Thea

“Thea? Are you back here?” Bryce’s voice startled me out of my head, which caused me to miss a step on the ladder. Missing a step on the ladder caused me to fall, and that triggered a shower of canned food to rain down on top of me.

“Ouch! Fuck! I’m in here, Bryce!” I shouted, while rubbing the back of my head.

Falling hadn’t actually hurt, but that didn’t mean it was fun, and now I was going to have to clean up a gigantic mess.

Bryce cautiously opened the pantry door.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I was just lost in thought and you surprised me.”

Bryce walked over and fixed the ladder before kicking a few cans aside so she could sit down next to me. I leaned into her, and she wrapped an arm around me to pull me closer.

It was a comfortable spot, and I almost forgot about what was troubling me.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” she said.

I shook my head. “You didn’t scare me. I just wasn’t expecting you to come back here.”

“Well, then, sorry for invading your domain.”

“You’re forgiven, this time.” I paused for a moment. “I’m sorry for leaving you all by yourself with an ornery fox and a drunk wolf.”

Bryce laughed. It was a good sound. “You’re definitely going to have to make up for that one.”

I smiled. “I’ll look forward to it.”

We sat like that for some lost amount of time, simply enjoying each other. I eventually broke the silence. This wasn’t the kind of conversation that I wanted to have sitting on the floor, but it felt like some sort of heresy to break the comfortable embrace.

“I don’t want to marry you, Bryce.”

Our fingers were entwined, and I was doing my best to avoid eye contact while I played with a lock of her hair with my free hand.

“This just feels really sudden,” I continued. “I’ve never dated a mortal before and I didn’t expect that it would mean marriage so quickly. I'm sorry if I led you on. I just didn’t know your customs.”

My body was tense as I waited for her rejection. I wasn’t sure if mortal relationships could continue after a marriage refusal, but I wanted it to.

“Thea, elvish customs would have us start dating a decade from now and maybe start thinking about marriage in half a century.” Bryce explained. “What we’re doing now is far closer to human standards and even most of them wouldn’t even start thinking about marriage for a few years at least.”

I didn’t understand. The wolf had sounded so convincing when she said that Bryce and I should get married. Hells, I had been in here mindlessly organizing canned goods, thinking it through, and I had nearly agreed to it!

“But Dezra—”

Bryce interrupted me. “Dezra doesn’t know anything about us. Besides, I bet Sora had a hand in what she said.”

Oh, I was going to get that stupid fox back for this if they had anything to do with it.

“So you don’t want to marry me?” I asked.

Bryce cringed at my question. “I don’t know, maybe someday, but that’s probably not for a while, and certainly not now.”

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I breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank the gods. I was so convinced that I would either have to marry you or give it all up.”

I was going to have to be more careful about making assumptions about mortal relationships. None of this made any sense to me.

“Wait, you mean that you actually considered marrying me because you thought the alternative was breaking up?” Bryce was laughing. It wasn’t a mean laugh, but I wouldn’t let her get away with it.

“Don’t make fun of me! I didn’t know! Mortals are weird, the whole gods damned concept of marriage is weird.”

“Do you not get married in the lower planes?” she asked.

I shook my head. “No, well, a few of the mortal races still get married, but we do breeding contracts instead.”

Esme had done a few breeding contracts in the past, but it wasn’t something that had ever interested me. Way too much commitment.

“Breeding contracts?” Bryce asked.

“Yeah, it’s not really a great name, but it’s an agreement to spend a set number of years together, usually a few centuries. They’re called breeding contracts, because they used to be only for creating and raising children. It’s a bit of an antiquated idea. Nowadays, they’re just used to formalize relationships for a set period of time.”

“Sounds a bit clinical,” Bryce said.

“It’s just practical. Expecting people to stay together their whole life stops making sense when they can live forever. Besides, you can always renew the contract when it ends,” I explained. “Contract renewals are actually a lot of fun. They’re what I imagine mortal weddings are like, but more demonic, I suppose.”

Esme’s renewals had always involved a lot of pranks and sex. Not really the best combination, but always a fun one.

“Have you ever had a breeding contract?” Bryce asked.

“No, I’m still too young for other devils, and only a really powerful demon would even consider approaching a devil for a relationship,” I said. “It’s a bit of an awkward place to be.”

“What do you mean, too young?” Bryce asked.

I shrugged. “I’m not even five centuries old. Other devils won’t even acknowledge you until you’ve been fallen for at least twice that long. The first millennium can be pretty traumatic for those of us who are forced out or orphaned, and it’s usually best to let a devil’s personality settle a bit before you consider them for a relationship.”

Bryce pushed me away and stared at me with wide eyes. “Wait, five centuries? How old are you?”

I stared back in confusion. “I’m 418. Elves don’t usually live that long, so you can’t be that much older than me.”

Bryce seemed to do some math in her head before responding.

“No,” she said. “You’re not that much older.”

She was lying, and I wasn’t about to let that go. “Bryce, how old are you?”

I shifted to look her in the face, but she did her best to avoid eye contact. I responded by tickling her in the ribs.

Before long, I had her laughing uncontrollably on the ground.

“Okay! Okay, I give up! I’m sixty-four!” she shouted.

“See? That wasn’t so hard.” I leaned over to kiss her but stopped just short. “Wait, sixty-four? Bryce, you’re practically a baby! When I was sixty-four, I was still in Elysia. I wasn’t even a devil yet.”

Bryce sat up and started lecturing me. “I’ll have you know I was an academy professor for nearly a decade before being placed in charge of a colony as a corporate executive for over thirty years.”

I scoffed. “Right, so you’re a nerd baby.”

Bryce cast a quick spell, and I felt her cut off the flow of mana to me.

“Oh shi—” I tried to curse, but couldn’t get it all out before she wrestled me to the ground.

She climbed on top of me and started her very own inquisition. After a long and very thorough interrogation, I recanted my teasing insult.

By the end of it, we were both lying together on the pantry floor with minimal clothing.

“I’m going to have to let you come in here more often,” I said. Bryce smiled and pulled me in closer.

“I still can’t believe we didn’t even know each other’s age,” she said.

“There’s probably a lot we still don’t know.” I shrugged. “We have a lot going on right now, and we’re still in the process of getting to know each other.”

“Okay, I’ll go first. I was born on Maridoth, the elvish homeworld, before going to the academy on Vista Prime. I graduated there with my doctorate before staying to become a professor. You know what happened after that.”

She paused for a moment and then added, “I have a mother and a father that still live on Maridoth, as well as an older brother and sister. The last time I saw my family was at my trial, and we didn’t part on good terms.”

I kissed Bryce before resting my head back on her chest.

“I suppose their loss is my gain,” I said. “My turn, I was the last celestial created by Inim.”

“Wait, actual Inim? Like Radiant Theocracy’s Inim?” Bryce asked. “He’s dead?”

“That’s the one. Now don’t interrupt,” I replied. “I wasn’t great at the whole rules thing, and after getting into trouble a few too many times, I asked to be released from service. Dad agreed, and he released me with an open invitation to return. I spent about a decade in the lower planes, barely making it by until I found myself in Hel and Es—Oh fuck! Esme, I still need to get a message to her!”