November's Story - demon prince x reader (nsfw) (Patreon)

Wow. Ok. 

*wheezes* 

This one is LONG. Like, a whopping 11,564 words long!!

That's... more than I intended, but I worked my ectoplasmic butt off for you folks to give you a good one this month, and I really really hope you like it!! *wibbles anxiously*. 

Here's what you voted for - a non-specified gender reader and a male demon. There's also a fallen angel and a reaper, both of whom I want to write stories for, perhaps even as a poly relationship, in the future. 

Anyway, no warnings (I don't think!!) other than nsfw. Hope you like it! Don't forget to let me know in the comments, or over on Tumblr on anon if you're shy. 

Darkness pooled in the archways of deserted doors. The tarmac glistened in the deep night, bright pools and reflections glimmering, and you had thought you were walking alone. Footsteps echoed behind you drawing your brows into a tight scowl. 

The hair on the back of your neck prickled and goosebumps ran the length of your arm in a heartbeat. The thudding rhythm of blood soared in your ears and your breath caught in your throat. Admittedly, this wasn’t the safest part of town, but you’d thought you’d at least be able to take the shortcut from your car to the store without fear of assault. Turning around to demand who was there seemed only childish, but it was all you wanted to do in those breathless, terrifying moments as your legs ground to a halt and you stood, stock still, barely daring to breathe. 

A sensation flickered on the edge of your awareness; the ghost of a breath on your skin. Someone was standing directly behind you, inches from your shoulder. 

Whipping around, soles scraping on the asphalt as you spun, you tensed, ready to smack whoever it was in the face, but you saw nothing; only the empty side street. Vents steaming; the dull whisper of distant traffic; and the far off clatter and patter of a fox nosing about in a dustbin and knocking it over: all normal sounds for this end of town at this time of night. 

And yet… those echoing footsteps had seemed so close. Surely it couldn’t simply be an acoustic trick of the architecture around you? Once more the horrifying, pressing feeling of a hand about to land on your shoulder made you spin back around the other way, twitching about like a cornered animal surrounded by wolves it couldn’t see amid the thick underbrush. 

“Stop it. Show yourself,” you snarled, nostrils flaring as you panted with the effort of a recently-galloped horse. 

Finally, something began to happen. A black shadow gathered at the edges of your vision, beginning where the pavement met the walls of the buildings on either side of the alley, lapping like waves at a rocky shore. You stared at it, as fascinated as you were horrified, unable to tear your gaze from its mesmerising, undulating rhythm. 

“What the…?” you whispered.

As you stood there unmoving, the darkness built, rolling and frothing until the billowing black fog grew into a tall column, perhaps seven feet high. As it resolved itself into a shifting pillar of darkness, discernible features began to form. First an oval head, crowned with enormous, antler-like protrusions that dripped darkness like viscous oil, then long arms - four of them - lifted themselves free of the central pier of swirling fog. Then came the strange, slanting legs of an animal, perhaps a bird, ending with colossal, black talons which drifted in and out of the black fog. 

Wings suddenly burst from the shoulder blades, their smoking tips touching the brick buildings on each side of the alley, and flashing eyes appeared amid the darkness. With a jolt, you realised that the monster’s face was not clad in muscle and flesh, but was gleaming dully like softly polished obsidian, and that it resembled the skull of a big cat, with overlapping canines and large eye sockets. 

While you were still staring, shocked and dumbstruck, at this towering being, a voice came from behind you, and you leapt almost out of your skin at the sound of soft laughter. A second figure had appeared in the alleyway, hemming you in, and as you turned, wide eyed, to blink at this other creature, you heard that chuckle again. Their gaze was not fixed on you, however. “Ever the showman, Storniel,” they murmured, shaking their head in honest amusement.

This figure was as different from the darkly-wreathed being as it was possible to imagine. Their face was achingly beautiful, smooth but veined as if carved from Carrara marble, and their glittering eyes were an inky black all over. Dark, smoky grey lips curled into a graceful smile, and you wondered if they were a stone angel come to life to protect you from the demon behind you. 

Little cracks skittered across the figure’s skin as they spoke, forming and disappearing before you could truly catch one. Where they truly made of marble? Their voice was a husky, warm tenor, or perhaps a deep alto, and their beautiful face was framed with thick, gleaming white hair that spilled down their back in a cascade of moonlit hues. 

You found your lips moving, and you realised a second later that they had given voice to your thoughts. “What are you?” 

The second figure chuckled again at your question. “We have come to take you to our master,” they said calmly, as though you and they were friends, and you were being offered a ride home.

Their gentle tone lulled you for a moment before the wave of panic swept over you as the sense of their words sank in. “What?”

From behind you, the creature called Storniel barked a harsh laugh. “Now who’s scaring our little human, Rashel?”

“A fair point. But come,” they said, stepping towards you and fixing you on the spot with their ebony gaze. “We have lingered in the Mortal Realm too long already. We will attract attention.”

Darkness closed around you in thick tendrils, as though Storniel’s essence had bled into yours, mingling with your own until you couldn’t tell where your mind and body ended and his began. 

How long you lingered in that liminal, timeless space, with Storniel’s four arms wrapped gently but firmly around you, and Rashel’s pale face smiling benevolently into your own, you could not have said. When Storniel finally released you, your feet were upon the hard, hot surface of volcanic rock, and veins of magma pulsed beneath the surface, visible through hairline cracks in the stone. Part of your brain told you that you shouldn’t have been able to stand on such a surface without the soles of your boots melting into it, nor breathe the toxic fumes which rose from the crevices in the ground, but you were still too disorientated by everything that had happened to appreciate the wisdom of that rational part of you. 

Your head spun and you stared wildly around you. Your mouth fell open and your heart plummeted at the sight of a towering castle of black basalt that rose from rivers of pungent lava in a thousand shatter-sharp pinnacles. It towered over you, the sky behind it a broiling mass of red clouds that rained sparks down around you. The whole scene looked like the vivid backdrop of some hideous shadow-play.

“What is this place?” you murmured as you stood there and tried to make sense of everything. 

Rashel’s voice was calm as they held out their veined, marble hand to steady you. Their gentle expression never faltered as they spoke, but the single word they uttered stopped your heart and breath as one. “Hell,” they smiled. 

Your knees went out from under you, your eyes rolled, and you tipped back into Storniel’s waiting arms, barely aware of his laughter, harsh and merciless as the tumbling rubble of a landslide. 

A cold such as you had never experienced woke you. Your chest clenched and you sat bolt upright to discover Rashel’s exquisite face gazing down at you, their fingers upon the pulse in your throat. It was a gentle touch, light as a hopping bird, but the temperature made you wheeze and sputter. 

“What…? What is going on?” you blazed suddenly. 

“Easy now,” Rashel smiled, leaning back and nodding in satisfaction. 

This close up, you could see that their canines were elongated, and their tongue was a bright, blood red, in stark contrast to the paleness of the rest of their stony body. 

“You’ve come a long way to help our beloved lord,” they murmured. “I’m glad I managed to reach you. I fear I should have prepared you better for this, but in truth I didn’t know how. Your mind is strong, human. You put up quite the defence just now.”

“I don’t understand,” you said. “I… Wait, your lord? You mean… like… the devil?”

Rashel’s laugh fluttered out from their full lips and they shook their head in amusement. “No, child. My lord is not so high and mighty as the Prince of Light himself, but he is a prince in his own right.”

“I don’t understand,” you choked again. “Please… I want to go home.”

Rashel raked sharp, taloned hands tenderly through your hair, and the gesture reminded you of a mother soothing a crying child. It at irritated and appeased you, and the two reactions curdled into something unpleasant in your stomach. “You will understand in time,” they said with a soft smile. “For now, know that you are safe, and that no one and nothing will harm you here. You could swim in the lava and it would be no more dangerous to you than bathing in a warm bath.”

“What?”

Rashel’s laughter was as kind as their words. “Indeed. My Prince has decreed that…” here, Rashel faltered. Their eyebrows - so perfectly chiselled, as if by Bernini himself - drew together, tears filled their eyes, and a huge crack split their face almost in two, right up the centre. “Forgive me,” they choked, turning away. Their long, silver hair fell down to mask their face like a curtain across a rare piece of artwork. 

You could not help but be moved instantly by this display of obvious grief, and you sat upright, taking in the sight of the rich, red silks that covered the bed for the first time. You reached your hand out and touched Rashel’s shaking shoulder as they wept. They winced at your touch, but allowed it. “What’s really going on?” you asked, insistent and firm, but as gently as you could manage. Confused you might be, but it was apparent that there was more to this than you’d first grasped. 

“My Prince is… is…” Rashel wept openly, shoulders hunched and heaving. “Oh he is so weak and frail,” they sobbed, hands flying to cover their face. Stone chippings began to fall from them, and a fine dust drifted down around their body as though they might just crumble away. “He was hurt… hurt so badly. He needs… He…” Rashel’s chest continued to heave erratically and the cascade of stone fragments continued to fall, clattering softly on the ground like hail before evaporating completely to leave no trace.

“And I come in, how?” you prompted, hoping to move things forward when they stalled completely.

The pale creature before you suddenly sat up, taking a moment to compose themselves, and just as they had reined in their wild emotions, the door opened, revealing nothing but blank darkness. Tendrils of it tested the air of the chamber, but nothing entered. 

In that moment, you saw the room properly for the first time, and gasped. It was like the finest royal apartments on some history show, with trimmings of red and gold, silk damask, gilded furniture, and ormolu candelabra. A leaded window looked out onto a courtyard ornamented with black vines which produced blood red and gold flowers, and some hellish bird alighted on the black stone fountain in the centre. Its face on one side was like that of an enormous raven, but on the other, the feathers and flesh were flayed back to reveal bare bone and sinew, and your stomach turned over. Your gaze wandered back to the room around you and to the figures holding up the brackets of the candelabra. Again, your eyes and mind veered away from the tortured figures which held up the flames, some with their mouths wrenched unnaturally wide, some with dislocated limbs, and still more in unthinkably horrendous poses of contrived and permanent torture. Fitting, given that this was actual, literal Hell, after all. 

“Rashel,” a gritty voice said from the doorway, and you recognised it as belonging to Storniel. “It is time. His Highness is awake.”

“Come,” Rashel said, standing, and when they turned, you saw no trace of the fissures or the distress. “It is time for you to meet our beloved Prince.”

You rose numbly, finding yourself still dressed in the clothes you’d worn in the alley. Unable to think of anything else that you could do, you followed meekly in Rashel’s wake as they led you to the door of the room. 

In a flash, the darkness, as though it had been merely a skin across the doorway, retracted to reveal an endless corridor beyond, and the creature Storniel loomed over both of you at one side of it. He waved both his left hands, and gestured for you to follow Rashel while he once again brought up the rear. Your two silent sentinels set a steady pace, and you tried not to let your breathing get too shallow and rapid as your terror began to mount once more in your chest. 

You had never conceived of demons being actually real, and yet there you were, walking along a corridor in Hell, flanked front and back by two creatures who couldn’t be anything but demons.

Eventually, after winding your way through a myriad of confusing turns and staircases, passageways and connecting balconies that overlooked bubbling, rippling lakes of golden lava, you came to an ornately carved doorway. Much like those on Rodin’s Gates of Hell, twisted and howling figures bent backwards from the stone as though the surface itself burned their very souls, and as the doors were pulled back you saw the fixed rictus of searing agony on almost every face. Sharp, cold fear shot right through you and you ground to a halt in the doorway, unable to move forwards or backwards, rooted to the floor in abject fear. 

Two colossal creatures had dragged the doors open, and now sat as obediently as hunting hounds on either side. They were twice the size of a full grown bear, their hides lumpy and rocky, as if each had been hewn from a boulder with a pickaxe by an unskilled hand. Goat-like horns adorned their granite heads, while their bodies resembled those of a rhino for strength and proportion. 

Rashel paused when they no longer heard your feet behind them, and saw you staring. They leaned back to whisper in your ear, “The rock demons do not like it when you stare. Come, we must not keep my Prince waiting.”

Rock demons. Of course. It was almost laughably obvious.

It was only as a second door loomed into sight at the other end of the room, this one much more modest and simply carved, adorned with only a skull that reminded you of a mausoleum entrance, that you forgot your mild hysterics for something altogether more acrid. 

Rashel knocked briefly on the delicately carved ebony of the door with the quiet politeness of a butler, paused just a few moments, and then let themselves in. “Your Highness,” they said, dropping to one knee and bowing their head as they entered. 

Your own eyes were not on Rashel, as graceful and swanlike as their motions were. Your eyes were fixed on a huge bed in the centre of the far wall. Blueish flames licked gently up the sides of it, and it seemed to have been carved from the same stone as the fortress itself. Shards of raw rubies were embedded in the four massive pillars of the bed, and in the centre of it was a figure you could hardly make out for the rippling and distortion of the flames’ heat. 

“You brought me the human?” 

“Yes, my Prince,” Rashel breathed and rose, bidding you follow them with a curt gesture of their left hand. 

The prince’s voice was weak and rasping, and as you were led around the curtain of flames to the side of the bed, you gasped. Lying there, propped feebly against a stack of red, silk pillows, was the creature you had apparently been brought to as some kind of sacrifice. 

When Rashel took one look at him, they gasped and stared openly. “My Prince!” they admonished, but you had no idea why. 

The prince waved an emaciated, clawed hand and offered a placating smile at Rashel. 

He was very far from the monster you had been expecting. 

For one, he was pretty humanoid, rather than some mind-bending being, too horrifying for a simple human mind to grasp. His skin was a warm terracotta colour, though it flaked and chipped in places like old, winter-damaged rock. His two, almond-shaped eyes were red, dull and almost misty, and they wandered occasionally and his eyelids would flicker closed, as though he fought sleep. His chest was unevenly sculpted, as though by a lazy potter, and it rose and fell in weak, wheezing gasps. The rest of his body was concealed beneath the sheets, but it lay motionless. 

Storniel closed the doors softly behind him, and remained just inside the threshold as a silent spectre, observing without comment. 

“Come closer,” the prince croaked, beckoning you over. 

When you did not immediately move, Rashel set their hand to the small of your back and gently steered you closer. 

The prince squinted at you, as though he had difficulty making you out, and then he sighed heavily. The flames around the bed died away to nothing and he reached his clawed hand out for you as you came to a halt beside the colossal bed. “Thank you, Rashel, Storniel; you may leave us now.”

Rashel nodded, pale hair falling forwards, and hesitated for only a fraction of a second. 

Clearly amused, the prince laughed, a deep rumble like distant thunder, and added, “It’s quite alright, Rashel. I can hold this form for a good while yet before I begin to weaken. Fear not, my beloved captain.”

Rashel nodded again, brought their fist to their heart in a fervent salute, and left, Storniel following in their wake like a shadow. 

“I suspect you have questions,” the prince all but chuckled, returning his vague gaze to your face. 

“Yes,” you admitted sheepishly. 

The prince drew a deep, rattling breath and tried to adjust himself in the bed to a more comfortable position. With his arms pressed close by his hips, he tried to drag his lower body up the bed a little way so that he could sit more upright, but he broke off with a gasp as his arms caved and he slumped despondently into the pillows, a grimace of pain wracking his unremarkable face. “Forgive me,” he gasped, grinding his jaw. “Alas, I am not… what I used to be.”

“What happened to you?” you blurted without thinking.

He cast his misty eyes up at you and narrowed them, though you got the impression that, instead of scowling at the bluntness of your question, he was simply straining to see you. “We demons are not invulnerable, you know? No matter how powerful we may be, we may still be injured.” 

“Right,” you said, not really understanding much beyond his words. “And… what do you need me for?”

He blinked. “You were not told?” he asked, horror beginning to creep across his features. 

“No,” you said hotly. “No one has told me anything. I mean, I think Rashel might have been about to, but the other one, Storniel, came and told us you wanted to see me, and they never got the chance.”

“Ahh, Rashel,” the prince sighed. “Dear, devoted Rashel. You know, they’re the closest thing we have down here to an angel?” he asked conversationally, like an old man who’s found a willing ear to bend with old stories.

Your brows furrowed into a silent question, and the prince laughed softly. 

“I always say they’re too gentle to be a demon. Too full of feelings. But they’ve been the most loyal commander I have ever had since they fell.”

You began to feel hopelessly lost. “Fell?” 

“Most demons are born of the will of the Prince of Light, or of the darkest desires of man, but some of us have… higher origins. Rashel’s is a sad tale, to be sure.” He adjusted his weight again, with only marginally more success this time, and went on. “They fell for the crime of falling in love. But we were not talking of them; we were talking of you. If they wish you to know their tale, I’m sure they will tell it in time.” 

“Alright,” you said, your heart clenching painfully at the thought of someone being punished simply for falling in love. “Tell me then what on earth I’m doing here…”

“I cannot believe you were not told,” the prince snarled softly, baring his teeth. They looked like ordinary human teeth, and you couldn’t believe this was some high demon lord. He just looked like some ordinary, rather unremarkable human, albeit with red eyes. Where was the brimstone and the terrifying form? The wings of fire and the lashing tail? The mind-bending horror?

“I said that Rashel would have told me…” you began, but he cut you off with a growl.

“Not by them!” he snapped irritably. “By your father!”

That whipped the metaphorical rug right out from under your feet, and you actually staggered. “My father?” you gaped. “I’ve not spoken to my father in years. How was he supposed to tell me I was going to end up as some demon’s sacrifice?”

The prince was breathing heavily again and fixed you with a penetrating stare, despite the film of mist across his eyes. “You don’t know who he is, do you? Not truly?”

“Then tell me!” you roared, fists clenching, eyes flashing as you stared down at this invalid demon lying amid a sea of pillows.

You suddenly found you had no more fear, only anger and confusion and hurt. Your father had abandoned you the moment your eighteenth birthday had come around, and you’d never been able to wring an answer from him as to why he’d done so. He’d never returned your calls, never written to you, never wanted anything to do with you now that you were legally an adult. You shouted as much at the prince, allowing all your confusion to boil over, and he sat there, clearly astonished, as the tirade washed over him. It seemed to weaken him as it hit him in a blast, and he gasped, his breathing erratic and laboured for a moment.

The doors behind you burst open, and Storniel swept into the room. “My Prince?” he rumbled. A truly massive scythe was now held between his upper left and lower right hands, and a red light pulsed in the empty eye sockets of his cat-like, obsidian skull.

“It’s alright, Storniel,” the prince rasped. “It’s alright. Please, leave us in peace.”

“As you wish,” he growled, flashing a dangerous look at you before bowing and leaving the room in a swirl of dark smoke and letting the doors slam behind him. 

“Your minions seem awfully loyal,” you sneered. 

“I am fortunate in that regard. Now, please,” he said, catching his breath and waving a hand towards the edge of the room, “Bring over a chair and I will try to tell you everything.”

You did as he bid, and lowered yourself gingerly into the uncomfortable, carved chair as he began his explanation. 

“Your father was a demon hunter, and an accursedly good one too,” he said, and your eyes widened. He held up a hand, demanding silence until he’d finished talking. You probably couldn’t have formed coherent words anyway. “Please,” he said. “I’m not sure how much strength I have to finish this, and I would have you know it all before I pass out again…” 

There was a self-deprecating humour to his tone which you couldn’t help but find somehow sweet, despite your situation. You nodded, and he continued. 

“Now, a number of years before you were born, there rose to power a great Greed Demon. We demons have rules, you know, which are supposed to prevent any one of us growing in power to the extent that we claim part of the Mortal Realm for ourselves. This is our realm, and while we may hunt and scheme and play in yours for as long as we like, we may not take over and settle down and rule there. The same laws apply for angels and the inhabitants of many other realms, including the Fae.”

He paused a moment, licking his lips and breathing harder, like an old man who had hurried up a steep hill. Recovered somewhat, he continued. 

“This Greed Demon’s appetite knew no bounds, and she devoured innumerable souls, corrupted still more, and set her sights on carving out a little slice of the Mortal Realm for her own. The Great Prince, the Prince of Light, was not amused by this, but neither was he particularly concerned. His perception of passage of time is a little different from even the rest of ours. He assumed, I think, that her little game would be little more than a blip, a snagged thread in the greater tapestry of time. For whatever reason, He ignored her, and so her power grew.”

He sighed and lay mute for a moment, slumped limply against his pillows, his hands resting quiescent by his sides. His throat was clearly drying out, and he coughed weakly. There was a glass on his bedside table, and instinctively, you reached for it and passed it to him. 

“I don’t think I have even the strength needed to hold that, child,” he smiled sadly. “Thank you though.”

Groaning, you stood reluctantly and rolled your eyes. “Let me, then,” you said. Leaning over him, you slipped your hand behind his head, lifting it until he was in a position to be able to sip from the large glass. He seemed genuinely surprised by the gesture, but accepted your help with an abashed expression on his face. 

“Thank you,” he said, swallowing as you laid his heavy head back down onto the pillows behind him. He lay a while just breathing, with his eyes closed until eventually his eyelids fluttered open, and he asked, “Now, where was I?”

“Some Greed Demon getting too big for her boots?” you suggested. 

“Ah yes,” he grinned. “She gained some support: other lesser demons who wanted a taste of power in her planned new kingdom in your realm, and soon it became quite the problem. I and a few of the other lesser princes rallied to try and finish her off. Unfortunately, more than a few of the human hunters had also noticed signs and portents, and had arrived to try and exorcise her. She had grown too powerful for human magic to succeed unaided, however, and our efforts were hampered by ignorant humans who didn’t know the difference between the demonic forces involved.” 

He coughed again, and took a few more ragged breaths before continuing. His form seemed to flicker suddenly, like a badly tuned television signal, and you blinked, wondering if you were more tired than you’d realised yourself. 

The prince didn’t seem to notice, and attempted to plough on regardless. His voice grew hoarser with each sentence, the gaps between each extending until you suspected he was in danger of nodding off. “Your father took down many of my soldiers as well, not knowing that we were essentially on the same side this time. Ironic, really,” he laughed. “Now, this is where we get closer to your involvement, though you weren’t even a quickening in your mother’s womb by this point. Your father took a terrible wound from one of the Greed Demon’s guard, but I saw the determination in his eyes, and I knew that together, with my help, we could destroy the demon. 

“I healed him, and made a bargain with him. I knew that he had vowed to himself never to have a child, but when I touched his skin, I saw you, as clearly as I could see him. There was great power in that vision, and I knew you were bound to me. I knew you were the price of my help…”

Your heartbeat thundered in your ears and you stared in horror at his slack, sunken face. 

“Sadly, no demon may involve themselves with a human’s affairs without demanding some kind of price. So, when I healed him, I demanded that when his seed was full grown, I could call upon the strength of his line when I had need of them. He spat that he would bear no child in a world touched by demons, but I told him I needed the promise anyway. He gave it to me, thinking he would never have a child, and knowing that it was the only way we could destroy the demon.”

You sat there, reeling. All your life, your father had known that you would be called by this demon prince to give him your strength, and he had never told you? Never tried to prevent it? To keep you safe? Was he so ashamed of you that he had abandoned you the moment his legal obligations were over? 

As if reading the heart of your thoughts on your face, the prince smiled sadly. “Forgive him, child. I put him in a terrible position. What choice did he have?”

“He could have told me!” you snarled. “Could have done something to hide me from you! Could have prepared me somehow!” You were so angry that you were on the point of standing up again, your fists shaking in your lap. 

“True,” the prince nodded. “From what I knew of him, though, he abandoned you to protect you. If there were no ties between him and you any longer, perhaps I would never find you. It took my very best to track you down, after all,” he added wryly. “He kept you in ignorance to shield you, and it almost worked. I have been dying for a very long time now while Rashel has searched the world for you.”

After silent minutes slipped by while you stared into your hands in your lap, you finally looked up at him and said, “So… what happens now? You feed on me? Drain me dry? Turn me into some kind of empty husk? Just so you can get better?”

The prince looked at you with an impenetrable look in his dull, red eyes. Then he drew in a great breath and looked suddenly exhausted. If he’d looked tired before, now after your furious outburst he seemed on the verge of fading into the stillness of death. You saw the gauntness of his cheeks, heard the rasping of his breath, and noticed, not for the first time, the complete stillness of his legs. 

His head began to loll. “I’m sorry,” he hissed, and his eyes flickered shut, lifting open once or twice before he simply succumbed to exhaustion and fell into an uneasy sleep. 

You sat there a long time, just staring at this supposedly powerful demon prince, hoping he’d wake up and tell you what was going to happen to you next. He looked somehow very small in that great bed, and very vulnerable. “What the hell am I supposed to do?” you whispered to yourself. No answer came to you, and it seemed like a lifetime passed you by before a knock on the door announced the return of Rashel. 

They entered the room and bowed, despite seeing that the prince was asleep, and beckoned you away with a whisper, promising you a meal and a tour of the castle. You wanted neither, but were too shocked and shaken by the prince’s revelations to refuse. 

You were brought back to his chambers the following morning, but the prince was asleep, and you simply sat in the chair, bored, for hours while he slumbered. Day, after day, Rashel brought you back to his chambers with the silent loyalty of a devoted wolfhound. On the forth day, the prince was awake, though he looked, if possible, even worse after all his rest. The moment the door opened, the prince looked up, and his form flickered violently. You’d noticed it do that before in his sleep, but now it glitched and shivered, and he croaked harshly, “Out!” 

Rashel took you by the hand, snatching up your fingers in their cold grasp, and practically dragged you from the room. 

“What was that about?” you panted in the antechamber as the black doors to the prince’s bedroom boomed shut behind you. 

Rashel’s distress was evident in every line of their chiselled body, and they looked on the verge of tears again. 

“He means a great deal to you, doesn't he?” you asked suddenly. “Why do you love him so much?”

Rashel smiled sadly and walked over to the window in the wall of the ornate antechamber, laying their marbled hands down on the sill and gazing out at the lava lake beyond. “When I fell -” they broke off and fixed you with a look, “- I’m assuming my Prince has told you that much…?”

“He said you were an angel,” you said hesitantly. “And that you were punished for loving someone…”

They nodded. “Not just ‘someone’. I loved a demon. It’s not unknown for angels to fall for humans, but it’s not exactly encouraged. It is forbidden for them to fall for a demon, however.”

“Was it the prince?” you asked tentatively, aware of how close their voice was to cracking. 

They shook their head and closed their eyes. “No. The love I bear the Prince is true and ardent, but it is not of that kind.” 

You remained near the doors to the prince’s rooms and listened, moved, to their lovely voice as they began to open up to you. 

“When I fell, I had nowhere. I had no understanding or control of my new abilities, no understanding of my body or my place in the world. I… I was lost. My love was dead, and I had nothing. He found me. I was being tormented by despair demons in some rotten corner of Hell. They battered at me, clawing me, tearing me to shreds, feeding off my pain, only to heal me and begin all over again. He banished them and took me with him. He cared for me.” 

Rashel opened their eyes and stared out again at the desolate scene before them. Something massive, serpentine, and winged rose lazily through the blood red sky above the black mountains in the distance, and their ebony eyes followed its progress for a while. 

“I hadn’t known that demons could be kind,” they smiled. “I thought that they acted only in selfish interests, but they don’t. They care just as much as the angels do, perhaps more, but they are bound by different rules.” They sighed, and their breath formed a glittering frost across the window that glinted like diamonds. “He nurtured me, cared for me, educated me, and took me into his fold. In time, I became a soldier in his army, and rose through the ranks to where I am now. I even made some friends - Storniel among them. I’m not alone because of my prince. He gave me new purpose, and so I give him my allegiance, and my heart.”

You nodded. “I… I didn’t know demons were capable of anything like that,” you said. “I didn’t even know demons even existed until you and Storniel turned up in that alleyway.”

“I’m sorry,” Rashel said, turning away from the window to look at you again. “That must have been quite the shock.”

You nodded. “What’s Storniel? Is he a fallen angel like you?”

Rashel shook their head. “He is a reaper. Surely you saw the scythe…”

A violent shudder rippled through you, and you looked for a way to change the subject, glancing back at the closed doors behind you. “What was that all about though?” you asked, jabbing your thumb towards them for extra emphasis. “Why did he chuck us out like that? I thought he needed me for whatever dumb shit he’s got planned…” you said bitterly.

Rashel’s face crumpled, and cracks immediately began to spider across their smooth, hard skin. “He’s dying,” they choked. “He cannot hold his disguise any more. He has not the strength.”

“Disguise?”

They smiled. “We all have our true forms, and what you have seen of my Prince is not his true form. Frankly I’m astonished he has been able to hold that one for so long, even in sleep. He must not want to frighten you, but it’s weakening him all the faster.”

“You all have other forms? What about you? Is this your true form?”

Rashel shook their head, smiling gently. “Perhaps I’ll show you one day,” they added wryly. “Storniel is not so shy. You’ve seen him as he truly is already.”

A knock at the door interrupted your conversation, and Rashel crossed with their swanlike grace to open it. A very small - and frankly adorable - goblin-like creature with the disproportionately massive ears of a fennec fox, stood just beyond the door. Rashel smiled down at it as it bowed, chirruped, and held out a note. They took it with a pale hand and thanked the little demon, who promptly vanished in a puff of sulfurous smoke, making Rashel cough slightly as they straightened. “Forgive me,” they murmured, reading the note again. “I must leave immediately. There has been a disturbance on the borders of my Prince’s territory. You can find your way back to your rooms alone?”

You nodded. “Thanks, Rashel.”

They offered you a beautiful smile, and then left. 

You had absolutely no intention of returning to your room now, and instead made your way back to the prince’s doors. Laying your fingers on the handle, you paused, heart thudding. You had to know, and you weren’t afraid of what he looked like. You were nervous of any consequences of this stupid boldness, but if you were going to be some kind of sacrifice, you at least deserved to see the monster who was going to drain you dry, right?

With that thought, you pushed your way into the room, and ground immediately to a halt, staring at the bed. 

Lying there, his breathing shallow, with the covers pushed back as though he were flushed with feverish heat, was absolutely not the creature you’d left behind only minutes ago. His chest was a roughly carved, gnarled, knotted mess of sinew and muscle beneath tightly pulled skin, but what drew and held your eyes was the massive, gaping maw that ran vertically down the length of his torso from his collarbones to his belly button. Irregularly sized teeth jutted out at various angles, some huge, some small. As his chest heaved with his rasping breath, the mouth opened slightly to reveal the pale bones of his spine behind, and a long, glistening black object that you took to be his tongue, sat right in the centre of the vertical mouth behind the teeth. 

His face was the same dark terracotta colour it had been before, but where he had had human features earlier, now his nose was flattened to two mere slits, and his mouth seemed to have vanished completely, closed up and lying behind what looked like cold lava flows, or marks where fingers had been drawn through unfired clay. His eyes were deep hollows, from which a blueish light glowed, and behind him on the bed stretched enormous, leathery, tattered wings. A lithe tail hung off the side of the bed, and two elegantly curled horns almost met in the middle above his head, like a broken halo, and at the gap of air between them, a glimmering blue light glowed and danced like a pilot light in a guttering breeze.

You stood there, staring, until he sensed you and began to snarl. His voice seemed to come from his very core, since he didn’t have a mouth on his face any more. “Get out!” he rasped. “I… I sent you away… I… please…” 

“No,” you said firmly. “If I’m going to be some kind of sacrifice, the least you can do is let me see you for who you really are.”

He began to wheeze and you frowned, stepping closer. Somehow the sight of him like this felt more natural than that strange, off-human body he had pretended was his own before. It felt right. As you approached the bed and boldly sat down on it, he turned his head weakly and gazed up at you with those strangely empty eyes. “You… You aren’t afraid of me?” he rasped. “I thought… I thought it would be… easier if… I…” he panted, suddenly short of breath.

You shook your head. “I think I actually prefer you like this,” you said, tilting your head slightly as you regarded him. His clawed hands trembled and his bizarre torso clenched in pain. “What can I do?” you asked. 

He didn’t move. He just stared up at you, his breathing barely audible now. The flickering flame between his horns was barely a pinprick of blue light now.

Bravely, you reached for his shoulder, wondering if the mouth on his torso would snap at your hand like some vile, Venus fly-trap plant. The teeth - pointed and glistening softly in the dim light of the room - certainly looked like they could do some real damage. He shuddered all over as your hand touched his skin, and he sighed. “Stay?” he managed to say, though it was softer than the wind through winter grass. 

And so you stayed. 

“I won’t hurt you,” he promised you after perhaps a quarter of an hour of sitting there in silence, his voice thin as autumn gossamer. “I swear it. I won’t hurt you.”

“But… won’t you die?”

“Perhaps,” came his deep, resonant response. “But perhaps not, if you just stay close. It… It’s easier now that you’re touching me.”

When a knock came at the door, hours later, the flames between his horns had regained a little vigour, and you had just finished telling him a story from your college days. A little shy laugh rumbled out of him as the door opened, and you glanced over your shoulder as Storniel entered the room. He froze, and his tall scythe dropped from his suddenly slack fingers to clatter onto the floor. “My Prince?” he grated, his body tense.

“Storniel, old friend,” the prince smiled. Strange, how his tone could convey a smile when his bizarre mouth could not. “What is it?”

“I…” the reaper faltered, “You…”

The prince laughed again, more heartily this time, and all the tension bled out of Storniel’s shoulders. 

“Forgive me,” he said, calling the scythe to his hands instead of stooping to pick it up from the floor. “But it is good to hear you laugh again, my prince.”

“I’m glad,” the prince said. “Do you have news for me?”

“I…” Storniel scratched awkwardly behind his cat-skull head and snorted. “I actually came to tell you that the human had disappeared… Rashel told me they’d given orders for the human to remain in the Red Room, and when I brought supper along and found it empty… We’ve been searching everywhere. We never even thought to look here…” 

The prince’s laughter filled the room, and blue flames began to lick at the edges of the bed once more. He held your hand tightly in his taloned fingers and you glanced down to see the maw on his torso stretching open a little. Once more you glimpsed the glittering surface of a black tongue, and you wondered idly what that would feel like on your skin. The thought so surprised you that you almost snatched your hand free of his, as though he’d be able to read your mind. 

Either he could not, or he was polite enough not to react. The prince only continued to laugh, and then turned to you. “Go on. You should go and eat, and I should rest. I… Thank you,” he said awkwardly. “I feel better than I have in years after this one afternoon with you.”

“Perhaps there’s no need to suck me dry after all,” you grinned, standing. 

Something about his body suggested a smirk, though his face never moved - it didn't even seem like his face could show emotion of any kind - but there was a hidden amusement about the set of his shoulders and the way the slightly raised lips which surrounded his vertical mouth shifted. “Until tomorrow?” he said simply, and you nodded. “I will send for you then. Do not come until I call you, please.”

Perhaps Hell wouldn’t be so bad after all. The food was pretty good, and the company was starting to get better. 

There was a ghoul or something that followed you around the castle the next day as you waited to be summoned to the prince’s chambers again. Hoping to find some respite from its irritating teasing, you headed to what you had discovered on your second day was the castle’s library, but to no avail. It followed you inside, and immediately coiled around you and blotted out your sight. It sent trickles of icy liquid down your back, and tried to force its fingers into your mouth, laughing all the while. Just as you’d begun to struggle in earnest, a rough hand yanked it off you and hurled it mercilessly at the walls, whereupon it shattered into a violet mist and fled the library. 

“Are you hurt?” It was Storniel, towering over you with his colossal antlers still dripping darkness and his lower half wreathed in shifting black fog. His scythe was nowhere in sight. He stared down at you from his expressionless skull, but you smiled gratefully. 

“No,” you panted. “Just… grossed out?”

He huffed a laugh. “She could not have hurt you,” he said. “Not truly - not with the protection of the prince, but still, I'm sorry she frightened you.”

You shrugged. “Figured it was a normal day in Hell,” you grinned, and he huffed a hoarse laugh. 

“You’re adapting quickly to life down here,” he said with something approaching respect. “Come, my Prince calls for you.”

He ushered you from the room and escorted you towards the now familiar rooms of the prince, leaving you at the door with a bow. 

Entering, you saw that the prince was still in his demonic form, and as ever he lay on his back. This time, however, he was breathing quietly, and he seemed more alert than usual. He lifted his head as you entered and closed the door behind you, and his black tongue darted out to lick the tips of the teeth in an unmistakably nervous gesture, despite the unfamiliar anatomy. 

“Hi,” you said, feeling oddly shy this time. 

He bowed his head silently and beckoned you over. “How was your morning?” he asked as you sat beside him on the bed in the same position you had the day before. Immediately, the prince took your hands in his and gripped them tightly. Concern rippled through his tone as he asked, “Someone has been bothering you.” And then his voice turned fierce as he added, “Trying to frighten you…”

“Some ghoul knocking around in the library,” you said casually. “Storniel appeared and ripped them a new one, so I’m not bothered…”

“Still,” he snarled, “You are under my protection.” 

“It’s fine,” you said, surprised by the warmth in the pit of your stomach. “It was harmless, I guess.” He rumbled something indistinct and you laughed. “So, what do you want to hear about today?”

You spent the next days in a similar pattern, visiting his chambers every day for longer and longer, until Storniel began bringing you your supper in the prince’s chambers, at the prince’s request. Each time you saw him, the prince seemed livelier, and Storniel commented, as he led you back to your chambers one night, that he hadn’t heard the prince in such high spirits since before the Greed Demon’s rise to power. 

Rashel returned from the skirmish at the borders of the prince’s territory with a bandage over one eye and a terrible limp. They opened the door to the prince’s chambers, and the moment the prince saw their battered body, they sat up abruptly, dislodging you from the bed completely. Ignoring your little grunt of surprise as you caught yourself from slithering to the floor, the prince opened his arms and bid Rashel come close. 

“My dear friend,” he crooned. “You are hurt! Look at you!”

“My Prince,” Rashel gasped, staring openly at him in astonishment. “You… You’re… You look…”

“Magnificently hideous as ever?” he laughed. “Now come here, Rash!”

The pale demon nodded and approached, hiding a wince with each step and still managing to appear graceful despite their obvious pain. The prince took Rashel’s beautiful face in both of his palms and lowered his forehead to meet Rashel’s, being careful not to jab them with his horns. The light which danced there quite merrily now suddenly flared like lit magnesium, and you were forced to turn away, screwing your eyes up against the brilliance of the light. 

When you dared open them, the prince was leaning back against the pillows, and the bandages around Rashel’s head were falling away to reveal the stunningly carved face you recalled from before. Rashel’s black eyes had filled with tears, and they dropped to one knee. “My Prince,” they choked. 

The prince laughed weakly from the bed and said, “Go on, Rash. I will hear your report later. I received the missive which said it was all cleared up, and I would have you feed and rest first.”

“As you command. And thank you, my Prince,” they said formally before casting you a quick, fond smile and retreating from the room. 

After the door had closed with a soft click, you turned to the prince. “Are you ok?” you asked doubtfully. 

“That… took a lot out of me,” he admitted, “But I haven’t been able to wield my magic in years. You truly have done wonders for me.”

“But how?” you said. “I don’t feel any different? Have you been sucking my soul dry while I’ve been telling you boring stories about the human world?”

He snorted softly, an amused little snuffle from his slit nostrils, and shook his head. “No. Your energy is pure and perfect, and just being around you, being close to you, is enough. I should have told you sooner that I don’t need your blood or your soul. I just need… you.”

At those words, something inside you that had been incredibly lonely for so very long, began to crack and waver, and you felt your lip tremble slightly. Instinctively, you lay down and curled up beside him on the bed, and laid your head gingerly on his shoulder. “Is this alright?” you asked in a tentative, hoarse murmur.

“I can’t believe… you want to do this…” he managed to hiss. 

You brought your fingertips to the teeth that jutted upwards from his unusual mouth and ran them down the nearest and largest, right down to the root where it disappeared into what should have been his stomach. “I don’t think I could ever have imagined a body like yours,” you chuckled, and felt him shift slightly beneath your touch. “Did I hurt you?”

He shook his head.

“What happened to you to injure you so baldly?” you asked in a whisper, still tracing your fingertips around his maw.

“An angel’s sword,” he said, his voice - as ever - coming from somewhere deep inside him without his ever moving his mouth. “It damaged my spine and nearly killed me… I cannot move my legs at the moment. Perhaps I never will.”

“What?” you gasped. “An angel did this to you?”

“The blades of angels are very dangerous to demons of all ranks, even the more powerful ones. They are one of the few things that could actually destroy us forever. The magic of humans can banish us back here, prevent us returning to the Mortal Realm, even cause us severe pain, but rarely can it damage us the way an angel’s blade can.” He sighed and hugged you closer to him for a moment. “We can damage them too in ways that others cannot. All in the name of cosmic balance…” 

“Will you heal?”

He shrugged. “I am already healing. And much more quickly than I ever imagined.” He twitched his arm and you snuggled closer, draping your arm along his body, letting your palm come to a rest on his hip bones. He gasped and bucked his upper body slightly into your touch, a low, shuddering rumble emanating from deep inside his chest. “All thanks to you,” he added. 

“I’m glad.”

After a pause he asked, “Do you really mean that? You don’t resent me? I tore you from your Realm, forced you to be here… This isn’t supposed to be… nice. I mean, it is Hell after all…”

You snorted. “It’s not so bad. Maybe that says a lot about me, but I don’t know. You’re not what I thought a prince of Hell would be like, and Storniel and Rashel aren’t so bad either…”

He laughed and shook his head. “If I could kiss you right now, I would,” he said, nuzzling his bony cheek against the top of your head where it still rested on his shoulder. 

“I’m sure you could find another way to express yourself…” you said playfully. 

The prince gave a great sigh, his fingers tightening on your waist for a moment. “Not tonight,” he said reluctantly, as though exercising great self-control. “Not now. I need to rest.”

“Fair enough,” you murmured and yawned as if on cue. 

He raked his sharp fingertips through your hair, and slowly you began to drift off to the rhythm of his rasping breaths and the delicate scraping of his talons against your scalp. An aura of calm safety surrounded you in a way you’d not felt since perhaps your earliest childhood, and it soothed you right down to your bones. Strange, you thought, to find such gentle comfort in the arms of one of the princes of Hell: a demon.

You awoke slowly and contentedly to the sound of soft voices and, without opening your eyes, you lay there and listened as Rashel gave their report of the fighting to the prince. Once it was done, the prince thanked them again for their unerringly devoted service, and expressed his hopes that Rashel would give themselves permission to relax and have some fun for a while. “I’m not asking you to forget her, dear friend,” he said gently, in the tone of one speaking to an old and very dear friend. “I’m just asking that you open yourself to new chances.”

“I will try, my Prince,” Rashel said stiffly before retreating from the room. 

The prince sighed deeply with obvious regret, and stroked your hair, much like the owner of a beloved cat would card through their fur on a quiet evening by the fire. “After all, fate brought you to my life,” he said quietly, “And look how much joy you have brought already.”

You stirred then, and slid your hand absentmindedly across his lower torso, circling his hips and drawing your own body as close to his as possible.

He groaned deeply and tightened his hold on you again, circling the small of your back with his large hand. His mouth parted and you cracked your eyes open to see his tongue sliding out as if tasting the air - tasting you on the air - and he let out another shuddering rumble. Unmistakably, he was beginning to get aroused. 

“Oh, my little human,” he growled softly. “What have you done…?”

“Me?” you murmured, voice sleepy and innocent. You palmed a circle over his hip bone and he grunted softly. That maw, lined with deadly teeth, parted, and his tongue snaked free as his fingers hooked beneath your top and he began to draw it up your back to free your skin. 

“May I?” he purred, suddenly desperate. “Please… May I?”

“Mmm,” you nodded, and he hauled you up a little to free you of the fabric of your shirt. The second you were out of it, his tongue began to lave over you in serpentine licks. Thick and black and utterly prehensile, it left searing stripes of wetness over your skin as drool began to glisten on his teeth. He moaned and sighed, savouring you, and eventually you looked away from the mesmerising sight of it working across your stomach and saw that at the top of his bare, motionless legs, a slit was beginning to open in his lower torso. The flesh was swelling, flushing a darker red, and it glistened softly at the very tip of hate slit.

Below his gaping maw, the skin was puffy and, you discovered as you trailed your fingertips curiously over it, incredibly sensitive. He gasped, his upper back and shoulders lurching, while his legs remained immobile. His strength seemed to increase, however, the more he tasted you with that tongue of his, and soon the slit in his body began to grow increasingly slick with his arousal. 

You tentatively slipped your fingertips inside the swollen walls of the slit and discovered that it was a sheath, hot and wet. He moaned deliciously and grabbed the curve of your backside, squeezing hard. In seconds, you felt the tip of what had to be his cock, just beginning to rise from the sheath. In the space of three of his heaving, gasping breaths, his black tongue lolling limply out of his maw now that you had sat up to get a better vantage point, his impressive cock had swelled and emerged from the sheath. 

Bright orange, like magma, with lighter, hotter ridges along its length, and with a nest of smaller tentacles at the base, it squirmed freely for a moment before you bravely wrapped your fingers around it and squeezed experimentally. 

The tentacles at the base writhed to try and touch you as well, and his whole body was wracked with sudden, glorious tension, and he gripped the sheets, his sharp talons tearing through them. Heedless of the damage he was doing, he began to pant. Drool slid off of his black tongue as it writhed, seeking the taste of you again. 

“I want you,” he rasped. “Please…” His tail began to thrash against the side of the bed, and the flame between his horns flared hot and bright, though nothing caught fire from it, thankfully.

With a smile, you shed the remainder of your clothes, and let him steer you to straddle his chest for a while. His tongue pressed itself to you - so long it could cover you from front to back, and half way up your arching spine. It was hot and slick, slippery as he revelled in the taste of your skin. His colossal, sharp teeth grazed the inside of your thighs, but he never drew blood, never hurt you, as he explored all of you, like a dying man given sudden reprieve. 

An endless stream of rumbling moans and sighs rolled from his cavernous chest, and his hands explored all of you until you were as sensitive as he. His cock, searingly hot and slick as his tongue as it dripped copiously with pre-come, nudged against the tight ring of muscle between your cheeks, and it was your turn to let out a grunt of surprise and pleasure. He nudged gently into you, stretching you carefully with his cock as he pleasured you elsewhere with his tongue. 

The sensations piled steadily on top of one another - the lick and swirl of his tongue over the places where you were most sensitive, and the nudge and push of his slick, ridged cock as it gradually opened you to him. He had no strength in his hips, and so, after what felt like a frustrating eternity of preparation, you simply sat back and felt him sink all the way inside you. 

His maw stretched wide, revealing all his monstrous anatomy to you, all the while his tongue wrapped itself around you, coiling and uncoiling, tasting and delighting in your body as you gave yourself to him. 

Tangible energy rippled between you as you rode him. The ridges of his cock filled you utterly until you saw stars, the short tentacles at its base teasing you until you thought you might die of ecstasy, and you tumbled forwards, gripping his shoulders for support. 

“I’ve got you,” he murmured, sounding barely coherent himself. “Are you alright?”

You nodded, mute with pleasure, hardly able to muster a whimper. 

“You are the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen,” he rumbled. “By all the powers of darkness, I’m yours,” he swore as you rocked your hips again and he thrust his head back into the pillows behind him. 

His tongue moved with renewed vigour, drawing you closer to your peak as it teased you relentlessly just where you liked it most. The pressure built and you began to gasp, shaking with all the sensations he was offering to you. “Please,” you gasped. “Please… I’m… I’m…” 

Your orgasm tore through you in a sudden, all-consuming, overwhelming wave, so intense that your vision vanished and your heart pounded furiously in your ears. 

“I’m yours!” you screamed, doubling over and clenching around him so tightly that he followed you a second later with a roar that shook the entire room. Heat gushed inside you, his release filling you and spilling out of you, even as he continued to empty himself into you. His maw hung open, his tongue locked against you in a rigour of pleasure, only sending you spiralling further into the depths of your orgasm. 

Eventually you finished and slumped, exhausted, onto his torso. He barely managed to close his mouth in time, but he did, and you lay pressed over the interlocking teeth of his vertical maw. After a few pounding heartbeats, he lifted your shoulders up and opened his lips a little. “I need to breathe,” he whispered fondly. 

“Sorry,” you slurred, hanging limply from his hands, his cock still pulsing sporadically inside you. “I needed that…”

“So did I,” he said wryly. “Are you alright?”

“Mmmph,” you murmured. 

He chuckled. Slowly, he lifted you easily off him, and as his cock began to withdraw from you he grunted as the ring of muscle clenched instinctively at his movement. A second later, his release began to slip from you, and you groaned at the sensation, too weak to do anything about it yourself. You weren’t sure if it was the light of the flames between his horns that was just glowing more brightly, but there seemed to be an aura around him that you’d not noticed before. 

Exhaustion washed over you before you could ponder it any further, and as he lowered you down beside him, you found yourself drifting into a deep sleep already. “Rest, little one,” he breathed, sounding like he needed it as much as you did. 

You woke to the soft sound of your name rumbling from his body. “Wake up,” he laughed. “Wake up!”

“What?” you groused, only making him laugh harder. 

“You… You gave yourself to me last night,” he said, still giggling like an excited child on Christmas morning. 

You shifted, feeling the ache between your legs. “Oh yeah,” you said. “That I did.”

“No,” he insisted, as though you were being very dense. “No, it’s not about the sex! You gave yourself to me!”

“What?” A sudden lurching fear swung through you, and you sat up abruptly. You were still naked, and he stared at you, the light in his hollowed eye sockets glowing virulently. 

“I’m healed,” he said, sounding choked. “I have all my strength back. I am as I was before the bargain with your father was struck. You saved me!” he said, and drew you close. “You didn’t have to sleep with me for that to happen,” he clarified. “You just had to give yourself to me, and you did,” he practically sobbed against you.

“Oh,” you mumbled, your voice muffled against his searingly hot chest. When he relaxed his arms a little to let you breathe, you asked, “Does that mean I’m stuck down here forever now? Did I give my soul away to you or something?”

His whole body changed then. The laughter in his voice died and the joy left the lines of his shoulders and his expressive hands. He let go of you. “No,” he said quietly. “No, I would not keep you here against your will. Your soul is still your own.”

“I want to go home,” you said in a tiny voice. 

Something clearly broke in him then. He turned his face away from you and drew the sheets up over himself. “Very well,” he said, voice as icy as Rashel’s breath had been on the glass a few days ago. “Your clothes are over there.” He gestured to where you’d abandoned them beside the bed the previous night.

The change was so abrupt that your eyes sailed wide, and you slid obediently, numbly, from the bed. That hadn't been quite what you’d meant…

Your feet hit the floor, and you began to dress mechanically. 

Once the last item of clothing was on, he waved his hand, still without looking at you, and a shimmering portal appeared in the air in front of you. It sliced a hole through the room and beyond it you could see the alleyway where Rashel and Storniel had first found you. It was daylight, but otherwise, nothing appeared to have changed. 

“Go,” he said hollowly. “You will not hear from me again.”

“Wait,” you said, turning away from the portal. “Stop. Wait, that… I didn’t mean… I just… I just wanted to know if I were free, that’s all.”

He rounded on you, snarling, his great maw opening and his tongue lashing at his teeth like a snarling wolf’s. “Get out!” he bellowed. “Go on! You don’t belong here anyway.” He choked up, emotion suffocating his strange, resonant voice. 

You took one step towards the portal, frightened by his anger. As you turned, you saw his shoulders shake and his back bend forwards. He drew his legs up, bending them at the knee and clutching one arm around them, hugging them in tightly while still holding the other extended to keep the portal open. 

“Your legs,” you breathed. “You…”

“I told you I was healed when you gave yourself to me,” he said in a tiny voice. “Go,” he whispered. “I can’t hold this open much longer.”

“Let it go,” you said firmly, turning on the spot. “I’m not leaving. I just… I only wanted to know if I were a prisoner.”

“You were never a prisoner,” he rasped. “You just never asked to leave.”

“I did,” you said. “I told Rashel I wanted to go home.”

He smiled. “That was before you met me,” he said. “Rashel had not the power to take you home - not when I commanded them to bring you to me first.”

“So if I asked them now, they’d take me home?”

The prince sighed. “Yes. You may leave whenever you wish.”

“And what if I want to go and come as I please?” you said. “What then?”

He raised his head and stared at you. “You wish to stay?”

“I wish to be free,” you corrected. “I wish to be able to come and see you whenever I like, but I don’t want to be trapped here.” You paused and grinned. “This is Hell after all!”

A deep, sonorous laugh rippled out of him and he closed the portal behind you and flung his arms open wide. He was still covered in the remnants of your lovemaking, but you didn’t mind. You landed in his lap as he lowered his legs again, and you wrapped your arms around his neck, burying your face against his hot skin. 

You jumped wildly as you felt something hot and wet sneak up underneath your top, and then barked a laugh right in his ear as you realised it was his tongue. 

“I would have you rule down here at my side,” he said quietly. “But you are free to leave whenever you desire.”

“I’m not going anywhere just yet,” you said, kissing his solid cheek. 

“Good,” he said, nuzzling back against you. His tongue slipped beneath your waistband and pressed dexterously against a place that was both a little sore and very sensitive. As your back arched and your body rocked, he laughed. “I’m not finished with you yet, my little human.”

“Go on then, my Prince,” you smiled, tipping back into his arms and allowing him to remove the clothes you had so recently put on. “Have your way with me.”

He growled, surged forwards, and got to work on you with all his new-found strength and vigour. 

Don't forget to check out the Patreon Masterlist, in case you missed anything from before. 

I hope to continue to update October's multi-part story (which is currently a colossal 19,992 words long already) with the conclusion soon, as well as doing the dullahan story!! *wheezes*

Anyway, I really hope you enjoyed this super long story! I fell completely in love with the prince, and Rashel and Storniel too!  *wibbles*