this is the first I’m hearing about your seventh invitation two hundred years ago and what happened to it. ”
Mal closes his eyes. When he opens them again, they’re not brown anymore—they’re crimson, the glamor slipping as his control wavers. His horns are visible now, small and dark against his black hair, and his tail has materialized, coiling anxiously behind him.
He looks like what he is. A demon. A creature I’ve invited into my life, my studio, my bed. A stranger wearing a familiar face.
“Her name was Elena,” he says quietly. “And she died because of me.”
The words hit like a sledgehammer.
Died because of me.
I want to run. Every self-preservation instinct I possess is screaming at me to get out, to put as much distance as possible between myself and this creature who apparently has dead wives in his past. This isn’t the sweet monster romance I’d somehow convinced myself I was living.
This is something darker, more dangerous, more real.
But my feet won’t move.
“Tell me.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “Everything. From the beginning.”
Mal’s tail curls tighter, wrapping around his own leg like he’s trying to hold himself together. “You might want to sit down.”
“I’ll stand.”
A ghost of a smile crosses his face. “Stubborn as always.” He takes a breath—unnecessary, I remember, since demons don’t actually need to breathe. Just a human habit he’s picked up over the centuries.
Centuries. God.
“I was young when I signed the contract,” he begins.
“Young by demon standards, at least. Barely fifty years old. Arrogant. Convinced I was smarter than everyone else. Azrael offered me power and influence, the ability to shape chaos however I wanted. All I had to do was bind myself to his service for three hundred years.” Another breath.
“It seemed like such a long time. I thought I could find a loophole, exploit the escape clause, and be free within a decade or two. I was wrong.”
He moves to the barre, gripping it like a lifeline. The wood creaks under his fingers.
“The escape clause requires seven freely offered invitations from the same person. Each one representing a deeper level of trust. It sounds simple enough, doesn’t it?
Make someone trust you, receive their invitations, fulfill the contract.
But there’s a catch. There’s always a catch with infernal contracts. ”
“The final invitation requires full knowledge,” I say, remembering Azrael’s words. “Complete understanding of what you truly are.”
Mal nods. “Not just what I am. What I’ve done.
Three hundred years of demonic existence, Izzie.
Three centuries of chaos and manipulation and deals that destroyed lives.
The contract doesn’t just require acceptance of my nature—it requires acceptance of my history.
Every terrible thing I’ve ever done. Every innocent person who suffered because of my choices. ”
My stomach turns.
“How many?” The question comes out before I can stop it. “How many terrible things?”
“Too many to count.” His voice is hollow. “I told myself I was just following orders. Just fulfilling my role. Just doing what chaos demons do. But the truth is, I enjoyed it. For a long time, I genuinely enjoyed watching the world burn.”
I should leave. I should walk out that door and never look back and pretend this whole thing was a fever dream brought on by too much stress and too little sleep.
Instead, I find myself asking: “What changed?”
Mal’s grip on the barre tightens. “Elena.”
The name hangs in the air between us.
“Tell me about her.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. When he finally speaks, his voice is barely audible.
“I met her in Thessaly, in a small village near the coast. She was a healer—nothing magical, just herbs and knowledge passed down from her grandmother. I was there on Azrael’s business, stirring up conflict and spreading discord.
The usual.” A bitter laugh. “But Elena... she was different. She saw through my glamor almost immediately. Not literally—she didn’t know I was a demon.
But she saw through the person I was pretending to be.
The charming stranger. The helpful traveler.
She looked right past all of it and said, ‘You seem very sad for someone who smiles so much.’“
You seem very sad for someone who smiles so much.
I think about all the times I’ve caught glimpses of something beneath Mal’s teasing facade. The moments when his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. The way he deflects with humor whenever the conversation turns too serious.
“What happened?” I ask softly.
“I fell for her.” Simple words. Devastating delivery. “I hadn’t thought it was possible. Demons are creatures of chaos and contract, not emotion. But Elena... she made me want to be something else. Someone else. Someone better.”
His tail uncurls slightly, then coils again. A nervous habit I’ve never noticed before.
“I told her what I was. She accepted it. All six invitations turned ruby within a year—the fastest I’d ever progressed. The escape was within reach. All I needed was the seventh invitation, and I would be free.”
“But?”
“But the contract requires full knowledge.” His voice goes flat.
“Not just what I am, but what I’ve done.
And Elena... she knew I was a demon. She’d accepted my nature, my appearance, and even my occasional bursts of chaos.
But she didn’t know about the village I’d destroyed fifty years earlier.
The plague I’d helped spread across Constantinople.
The dozens of bargains I’d made that ended in suffering and death. ”
My hands have gone cold.
“Did you tell her?”
“I tried.” He releases the barre, turning to face me fully.
His crimson eyes are bright with something I’ve never seen there before—not quite tears, but close.
“I sat her down one night and started explaining the things I’d done.
The people I’d hurt. I got through maybe a tenth of it before she stopped me. ”
“Stopped you?”
“She said she’d heard enough.” A terrible smile crosses his face. “She said she understood now. Understood what I really was. And then she walked out of our home and threw herself off the cliff overlooking the sea.”
The world tilts.
I reach for the barre myself, needing something solid to hold onto as the implications crash over me.
She killed herself. She learned the truth about him and she killed herself.
“Izzie.” Mal’s voice is rough. “Say something.”
What is there to say?
The man I’ve fallen for—the demon I’ve invited into my life, my heart, my body—has a history so terrible that knowledge of it drove a woman to suicide. And now I’m supposed to offer the final invitation with full understanding of that history?
No wonder Azrael called it impossible.
“The other attempts.” I force the words out. “After Elena. Azrael said there were others.”
Mal’s jaw tightens. “Three more. Over the centuries. Each time I thought... maybe this time would be different. Maybe I’d found someone strong enough, accepting enough, to hear the truth and stay anyway.”
“What happened to them?”
“Different outcomes. Same result.” He ticks them off on his fingers like a grocery list, but his voice shakes.
“One ran. Simply packed her things and disappeared in the middle of the night. I never saw her again. One tried to have me exorcised, and it nearly worked. It would have been a mercy if it had.”
Children.
My stomach heaves.
“And the third?” My voice sounds very far away.
“Constance. Fifty years ago. She seemed perfect—open-minded, progressive, had even dabbled in the occult herself. I thought surely she could handle the truth.” A hollow laugh.
“She tried to bind me instead. To trap me in a summoning circle and use me for her own purposes. Turns out she wasn’t interested in freeing me. She just wanted a demon of her own.”
I don’t realize I’m crying until I taste salt.
Not for myself. Not even for Mal, really. For all of them—Elena and Constance and the others. Four women across three centuries, each one caught up in a demon’s desperate bid for freedom, each one damaged or destroyed when the truth emerged.
And now me.
Number five.
“You should have told me.” The words come out choked. “From the beginning. Before the first lesson, before the first invitation, before any of it. You should have told me what I was getting into.”
“Would you have believed me?”
It’s a fair question. If some strange man had walked into my studio five weeks ago and announced he was a demon bound by an infernal contract, I would have called the police.
“Maybe not,” I admit. “But I deserved the chance to make an informed choice.”