Since you are the sun,
I brought you your very own ray of sunshine. Taken from Solara—the home of light, where Earth’s sun comes from. Tap once for midday, tap again for sunset, tap again for sunrise.
- K
Solara, another place I had never heard of. A realm, a whole realm dedicated to sunshine. The light in the orb is soft, yet impossibly bright, like the sun distilled into something I could hold in my hands. I pick it up, tapping it once. The orb shiftsinstantly, and I watch in awe as the colours melt into the brilliant orange-pinks of a sunset, the kind my mother used to love watching from the back porch. Another tap, and it transforms into the delicate pastel golds and blues of a sunrise, soft and full of sleepy hope of a new day. I sit there, staring, unable to move, unable to think. My chest tightens painfully, my vision blurring. My mother would have loved this.
I pad into my bedroom, setting the orb carefully on my bedside table, watching the colours shifting peacefully. I curl under my blankets, pulling my knees to my chest as I lie on my side, watching the sunset glow of the orb until my eyes grow heavy. For the first time in weeks, I don’t cry myself to sleep. Instead, I fall asleep wrapped in the light of Solara. Still furious, still broken, but with a tiny little orb bringing a semblance of peace to my heart.
The next morning,the orb still sits on my nightstand, glowing softly, casting a warm halo across the room. I stare at it for a long time, hating how much it comforts me, hating it even more because it reminded me of a certain seven-foot demon who had flipped my entire world on its head.
I drag myself out of bed, the Christmas wrapping paper still littered across my floor. The presents from Talia and Ezra sitting on my sofa, little pieces of them warming the cold edges of my heart. I wrap myself up in Ezra’s ridiculous hoodie, tracing my fingers over the lettering that reads ‘Sunshine Incarnate’. Because, honestly, I need the lie today.
The daysbetween Christmas and New Year’s blur into one long, sluggish crawl. I go through the motions. Smiling when Taliaand Ezra text, frowning when my boss tells me that I have to work the first day back after Christmas break. I even manage grocery shopping, acting like a fully functional human being for the first time in what feels like forever. But inside, I remain stuck, floating somewhere between fury and heartbreak.
New Year’s Eve crept in like a ghost. Talia and Ezra begged me to go to a house party with them—offering everything from pizza bribes to promises of no gross frat boys hitting on me—but I declined. I blamed it on still being tired, on needing to rest before I went back to work. The truth was, I wasn’t ready to go to another party just yet. Honestly, I didn’t know if I would ever be ready again. Images of Ethan flash through my head, making my palms break out in a cold sweat. Nope, I don’t think I will ever be ready to go to another party as long as I live.
By eleven thirty p.m., I was sitting on my old sagging sofa, wrapped in the fluffiest blanket I could find, staring out of the window. The streets were alive outside, bursts of laughter filling the air, flashes of cheap fireworks already starting to explode in the distance. I hug my knees to my chest, letting the cool glass of the window chill my face as I lean against it. I’d brought the orb from Solara from my bedside to my coffee table, casting the soft hues of a sunset across the otherwise dark room. I tap it once with my finger, watching it shift to a sleepy sunrise, ready for a new day, a new year.
It was supposed to make me feel hopeful, but I still just feel empty. Like an echo chamber was in my chest, residing where my heart should be. The first fireworks of the new year explode in the sky as the clock turns to midnight, painting brilliant purple and gold against the dark. I press my face harder against the glass, watching the lights scatter across the city as I hold tightly to my empty bottle of wine.
“I wish you had never saved me,” I whisper into the empty room. “And I wish you had never left.”
I take a glance back at the orb on the table, wondering just how bad a marriage to the Prince of Hell could be.
Chapter 20
Korithax
The mortal whisky burns like acid as the amber liquid slides down my throat.
Good. Maybe it’ll cauterise whatever rot seems to be festering inside of me. I lean back in the worn leather chair of the viewing chamber, the scrying mirror suspended above the blackened stone table like a frozen moon. It hums with magic, flickering with the image I can’t stop watching. Her apartment is quiet and dim, messy in the way I’ve grown to know how she likes her space. And there she is, sitting by the window in that absurdly oversized hoodie. The one with the words Sunshine Incarnate scrawled across the front like some kind of bad joke. The orb sits on her coffee table, casting hues of soft light across the room. The same orb I know she threw in the trash. Yet, there it is, illuminating her space. Her knees are pulled up, an empty wine bottle swinging in her fingers as she stares out at the fireworks illuminating the sky. I swirl the whisky in my glass, letting the silence stretch between us, despite her not knowing I’m there with her.
“If you hate me so much, little flower,” I murmur, voice rough from the burning spirit that laces my throat. “Why do you sit with my gift?”
She taps the orb, the colours shifting from sunset to sunrise. Even now, she’s always choosing the light. Always pretending her life, her world, isn’t made of shadow.
I down the rest of my drink in one go, the glass thunking against the stone with a hollow sound that makes my jaw twitch. It’s been well over a month since she left my realm. Well over a month since I told her to get on with her fucking life, since I let the venom spill from my tongue just to stop myself from falling at her feet. And I’ve watched her every night since. Pathetic.
But I have bigger problems. The Divine Six have made their threat. A noose tightening. A deadline. One more moon cycle to find a bride, or they’ll provide one for me. Tick fucking tock. They gave me three options, all of them insufferable, each one worse than the last. Zerithia of the Eastern Flame Tribe that reside in the pits. Strong lineage, a decent warrior, but has tried to assassinate two of her previous fiancés—one of them successfully. It turns out, she also does not want marriage, and is being forced into it by her parents. So if she can’t have her own way, she’ll just keep trying to kill those who get in her way.
Then there’s Iralen of the Wretched Vale, part of a realm Hell cut trade with a long, long time ago. Poison in a gown. She kissed me with daggers behind her back, already asking me what I’d leave her in my will. I’d give her credit for being so upfront if it wasn’t for the fact that I knew damn well she wouldn’t waste time on stabbing those daggers straight into my jugular the second the ceremony was over. I’m pretty sure she was only putting herself in the running so she had a chance to kill me as revenge for Hell cutting the trade deal. It wasn’t even my decision; it was my father’s and the Divine Six who decidedthey weren’t worthy. But now all of a sudden, one of theirs was potential bride material. Make it make sense.
And finally, Alorith. Some highborn royal from the Crystalline Peaks, a realm too far away from here for me to ever even consider visiting. She had come here, though, to make herself a contender. She was absolutely beautiful, well-polished, yet so painfully dull that I’d forgotten her name twice during our meeting. I’m pretty sure I’d fall asleep fucking her, she was that boring.
None of them inspired anything in me apart from dread. But the Six weren’t bluffing this time. Something in their voices—especially Seraphiel’s—felt different. It felt final. The kind of warning that doesn’t repeat itself. This isn’t just politics anymore; it’s war prevention. Legacy protection. In their eyes, I’m not just a ruler—I’m a loaded gun with no safety, and they want me tied to something. Anything. Something they can predict and control. So naturally, I went to the only person who ever made me feel utterly out of control. And she laughed in my face. And then she screamed. The memory of her fury is still ringing in my ears. The venom in her voice, the way she hurled my gift into the bin like it was nothing more than trash. It should’ve angered me. Instead, it wrecked me.
I rub at my jaw, staring at her silhouette through the mirror as the fireworks outside her window erupt in colour. She just watches, hollow and still, a wine bottle swinging from her fingertips like a pendulum, counting down the seconds until she finally breaks again. She is so small, so mortal. So utterly fucking mine in a way I can’t explain. And yet I sent her away, told her she was nothing.
The irony is, I’ve never wanted anything the way I want to break her heart and then beg her to let me hold the pieces. But I don’t get to do that. I get to sit in the dark, drinking myselfblind, and watching a girl who still sits beside my gift like it’s a lighthouse keeping her from the edge.
“I am the monster under her bed,” I murmur to no one, “and she will always leave the light on to banish me.”
I hate her for it. I ache for her because of it. Because of this fucking tether that I have no explanation.
My fingers curl into fists, nails biting into my palms. I’m the Prince of Hell. And this girl—this mortal girl—has reduced me to a shadow that lurks in her corner, begging for scraps of her warmth.
I swear to myself that I’ll stop, but my soul tugs me here every night to watch the mortal who flipped my entire life upside down.
