The Void Prince Who Devoured the Demon Queens

Chapter 4: The Contract of Embers

The hand around his throat was shaking, and Kaelen could not decide whether that was good news.

"Before you squeeze," he croaked, "I'd like to point out that you can't actually..."

She squeezed.

For half a second it worked. Her claws bit in, his vision went speckled, and he had time to think, so that's how it ends, then. Then Ignis made a sound he had not heard from her before, a hard, wounded grunt, as if someone had driven a fist into her stomach from the inside. Her fingers sprang open. She folded in half across his chest, coughing a thin cloud of gray smoke onto the cot.

[VOID ANCHOR: Partner mana locked against host.] [Hostile intent detected. Core response: CONTRACTION.]

"Told you," Kaelen wheezed, rubbing his neck.

Ignis rolled off him and hit the floor on all fours. Her hair hung in a tangle over her face. For a moment she stayed there, panting, one hand flat against her breastbone like someone checking for a wound. Then she lunged, quick as a snake, and drove her fist at his face.

She stopped an inch short. Her arm locked. The tendons stood out along her forearm, and a tremor ran up the whole length of her body, and she made that sound again, lower this time, and sat back hard on the flagstones.

"Stop," he said, not unkindly. "It's going to keep doing that."

"What is it?" She was glaring at him through the hair. Her eyes were bright with something that wasn't quite fury. "What did you put in me?"

"I don't know the right name. The window calls it a Void Anchor." He sat up carefully. His ribs didn't scream, and neither did his lungs. The black furrows across his chest had sealed over into pink new skin. Whatever he'd drunk from her, it was holding. "Let me try to explain it the way I'd explain it to a patient."

"I am not your patient."

"No. But you're about to have a prescription."

She said something in Abyssal. The borrowed memories declined to translate.

Kaelen swung his legs off the cot. The floor was warm under his bare feet, and the little carved sun on the wall had blistered black. He found the exile decree under a drift of ash and flipped it over. It was blank on the back, and the wax seal had melted into a sad puddle, but the parchment was good heavy stock.

"Your core makes too much power," he said. "That's the Swelling. Mine makes none and eats everything. For one night we fit together like a lock and a key. The Void Core took what you couldn't hold, cleaned it, and put a piece back." He tapped his own chest, then pointed at hers. "Which is why your hair isn't smoking. Which is also why you can't hurt me. There's a line running between us now, and your power flows through it. When you try to point it at me, it turns on you."

"A leash," Ignis said flatly.

"A tether, with an end in each of us. I can't be drained by you, either."

"So you say."

"I could be lying. You could test it." He gestured at the empty air where her flame had died. "Go ahead."

She didn't. She sat and stared at her own hand, and the silence stretched until he realized what he was seeing. It was not fear. It was shame. She had held herself like a drawn blade since the moment he'd met her, and now the blade was dull and she didn't know how to stand.

"Nobody has ever..." Her jaw tightened. She started over, lower. "In the Abyss, I was the one who walked away. I made men beg. I have never once been the one who..." She swallowed the rest. "If you ever tell anyone what I sounded like in there, I'll find a way. Anchor or not."

"I wasn't planning to."

"Good."

"For what it's worth," Kaelen said, because he could not leave it alone, "I've seen a lot of people at their worst, and you're the first one who looked better afterward."

She threw a chunk of plaster at his head. He ducked.

"What are you?" she asked, and this time it wasn't a threat. "The prince I killed was soft. He cried when I took his prayer beads. You didn't. You looked at me like I was a lock on a door."

"He died," Kaelen said. "I'm what woke up."

"From where?"

"Somewhere with a great deal more paperwork."

She snorted.

"Fine." Ignis got to her feet, and the old swagger crept back into her spine, one vertebra at a time. "So I can't kill you. I still don't need you. I'm cured. I can walk out of this ruin and never see you again."

"You can. How long until the Swelling comes back?"

She said nothing.

"Because it grows when you win," he went on. "You told me. It grows when you're angry. Every fight you pick, every throat you cut. You can't stop the core from filling, only slow it down. A month? Two?"

"Three, if I'm careful."

"And then you'll be back on a road somewhere, steaming, looking for something small to break. Only I won't be here." He held up one finger before she could speak. "Or you can have a standing arrangement. I take the surplus when it builds. You stay strong, and your fever stays gone. And, as a free bonus, every time we do this the power I send back is a little stronger than what I took. In a year you'll be a different class of monster."

That did it. He saw her weigh it, the pride and the fear and the arithmetic, one against the next.

"And you?" she said. "What do you get?"

"I live," Kaelen said. "For now, that's plenty."

She circled the cot once.

"Words are wind in the Abyss," she said at last.

"I know. So let's make it more than words."

He took a lump of charcoal from the collapsed hearth and sat cross-legged on the floor with the parchment on his knee. Ignis watched from above, arms crossed, tail swishing. He wrote the heading in block capitals, then underlined it twice.

"What is that?" she demanded.

"Section One. Definitions."

"Definitions of what?"

"Of words. So nobody can argue about them later." He kept writing. "Party A is Ignis Ashblood, hereafter 'the Princess.' Party B is Kaelen Vanguard, hereafter..." He chewed the charcoal. "'The Prince.' It's technically true."

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever seen."

"You're welcome."

They wrote it together in the end, or fought it together, which turned out to be the same thing. He drafted; she objected; he amended. Neither party shall intentionally harm the other. The Prince will provide Maintenance whenever the Princess's core reaches critical swell. The Princess will protect the Prince from external threats while he remains weaker than she is, and she will not, under any circumstances, call it protecting him in public.

"No kneeling," Ignis dictated. "I will not kneel to a human."

He wrote it down.

"And you take no orders from anyone else. Not the Church, not your crown, not some half-baked saint." Her eyes flashed. "If I'm bound to you, I'll be bound to somebody worth the trouble."

He wrote that too.

"Dispute resolution," he said, "by conversation first."

"And then?"

"And then, if talking fails, a night apart to cool off."

"And then?"

"And then we talk again."

She looked deeply disappointed. "You've left out the violence."

"I have."

"Put in the violence."

"Ignis..."

"Put it in or I'm not signing."

He put in the violence. A duel, regulated, no lethal blows. She read it twice, lips moving, and gave a satisfied nod.

"We call it the Contract of Embers," she said.

"It's a pharmacy lease with extra steps."

"I don't know what that means, and I like it."

She took the parchment from him and held it over the cold hearth. "Among the old Balor houses, a promise is sealed in Hellfire. It was fashionable before my grandmother's time and now only grandmothers do it." She smiled thinly. "Nobody burns a seal anymore. That's devil nonsense. Clerks and ledgers."

"Then why do it?"

"Because you wrote it all down, little prince. It would be rude not to."

She pressed her palm to the bottom of the page. Heat bloomed under her fingers, and a ring of white fire raced out along the lines of charcoal, tracing every letter before it faded. Her hand, he noted, produced the flame without trouble. The Anchor only cared where she pointed it.

She held out a clawed finger. "Blood."

He pricked his thumb on one of her claws. It welled black as ink. He pressed it to the page beside her palm print, and the parchment drank it.

[CONTRACT OF EMBERS: SEALED] [Infernal seal detected. Registering with the Ledger of the Nine Hells...]

"What does that mean?" he asked.

Ignis had gone very, very still.

[Registration complete. Auditor assigned: V. HALLOWGATE, Magistrate of Contracts.] [Notice of inspection will be delivered.]

"Hallowgate," Ignis whispered, and the color drained out of her face. "Of all the clerks in all the Hells."