She was in front of him now. Her hand rose—fingertips brushing his collarbone.
"I finished mine, Rein."
A pause.
"You are now my beloved."
Rein opened his mouth to speak, but only a soft, dry noise came out.
His legs weren't moving.
His heart was pounding against his ribs. Every instinct screamed run, but his body was frozen.
Not by fear. Not by magic.
By a single, dreadful question:
Was she serious?
Rein stepped back.
She followed.
He reached behind him slowly, hand brushing the shelf where he kept a hidden smoke bomb—one of three he'd made during a long week of boredom and herbal mania.
"Who are you?" he asked quietly.
Her head tilted, crimson hair sliding off one shoulder.
"I already told you," she said. "Your beloved."
"That's not a name."
She took another step forward, and the air seemed to tighten.
Heat spiraled around her, soft but growing—as if someone had lit a brazier under the floorboards.
"You want names?" she asked, voice lilting like song. "Others have called me Empress of the Crimson Veil. Flame-Born Calamity. Blood Bride of the Final Eclipse."
She paused, then smiled.
"But you may call me… Asmodra."
The name hit the room like a dropped blade.
Rein's stomach dropped through his boots.
Asmodra. One of the Seven Demon Lords.
The one they used to scare children.
The one whose armies turned cities into red ash.
Rein's hand found the smoke bomb.
"You're lying," he said weakly.
"I'm not." She took another step, slow.
Her bare feet whispered over the wood.
"I burned Solmere for accusing me of theft," she said sweetly. "I crushed Thalia when they crowned a king without my blessing. But you…"
She stopped inches from him.
"…you gave me tea."
"I didn't know who you were!"
"That's what made it real."
He couldn't breathe.
"You're insane."
"Possibly." She leaned in, voice low, intimate. "But I'm also loyal. Eternally. Obsessively. Ruinously."
Rein stared at her, wide-eyed. His heart was hammering out of rhythm.
"Why me?"
Asmodra's voice softened.
"You looked me in the eye," she said. "You saw blood and didn't flinch. You touched me without trembling. You brewed for me without asking what I'd done."
She reached up, fingers brushing his jaw.
"And most of all… you spoke my name—before I ever told it to you."
His breath caught. "No, I—what?"
"When you found me in the field," she whispered, "you said it under your breath. So quiet. But I heard it. 'You better not move when I touch you.' You knew. Somewhere in your bones… you knew me."
Rein took a step back. It was ridiculous.
She didn't follow this time.
Instead, she turned her palm upward and snapped her fingers.
The air shimmered.
Then split open.
Black, thorned vines exploded from the floorboards, writhing through the air like snakes, forming a crimson-ringed circle beneath her feet.
The sigils on her skin ignited—brilliant red lines racing across her body like living tattoos.
The temperature soared.
Rein's lips cracked from the heat.
The walls of the cottage shook.
Bottles exploded.
Dried herbs curled and blackened.
Asmodra floated an inch off the floor.
"I was going to rest. Heal. Leave."
Her eyes glowed, pupils now inverted pentagrams.
"But then you looked at me with those sad little eyes. And I knew."
Her voice changed.
Reverent. Fevered.
"You're mine."