Page 90 of Level Up for Love

“Sinful creature,” he murmurs. “Is that where you got your name?”

She grinds her teeth near to breaking. “The devil tried to claim me once, but I chose my own path.”

“And I chose mine.”

This close, Sindra can see the madness in his eyes, the way the bloodshot veins branch out from his burning ruby irises.

It dawns on her then, and she gasps. “That’s what happened to you, isn’t it? All of the questions, the runes in your skin, in the crown…” she breathes. “You’ve made a deal with one, haven’t you?”

His gaze is steady on her, even as his eyes narrow dangerously.

“Have I hit close to home, my prince?” He bares his fangs at her now, but still she continues. “What were you seeking? Power? Control?” That’s almost always the case, she’s learned. It was with her parents.

“I didn’t want to control the people of Moros,” he says, seething. His eyes darken suddenly, and for a moment, Sindra swears she sees a flash of the warm brown they used to be. “I wanted to protect them. Look. Look.”

He wraps a hand around one of her horns and wrenches her forward until her forehead knocks painfully against his. “Ursan tried to have us killed for stealing food, Sindra—many of us. You think me a monster, but you know nothing of monstrosity. You were not here,” he snaps. “I escaped Frozenfang Pass. I found the cave. I freed this whole fucking kingdom.”

This time, it’s not the slow ease of sinking into a dream. Instead, Sindra’s vision turns black, and painful pressure builds behind her eyes as Vadrien forces her to witness another memory.

He has almost accepted his inevitable death when he sees the light.

After his exile, Vadrien wandered for days through the darkness of Frozenfang’s cave systems. He tried to stick with the others, working together to survive, but one by one, their numbers dwindled. Some were lost to the wolves, others to the cold. Some left to scout the dark caves ahead and never returned. Just this morning, Vadrien had one companion left, but starvation had seen the end of him before the sun even rose.

Vadrien’s own hunger claws at his empty stomach, makes him slow and delirious. The caves are so dark that he begins to imagine shapes and shadows. When he finally sees a glow at the end of the tunnel, it feels like hope. And so he follows it, even as it leads him deeper and the air begins to swelter. Even as the heat grows oppressive.

By now he has counted dozens of bends, and he has just begun to believe that it was simply a figment of his imagination when the light suddenly blinds him.

The bonfire surges upward from a pit at the cave’s center, filling it almost entirely. It’s impossible to tell what fuels the flames—it is as if the earth itself has cracked open to release the fire, though Vadrien sees scatterings of bone-white wood at the edges of the pit.

Or perhaps that is not wood at all.

Vadrien carefully clears his dry throat. “Hello?”

“Welcome.”

He feels more than hears the voice, like a rumbling that begins underneath his feet and makes every step unsteady. Vadrien looks around for the source, but the fire overtakes his vision; he can see nothing beyond the flames.

“I saw your fire like a beacon when I entered these caves. I thought I might—” He winces as a pang of pain shoots through his arm. He’d injured himself badly when he slipped down a ravine. “I thought I might find safety here.”

The answering laugh is like nails clawing at his spine—it grates at Vadrien like a warning. If he had any energy left, he might have run.

“I may be able to grant you what you want,” the voice muses.

Impossibly, the firelight casts hundreds of shadows against the cave’s walls. Vadrien spots humanoid silhouettes but also flashes of spine-tipped wings, the arcs of horns, the whip of a tail. It makes the cave seem as if it is filled with beings, and each shape is more horrific than the last.

“What do you want, boy?” the voice demands.

“I—I just need somewhere safe to pass the night.”

The voice hisses angrily, and Vadrien finds himself cowering, his knees gone soft. “More. Do not lie to me, human. What do you want?”

Vadrien licks at his cracked lips. The heat is stifling—almost unbearable.

“I just want to live,” he insists. In Zaska, with my family, surrounded by the friends I’ve lost. With a full stomach. And my sister, safe. Peace—finally, peace.

“Closer,” the voice rumbles. “This is the last time I will ask: What do you want?”

Vadrien stares into the fire as it crackles and burns. His heartbeat begins to surge, and so do the flames, roiling as they stretch toward the ceiling. He feels their heat in the pit of his stomach, and an awful rage flares to life.