Now there were only the two of us. Yeni’s distant footsteps could be heard echoing from the central stairwell. I was probably the only resident of the tower who’d never laid a foot upon them.

“So,” I said, “I think there’s some discontent that I haven’t been making offerings to the other priestesses.”

Mona smirked. “It is surprising you haven’t been to the bordello, at least. It’s also unusual that you haven’t replaced me yet. Rumors are beginning to spread. You should pick a girl and fuck her.” Her eyes looked towards the stairwell, then back to me. “Yeni would be a fine choice, actually—did you like her?”

“I didn’t really think about it. It wasn’t exactly on my mind while she cried tears of blood, you know?” I was still mystified by the strength of Yeni’s reaction.

“She’s still young,” Mona said. “Barely thirty. She must badly want some dick. She’ll get over it.”

“Well, I’m sure there’s plenty of dick available to her—she’s not an unattractive woman.”

Mona laughed. “So you did like her.”

“I just meant, in my informed opinion, she must not want for suitors.”

Mona’s eyes widened, and she looked at me in surprise for a moment. “Oh, I guess I hadn’t told you. We’ve never talked about it.” She smiled hesitantly, and when I blinked, I saw her Will tremble with guilt in that brief flash. “I wonder why that is. Listen—if Phaedra says anything to you, please don’t listen to her, okay?”

“Why would Phaedra say anything to me?” I reached out and touched her shoulder gently. “About what? What’s going on?”

“To be eligible to become High Priestess, you must be a virgin and have refrained from all sexual conduct besides masturbation.”

“Does it matter? That position is already taken. What does Yeni think is going to happen?”

“She thought you might be tired of me now or growing that way. She thought it might be a good time to make her move. Usually, the next High Priestess starts as the Master’s newest plaything.”

I sighed. Our conversations never failed to get sidetracked. And here I’d come, thinking I was the one who would have something important to say. “This isn’t why I came to talk to you.”

My eyes wandered past the dais to the sarcophagus where I’d first risen. Then I looked across the sanctum, toward the balcony doors through which I’d first seen the outside world. I beckoned to Mona and headed towards them.

There was a cool autumn breeze blowing outside the tower. Mona followed closely behind me, and when I reached the balcony railing, I turned around to look at her.

Mona pulled her robes tighter as she stepped towards me. “It’s a little cold out here, isn’t it?”

“You get a chill easily, don’t you?” I asked, wondering if it was because she was a pyromancer or a demon. I shrugged off my military jacket, flipped it around, and draped it over her shoulders.

But she shrugged it off as soon as I tried to put it on her, looking almost frightened. She thrust it back out to me in a panic.

“I can’t wear this, you idiot,” she said. “If anyone sees me, it will be considered a grave insult to your uniform.” She looked into the sky, and I followed her gaze until I saw one of the members of the Winged Legion, presumably on patrol, flying above us under the late morning sun.

But I did not put my jacket back on. Instead, I draped it over the balcony railing, then held out my hands and recited an incantation in my head, the one I’d read this morning, what I had learned was called the Third Verse of Fire.

I began to summon forth my Will between my hands, commanding a flame to form. “An ember in my spirit,” I called out. “Fire, be born!” With a pop, a small flaming sphere blazed into existence, kindled by energy from my Will. The orb smoldered, and I felt the heat radiating from it, causing my palms to prickle with sweat. I held still, trying to maintain my concentration and keep the spell going without growing or reducing the effect.

Mona’s eyes widened a bit, and I could tell I’d impressed her.

“This is what you were trying to do, isn’t it?” I asked. “Until the paladin cut your fire with her sword.”

Mona sighed. “Don’t remind me. I was close to stabilizing the spell, but she disrupted it before it finished forming.”

“Would any sword be able to do that?” I asked.

“It’s not the sword,” Mona said. “It’s the one who wields it. She must have channeled her Will through the blade.”

I nodded, then took a deep breath. I moved my hands, and the orb moved with them until it was between us. “See? I’m already getting better.”

Mona smiled, then shook her head. “I don’t understand you, Master. You leave me so harshly, and now you come to me and behave like this, trying to gain my favor. Are all humans so fickle in their desires?”

I left the orb hanging, held by my Will as I slowly pulled my hands away. The orb stayed in place, bobbing slightly in the wind but stable. When I blinked, I could see tendrils of light extending from my body, keeping the tiny flame suspended.

I straightened up, walked around the fire, and reached out to take Mona’s hands. “Mona, I changed my mind. I’ll do it.”

“You… what?” She stared at me, looking almost confused, and I wondered if my magical ability to translate had failed me again.

“I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll be what you need me to be.”

Her eyes widened. Part of her looked excited, but another part had never expected to hear these words and appeared skeptical. “Why the change of heart?” she asked.

“So, here’s the thing.” There must have been something in my voice, for she looked at me strangely. “I had a dream last night. A dream, but it was a memory. You were in it—or at least, your Will was.”

“What are you saying?” Mona was looking at me as if I’d gone insane. I supposed I couldn’t blame her.

“Should we maybe sit down?” I looked around the balcony and spotted a bench on the opposite side, but when I tried to steer Mona towards it, she stayed still. “I can move the fire if that’s what you’re—”

She looked at me intently and raised an eyebrow. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“I started to remember my past life. And you were there, Mona. I recognized your Will, your soul. I could see it. Before you were Desdemona Fell, you were named Maria Chavez, and you and me, we were together, we—”

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She pulled her hands free. “I don’t want to hear this.”

“I’m telling you, I’m starting to remember my past life. Our past lives.”

She smiled, but there was no joy in it. “And I’m happy for you, Greg. But what you’re saying can’t be true. We do not reincarnate, and certainly do not reincarnate from other worlds, so you must be mistaken.”

Was I wrong? It was just a dream, after all, hardly definitive. Yet it had felt so real. I could never forget her light—it resembled a warm fire. It was a comfort to my soul to be next to it.

Mona had called me back to her, decades later—had I really been in the Void so long? Knowing she didn’t wish to learn our history couldn’t help but disappoint me.

“You don’t believe me,” I said.

“I know it must seem rude of me. I’m sorry, Master, but it flies in the face of what we believe as demons. It flies in the face of the Book.”

“I understand, Mona, it’s just—it was…” My words were failing me again, and I wanted desperately to make her understand. Perhaps that was the problem with dreams—they were never as meaningful to anyone else as they were to you.

“There’s something else you said.” Only now did Mona walk over to the bench and sit down. She had a distant look in her eyes as if she was contemplating something. Then she focused on me very carefully, her eyes scanning me from head to toe as if viewing me in a new light. “You said you saw my Will, my soul, in your dream.”

“Yes, like always.” I walked over and joined her, our legs almost touching.

Her eyes widened. “You can see it right now?”

I realized my third eye must have been special, not something any demon could do. I blinked slowly again, taking in Mona’s Will, the soothing glow of her.

“You mean not everyone can?” I asked, astonished. I’d assumed it was an ordinary skill, at least among mages. I’d assumed that Mona and Asmodeus, at least, would have been able to. “I can see any magic, but the magic within people glows the brightest.”

“That’s why you close your eyes?” she asked. “I found it peculiar how you blinked so much, but it hardly seemed worth mentioning.”

I laughed. “I hadn’t realized it was so strange. I think I assumed everyone else knew what I was doing since I’m the one who’s supposed to be lost.”

“What does mine look like?” Mona asked, trying to keep her tone casual though I could tell she was intensely curious.

How could I even begin to describe her? I closed my eyes and leaned in until she burned at the center of my vision, brighter than the orb of fire I’d conjured to keep her warm.

I realized I’d never moved the orb over. I opened my eyes and looked—and saw two orbs, one right next to us on the bench, and my original flame orb near the railing.

“Wait,” I said, “you summoned your own?”

She smiled at me guiltily. “You forgot to move it, so I got cold.”

“Wait a minute. Why didn’t you do that in the first place? Why put on airs about how chilly you were?” With a sigh, I relaxed my Will, and watched my flame orb wink out of existence.

Mona smirked. “I wanted to see if you’d improved. But I believe, Master, you were telling me about my enduring soul.” She leaned in closer, pressing her body against me.

I closed my eyes again and saw her. Just as she was in my dream, radiant and warm. “You’re bright,” I said. “Brighter than anyone else I’ve seen—” Besides the paladin, at least, who was close. But I wasn’t about to say that. “—an orange-yellow, the color of the sun. Not the sun here, but the sun on my Earth. As I stare at you, you grow larger in my mind. You have a pull on me, Mona, a gravity all your own. You always have.”

“Did you really see me, then?” she asked, in wonder. “In your dream? Was I really a human?”

“I wouldn’t lie about something like this.”

“I know. Yet I have no memory of it. I’ve lived an entire life here, Greg. With no idea.” Mona paused as if out of steam, and neither of us spoke for a while. I looked at her, our faces close together now, though I did not remember leaning in. I could have kissed her, but it didn’t seem like the time. At some point, our voices had dropped to whispers and stayed there.

“You would trust your life to a dream?” she asked. “This dream is what convinced you to stay? Then I suppose I should be thankful for it.” She still sounded skeptical, however.

“The truth is that I still love you,” I said. “I know you’re not her, but it must mean something, right? I forgot everything about my old life, all the details. I even forgot her—forgot Maria—but last night I remembered. I think I only remembered because of you. Because we were starting to drift apart. There was another dream, after the first night we were together. Maria was in that one, too, but I couldn’t remember her clearly.”

Mona looked at me, her face wavering between skepticism and belief. I could tell part of her wanted to believe, but it was too strange to comprehend.

“I wasn’t sure if I should tell you,” I said, and I reached up and put my hands on her shoulders gently, then wrapped her in my arms. She grabbed me tightly in return, her claws digging into my back as she held me.

Her fingers relaxed a moment later. “I’m sorry, Master, I didn’t mean to hurt—”

“You didn’t hurt me.” I squeezed her back, holding her closely against me, and I felt her body relax, melting into my embrace.

“I suppose I’m still processing what you’ve told me,” Mona said. “I need you to understand, though. I’m not her.”

“I know. She’s gone. She died…” I remembered it now, too, though it hurt to look at the memory too closely. A drunk driver ran a red light and plowed into the passenger side of our car. I’d been driving that day. I survived, but Maria didn’t.

As the memory replayed in my mind, I wished more than anything I could go back to that day and hold her in my arms for as long as she’d permit. Tell her we didn’t need groceries that badly, anyway.

But as Gravity and Time had made clear, you couldn’t change the past. You could only ever move forward.

“I’m sorry, Greg,” Mona said, releasing me from her embrace and fixing me in her gaze. “But I need you to understand something. I could mess with your head. I could lie to you right now and tell you what you want to hear because I do very much want what you have offered me. I want our partnership to work.” She sighed. “But for better or worse, I’ve always tried to be honest with you. And the truth is this—you don’t really love me, and I don’t love you.”

Her words cut me like a knife, even if I knew they made sense. We barely knew each other. I never should have used that word in the first place—love. It had just slipped out of me. “You know, after we slept together, I have to admit, some of the things you said to me, I wondered—”

“Please don’t read too much into my pillow talk, Greg,” she replied. She looked sad. I knew she didn’t want to have this conversation, and now, neither did I. “You made me feel good, so I wanted you to feel good too. Not just physically but in every part of you. I hope we can keep doing that for each other. There is little other enjoyment in our lives these days. But please don’t read into it more than that, and don’t take anything I’ve said personally.” She sighed. I watched her lip tremble as she took a deep breath before continuing. “Demons don’t fall in love. Demons make deals. We have relationships based on mutual self-interest—mutual need, mutual desire, even mutual kindness and compassion. A deal can be good for both parties. The best deals are. But to a demon, it is still just a deal. A trade. Do you understand?”

“I do.” I nodded, but cursed under my breath. “Mona, I wanted to mend things between us, and now I fear I’ve made them worse.”

“If it makes you feel better, Greg, this is not your failing. I’ve never loved anyone in my life, and I’m too old to start now. I don’t think I even know what love means.”

“It’s not an easy thing to explain. Not until you’ve experienced it. But I understand you, Mona. Humans make deals, too. And there are plenty of relationships on Earth as you describe. Where love is just an excuse to use, or be used by, somebody else. But real love? You only know you have it when there’s no self-interest left.” Like when they’re gone, I thought, but didn’t want to say it. “When you still care for them even if it doesn’t benefit you in the slightest.”

“I wish that made sense to me, but it doesn’t.”

I looked towards the distant red sun, a reminder that whether I liked it or not, I was here now. I placed my hand on Mona’s knee. “It doesn’t have to. I’m just a foolish human, after all.” I grinned at her.

“You must think me rather cold, Greg.”

“I’m still too human for this place. Too weak.” I shook my head. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“No,” Mona insisted, taking my hands in her own. “I am glad you did. I would never wish for you to hold back from me. I had always hoped you would tell me everything that passed through your mind. That I might be the devil on your shoulder.” She smirked playfully, showing her fangs.

“You already are,” I said and laughed. “You know, we forgot something this morning. Part of our deal.”

“We did.” She tilted her head back, her lips parting in a playful smile, her eyes gleaming in the midday sun. There seemed no better time. I leaned in until I could feel her breath on mine, lingered there, enjoying the feeling of our closeness, then kissed her. Her lips parted softly before my tongue. My hand touched her face, and I held her close, feeling my desire for her burn.

Part of me still wondered if her Will had called me here for a reason. Even though she wasn’t the same person, I had another chance at life because of her. Nothing would change the fact that she had called me here. We had already lost each other once, and it made me marvel at this strange fate—that our souls had been reunited in this dark place, in these monstrous forms, together.

Even if it wasn’t love, there was still something between us. We could call it a deal if she wished to. But I supposed I would think of it as something else—a promise.