“And so you went, I take it.”

The demon lord’s sharp voice dragged Sonya back to the present. She tried to gauge from the drawl in his voice, from his rather blank expression, whether he’d been bored by her tale or not. It was difficult to say as inhumanly yellow eyes bored into hers.

“It wasn’t as straightforward as that,” she hedged, remembering the resulting tears from Katya, the scoffs from her mother, the worries from her father, Mischa’s eyes as she’d left that day, still shining with a blend of confusion and hurt… “But yes.”

“And let me guess.” The demon tapped a clawed hand against the arm of the chair he’d summoned from nothing. Between its handsome filigreed limbs and pin-thick embroidery that coated its royal blue upholstery, it was the fanciest chair she’d ever seen, save for the one the Academy had dragged out that one time the Emperor had dined with them. “Sheer force of will wasn’t enough to make up for a lack of natural talent.”

“That’s…” Sonya’s voice trailed off, unable to counter the accusation. The truth stung. It always stung. She looked down at her lap, fiddling her thumbs over the dusty pale red of her petticoat. She ran the pad of one over the back of the ring she’d carved that morning—had it really only been just that morning? It’d been a normal ring up until the spell, but now it seemed fused to her skin, unable to twist. She shuddered at the thought of the raw bone it’d been, of the… body it’d belonged to. Bits of dirt still clung beneath her fingernails. She wondered if she’d ever be able to wash it off.

“So, you decided to bind yourself a slave.”

Sonya’s head whipped up at that.

The demon had been looking at her ring as well, but then his gaze lifted and yellow eyes met hers. They were hardly the only thing inhuman about him.

The creature’s face seemed sculpted, his cheek and jawbones chiseled as if he was simply one of the thousands of statues that dotted the fountains and pediments of Tiberia’s capital come to life. However, he was certainly more colorful than those statues. Although his skin held a wan pallor, his coifed hair was a strange mix of sky-blue and silver, like a bird’s feathers. Furthering the plumaged look was a red cravat that hugged his throat above a royal blue shirt and waistcoat. His collar—a mirrored extension of her bone ring—peeked out in thin slits of white beneath it.

As she stared, the demon’s lips peeled back and he smiled at her with a wolf’s grin.

Sonya nervously recalled the last binding ceremony she’d attended. Only a week ago, pressed in with the rest of her classmates along the upper viewing decks, they’d watched in paralyzed horror as a soon-to-graduating senior had accidentally summoned a lord like the one before her instead of the obligatory animal. It’d been tall. Womanlike. With a neck twice the length of even the fairest imperial dancer’s. The demoness’ emerald green dress had trailed behind her like spilled ink even as the senior had stammered his apologies. It was a mistake that happened roughly once every few years, or so her friend Octavia had told her afterwards. Sonya recalled the screams had echoed across the binding hall. The smell of iron that refused to leave her nose.

By contrast, this demon didn’t seem like he was about to kill her. It was a fragile mercy. It’d likely be healthier if she still assumed he did. She’d still offer to send him back.

Not that she even knew how to send him back.

“A familiar,” Sonya corrected with a small prickle. It’s what everyone called them, and it was what they were. What she had intended to bind. Common demons. Animals. Be it hellhound or deathraven, the creatures could no sooner be slaves than any hunting dog or hawk could.

Of course, the creature sitting across from her, his one knee casually bent so his boot could lay across the other, was no animal. Luckily, he didn’t look too monstrous either. Tiers of power among demonkind were known to go from prey animals to predator animals, then from human-looking ones to… well, inhuman-looking ones.

“Whatever you say.” The demon leaned back and rested his cheek against his fist.

Sonya shivered. The southern, low-lying city of Lucra didn’t get nearly as cold as the mountains of her home province of Dalmatia, but the approaching winter still nipped in the air and Sonya wished she’d brought a shawl with her.

“Cold?” the demon asked.

“No, I’m fin—” Sonya started to say, but the demon snapped its fingers and a rush of warmth rippled over her skin. She jerked, her spine straightening at the unconscious ease at which he cast spells.

While her classmates and professors were certainly powerful, far more powerful than she, even they maintained a certain amount of… restraint, often only indulging in a spell when specifically requested to. If anything, the demon’s unrestrained use of magic reminded Sonya oddly of her sister.

“As I was saying,”—the demon steepled his hands together—“you wish to use me to become an imperial mage?”

“Not exactly…” Sonya swallowed when he lifted a silvered eyebrow, and she forced herself to continue, tentatively gripping the broken arm of the chair that he’d floated down from the stack of destroyed furniture for support. “I mean, I’m not supposed to be here. My sister is. I’m just a placeholder.” She fell instinctively back on the plan that her family had developed—had repeated to themselves like a mantra during that second half of the summer. “If I make it through this year without getting expelled, my sister keeps her reputation. We get her scholarship money, she can transfer to another academy after the baby’s born, a distant academy, and no one will ever know I was here.”

The demon was quiet. Thoughtful. “And what will you do?”

“Huh?”

“After your sister takes your place.”

“It’s not my—” Sonya stopped. It was pointless to correct him. “I go home.”

He frowned. “To your carpenter’s cottage in the woods?” His tone seemed equal parts dismissive and… disappointed?

“Well, if Katya succeeds, it wouldn’t have to be the woods. We’re hoping to move to the city. Maybe one as big as Salona even.”

The demon studied his fingertips—clawtips?—setting Sonya’s stomach into the queasy sort of churning that’d haunted her during her long sea voyage to the capital. He kept claiming to be her slave, but he was acting anything like it. “Seems to me,” he finally said, “you could cut out the middleman. Succeed without a switch.”

“Cut out Katarina? But…”

Yellow eyes flashed to hers, and she shivered despite the warmth he’d cast over her limbs.

“Unless there’s something you’re getting out of this deal.”

“It’s not a deal,” Sonya quickly said, balking at the crude word. “It’s… a promise. For my family.”

The demon scoffed, then sneered, twisting his beautiful face cruel. “Take some advice from someone who’s been around a few dynasties.” He waved a flippant hand as if dismissing a servant. “Promises—especially family promises—aren’t worth the breath they’re sworn on.”

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Sonya inhaled sharply. The bone ring burned blisteringly hot around her finger as she tried to still her tongue. “Well, I’d hardly expect a creature like you to understand,” she muttered before she could stop herself.

The demon’s eyes flashed gold, and her heart skipped. For a moment, a manic sort of grin gripped his face, tight like a bowstring, promising death. The screams of the unfortunate senior echoed in her head.

Sonya held her breath.

“No,” he finally said, his smile slipping with it, and both the room and the bone ring grew cold again. “I suppose not.”

Sonya rubbed at her arms.

“Well!” the demon continued as if the prior minute hadn’t just happened. “I’ve never personally experienced one of these enslavements, but as far as I know…” Still seated, he bowed in his chair and extended a clawed hand towards her with an exaggerated flourish. “I’m yours until death, my little mouse.”

Hers until death.

Sonya had known those terms. Had known the length of binding. She’d lived her life and had entered the Academy knowing it. She’d cast the binding spell itself knowing it. But she’d cast the spell thinking she’d be summoning some small variety of demon—a razor-toothed-yet-still-palm-sized dirgebird perhaps, or one of those crimson-eyed inkrats.

And it was an inkrat she’d been about to bind.

After she’d finished the incantation and the curving lines of powder she’d poured on the floor had flared with purple-blue fire, Sonya had let the binding’s magic open her gaze to the demonic plane. Her concentration had been strained, her forehead pounding and slick with sweat as she’d fought to hold the binding open, taking in shadowed scene after shadowed scene like flashes from a dream—a bubbling lake reflecting trees beneath its surface that weren’t the same as the ones rooted at its shores; a gleaming yet windowless palace of onyx, its walls and roofs jaggedly steep like crystal; cave mouths and midnight glades and screech-filled forest paths—until she’d finally seen the inkrat.

The tiny rodent had been perched on a fallen log, its glossy black fur creating a distinctive silhouette from the greyed stillness of its surroundings. Its nose had quested in small twitches, apparently focused on… something.

Distracted from her.

Sonya had just let go of her spell-hold, letting the binding snap close, when claws had pierced the inkrat’s tiny, trembling body. It’d screamed.

And then her bonds had clamped shut on something far, far bigger.

“I didn’t mean…” She winced as the demon’s nostrils flared. He clearly hadn’t liked her apologies earlier, but she struggled to express her stew of feelings another way. Thoughts tripped over themselves, only to rise up and stumble again. “I don’t want you until death,” she blurted out.

Then paled.

Oh, no.

That’d come out far worse than an apology.

The demon’s face tightened. Something dark passed over his eyes. Claws dug themselves into the lush fabric of his armrests with a slow ripping sound. Sonya’s heart spiked in her throat, wondering if he’d kill her after all, and then his grip loosened and he threw his head back with a hearty laugh.

“I’m sorry, dear,” he said, wiping away a non-existent tear. “It’s just…” He lowered his head and regarded her savagely. “There is no want in this arrangement anymore.”

“But—”

“The binding magic is simple. Ancient. I am yours to command until your death. Once it’s been set, there is no breaking it.” His head tilted. “Now… while I could find a way to hurry the ‘your death’ part of the clause along, I hardly think you’d find that solution to your liking.”

Sonya stared blankly at the demon, her fingers numb. She pressed her hand over the bone ring, trying to feel out its edges—maybe it was her imagination, but they seemed smoother than they had just minutes ago, as if the ring was slowly sinking into her flesh—as she tried to imagine a lifetime shackled to this creature. His presence forever mingled with hers. His taunts in her head. His vast reservoirs of magic leaking out into the world through her.

Impossible.

“Why don’t you kill me now?” The question escaped before she could stop it, and her hands flew to her mouth as if she could scoop it back inside.

The demon snorted. “A fair question…” His lips pursed and he glanced towards the plain wooden ceiling, studying it. “I suppose because I’ve been bored.” His gaze flicked back towards Sonya, and he smiled. “So, far be it from me, a lowly slave, to tell you, my new master, what to do… but I’d strongly suggest you direct your efforts towards keeping me entertained.”

Sonya went cold.

Demons.

Fancy or savage… Humanoid or animal…

They were all beasts in the end.

“I won’t kill for you,” she told the demon lord.

“Oh,” he said with a lazy smile. “I wouldn’t say won’t too soon…”

“I mean it. You’ll have to kill me first.”

A change rippled over him, and he stood, his presence heavy. Sonya leaned away, but there was nowhere to go, the broken chair’s back already flush against her spine. Despite it, she refused to let her eyes leave his, holding his yellowed gaze with a glare of her own. If killing her meant severing their bond, if it meant sending him back to his demonic plane… well, she’d choose that a thousand times over being some pawn for whatever dreams of carnage he must’ve dreamt.

With a sudden snap of the demon’s finger, Sonya’s chair vanished. She fell through nothing, hitting the storage room’s floorboards with a pained cry, and another mirthful round of laughter greeted her ears.

“What a feisty mouse! Two nibbles in quick succession? Precisely the sort of entertainment I hope to see.”

Sonya grit her teeth. Her shoulder and tailbone ached where they’d hit the floor before the rest of her, but there was nothing she could say, nothing she could do to harm the bastard. She focused on picking herself up instead.

A pale, claw-tipped hand entered her vision.

Palm up.

Sonya stopped, staring at it—staring at him—as if he’d just extended a bear trap to her.

When it became clear she wasn’t going to accept his offer of assistance, the demon’s spine straightened, and his hand withdrew behind his back. “Tavarius.”

“What?”

“Tavarius,” he repeated. “That’s my name.”

Sonya frowned. With the Tiberian-sounding name and his elegant bearing, the demon seemed straight out of one of the old families of Lucra. The thought brought with it memories of Octavia, and Sonya’s heart clenched. Her pearl-studded friend had warned her about going down this path, but she’d still helped despite those warnings, Sonya pushing the girl’s goodwill past its breakpoint… and now all Sonya could do was think about how she wished she’d listened.

“Sofiya,” Sonya said, offering the demon her formal name. She pushed herself up to her own feet, cautious not to trip on the hem of her dress in the process. “Sofiya Stolar.”

She clasped her hands together, waiting for him to take control of the conversation again. When he didn’t, she cleared her throat awkwardly. While she’d rather die than become his pawn, she didn’t exactly feel like proactively killing herself either. Surely, there had to be some sort of middling compromise out there. “Well…” she ventured. “Now that we’re in agreement, I think that we should… um… probably get to bed?”

The demon—Tavarius—lifted an eyebrow. “Early class?”

She decided to bury her rising anxieties by hustling around the room. Grabbing the broom she’d “borrowed” from a supply closet earlier that day, Sonya began to sweep up the various powders she’d used to draw the binding spell’s required runes on the ground. With each sweep, they emitted puffs of acrid ash that rose into the air, their latent powers depleted. Sonya tried not to breathe them in. “Something like that.”

Tavarius remained silent.

Expectant.

Sonya’s grip tightened on the broom handle. She wasn’t going to be able to hide things from him, she suddenly realized. From here on out, he’d experience everything in her life alongside her. She’d have no secrets. No privacy. Her stomach sunk. “More like an early exam,” she admitted.

More silence.

Sonya stopped sweeping.

“An early… solo exam.” She risked a quick glance at the demon, but it was too quick to gauge his expression. “To test my competency?” She winced as her voice came out as a squeak, apparently every inch the mouse he’d teased.

“Ah,” Tavarius said.

Sonya resumed sweeping, her cheeks a bright, burning red. Even if she’d been the most powerful student in her class, even if she’d been Katya, she was sure she’d still pale in comparison to him, so it didn’t matter, admitting weakness, but even still…

After she’d gathered all of the spent powder into a central pile, Sonya hunted for the dustpan. She found it decidedly not where she’d left it at Tavarius’ booted feet.

“Academy cats sniffed you out?” he teased.

Sonya swallowed, her lips pressing tightly together. She didn’t doubt his earlier threats. The demon could likely snuff her out in an instant, the bondage of the bone ring be damned, but he hadn’t. Not yet. Unlike the demoness who’d ripped apart that senior, this one seemed to be playing with her like a cat himself, letting her scurry desperately over his claws. And Sonya wasn’t stupid. She knew it was only a matter of time before he got bored and would lower her into his gaping jaws, but…

As long as he was still playing…

“So what if they did?” Sonya ventured, trying to keep the tremble from her voice. She pulled her broom close to her chest. Rested her weight upon it. “You’re going to help me take care of them, aren’t you?”

Tavarius’ expression was light and inscrutable. Slowly, his smile curled back into a shining display of teeth. “Hmm… I suppose I will.”