Page 188 of Just One Little Bargain

“You’d rather spend eternity in torment than attempt to salvage your position here?”

“Yes.”

“What’s next?” She lets out a sharp breath. “Are you going to walk in there and beg them to make it worse? Ask them to strip your demonhood entirely?”

“That’s possible?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You just said it.”

“As a joke.” She flicks one hand between us. “It’s an extreme punishment reserved for the most humiliating failures. It’s barely documented because it’s an embarrassment to Hell. You’d have to be spectacularly reckless to even suggest it.”

“What happens to demons who get that punishment?”

Her eyes narrow. “Why does it matter?”

“Just tell me.” I hear the urgency in my voice and lower it, but there’s no taking the question back now. “Please.”

Mother studies me with growing suspicion, then sighs. “It depends on the Tribunal and the offense. Most documented cases were made mortal. Some were reduced to lesser forms. Insects, occasionally. One particularly vindictive arbiter turned a demon into a potted plant. The point is that it’s rare, permanent, and thoroughly degrading.”

“Mortals,” I repeat.

“Yes.” She says it impatiently, clearly expecting the word to disgust me. Instead, I can’t stop thinking about it. “Stripped of power, rank, immortality. Sent back to the mortal realm to live out one pathetic human lifespan. No demon in their right mind would request it.”

For the first time, the punishment sounds like a possibility instead of a threat. I could ask for it. Go in there and request the one thing that might give me exactly what I want.

It’s reckless and stupid, the kind of decision that would confirm every terrible thing anyone has ever thought about me. But it could also make me mortal, give me a lifespan that matches Evie’s, and give me a chance to go back to Brindlewood.

I crush the hope before it can become certainty, because Mother said could. The Tribunal might refuse and decide an insect is more humiliating. I could walk into that chamber, ask for the first thing I’ve ever been willing to risk everything for, and leave as a beetle.

“We should go in.” I head toward the entrance. “You said the hearing starts soon.”

She grabs my arm. When I turn, the calm has returned to her expression, but I know her too well now to miss the concern underneath it.

“If you do something foolish in there, I can’t protect you from the consequences.”

“I know.”

Mother’s mouth presses into a thin line. Her fingers loosen from my arm.

“Fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

She turns and sweeps through the entrance ahead of me, dark fabric whispering over the stone as the tribunal doors open to admit her.

I walk through the tribunal doors thinking about one word: mortal. It’s reckless, humiliating, and potentially disastrous, but if it could give me a way back to Evie, I’m going to ask for it.

Chapter 54

Evie

Sunday arrives more normally than I want it to, and I throw myself into work because that’s what I do when things hurt. Guest rooms get stripped, grout gets attacked with a toothbrush, and the linen closet is reorganized by color, then by size, then back to color again because the first way was wrong. By the time my phone buzzes, I’m on my hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen baseboards.

I ignore it.

It vibrates again. And again.

I grab it off the counter hard enough that it nearly slips through my fingers.