I Tamed the Demon Girl Who Killed Me

THE GIRL WHO KILLED ME

“If you’re going to die, at least have the decency not to wake up and disturb your killer.”

The voice was low, amused, and very close.

Adrian Vale opened his eyes and immediately regretted it. His head throbbed as if someone had used it as an anvil. Cold stone pressed against his back. The air stank of burnt incense and, underneath it, something coppery and old. When he tried to breathe in, a line of fire tore across his chest.

He looked down. A fine white shirt, soaked dark with blood. In the middle of it, a ragged wound gaped where no wound should have been.

Okay, he thought, with the calm of a man who had not yet understood anything. That’s a lot of blood.

A woman was crouched beside him.

She was beautiful the way a blade is beautiful, all sharp lines and cold light. Two black horns curved back from her forehead through hair the colour of midnight. Her eyes were crimson and unblinking, and in her right hand she held a dagger slick with something that was very probably his.

“There he is,” she said. “The corpse has opinions.”

“Hello,” Adrian croaked.

“Hello.” She smiled. “I’m Nyra. I killed you.”

He waited for the punchline. There wasn’t one.

His first thought was that he was dreaming, some vivid, stupid dream brought on by too much overtime and too little sleep. But dreams did not hurt like this.

Then the memories arrived, and they were not his.

A manor with white pillars. A father who never looked up from his papers. A proud, spoiled boy of twenty with a talent for talking himself into trouble. A forbidden book, candles in a basement, chalk lines and whispered words, and a flash of light as something answered from the other side.

Then a smile, a dagger, and a very surprised boy.

I was crossing a road, Adrian thought. I was Adrian Vale, logistics coordinator, and there was a horn.

Strangely, the boy in the memories shared his name. A coincidence, or something that felt uncomfortably like fate. But the face reflected in the polished blade beside him was not the one he had shaved that morning. It was younger, paler and annoyingly handsome.

I’m dead. And I’m also in someone else’s body, bleeding in a basement, talking to the woman who killed him.

“You’re thinking very loudly,” Nyra said. “It’s charming. Most of them just scream.”

“Most of them?”

“The ones who summon me.” She turned the dagger slowly. “Fools with books. They always want something. Wealth, revenge, a girl. This one wanted power.” Her gaze flicked over his chest. “He received a short lesson in what that costs.”

Panicking had never solved anything, and Adrian suspected it would not start today. He forced himself to stop looking at the knife and actually see the room.

It was a round chamber of black stone. Candles burned in iron stands along the walls. The floor was covered by an enormous circle of glowing symbols, and every symbol pulsed in the same slow rhythm, like a heartbeat.

And Nyra was kneeling in the centre of it.

That was odd. She was the predator in the room, yet she was crouched in the middle of the circle like a tiger in a cage. Thin chains of pale silver light ran from her wrists straight into the lines on the floor. Whenever she shifted her weight, they flared, and a flicker of discomfort crossed her face before she hid it.

She isn’t standing there by choice.

“You’re staring at my chains,” Nyra said.

“I’m staring at everything. It’s a stressful moment.”

For half a second her smile slipped. What replaced it wasn’t anger but irritation, as though he’d said something unexpectedly sharp. Then it was gone.

“The man who summoned me is dead,” she said. “His bindings die with him, eventually. Until then I wait.” She lifted the dagger. “But I do like to finish my work before I go. Professional pride.”

“You already finished it.”

“And yet you woke up.” Her eyes narrowed. “I put this through your heart myself. So either you are very lucky, or something is very wrong with you.”

“Both?” Adrian offered.

She laughed, low and genuinely amused, and it was the most frightening sound he had ever heard.

“I’ll make it quick,” she said. “Hold still.”

Adrian did what any sensible man in his position would do. He talked.

“Wait. If you could leave that circle, you would have. So you can’t. Not yet.”

The dagger paused.

“You’re waiting for the contract to finish unravelling,” he went on, as fast as the pain allowed. “Which means you’re stuck here with me, and I’m the only other person in the room. That’s the only reason we’re still having a conversation.”

“That,” said Nyra, “is a very long sentence for a dead man.”

“I’m told I’m persistent.”

“You’re annoying.” But the blade stayed where it was, and something in her expression turned colder and more careful. “Humans are never this calm when I hold the knife. Why aren’t you afraid?”

Because I’m terrified, Adrian thought. I just have a lot of practice smiling while my boss screams.

“I don’t think this is a dream,” he said aloud. “Which means I’m either about to die, or I’ve been handed a second chance by something I don’t understand. I’d like to find out which.”

“You will not,” Nyra said softly.

The dagger came down.

It stopped a finger’s width from his throat, as though it had struck glass.

A pane of pale blue light had snapped into existence between them. Nyra hissed. Her chains flared, and the whole circle gave an angry pulse.

Words scrolled across the air in front of Adrian’s eyes, clean and glowing and completely impossible.

[Soul Covenant System initializing…]

He blinked. They did not go away.

Nyra stared at the empty space where he was looking. She clearly couldn’t see any of it. “What did you do?”

“I have no idea,” Adrian said honestly.

[Host identified: Adrian Vale.] [Compatibility with Soul Covenant: Confirmed.] [Condition detected: Host is at the threshold of death. System has intervened to preserve the host.]

The pain in his chest dulled. It did not vanish, but it settled from agony into a deep, manageable ache. He could breathe.

[You have been granted one opportunity to establish a covenant with a demon.] [Target available: Nyra.] [Warning: Failure to establish a covenant before the host’s soul destabilises will result in permanent death.]

Adrian read that last line twice.

“What are you looking at?” Nyra demanded. For the first time, she sounded unsettled. “Your eyes are doing something strange.”

“I’m reading,” he said. “Apparently you and I are about to make a deal.”

She stared at him. Then she smiled again, slowly, and this time it was hungry and interested and very, very dangerous.

“Oh, I do hope so,” Nyra murmured. “Because I’m looking forward to killing you twice.”