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The craving starts within the hour. It begins as warmth, low in my stomach, spreading outward. Not sexual, not exactly. More fundamental, as if I genuinely do need him near me. In me? How did that seriously become my life in the Underworld that I need the demon king to, well, fuck me, to survive? My skin becomes sensitive to the sheets, to the air, to the fabric of the dress I'm wrapped in.

I’ve opened up all of the curtains to let in the air, realizing quickly how many gargoyles watch the perimeter. It doesn’t matter as I breathe in the salty air. That does help, for a time.

By the time I can't stand it, I'm pacing. The ocean at some point loses its potency, and every fiber in my being is telling me only he can fix this.

"Kallúm," I say, not loudly, almost in delirium, as I stare at the ocean as the sun begins to lighten. I don’t know when he appears, but I can feel him near, seeing that he presents a small glass vial of something amber in his hand.

I drink it, knowing it’s the tonic. Within minutes, the craving retreats to a manageable hum. "Thank you," I breathe, and the word feels too small.

"When you are begging for me," he says, right next to me, "it will be from the heart. Not from desperation." He grips the side of my head and kisses my temple, breathing me in. “Sleep, my tempest.”

Then he's gone, and I'm alone with the ocean and the absolute certainty that I cannot survive many nights of this.

At some point I’m standing in front of a full-length mirror, the gilded frame in the shape of many seashells. For just a moment, my reflection moves differently than I do. A tilt of the head I didn't make. Eyes deeper, older, fiercer. Lips that almost smile.

Nara.

I climb into bed when I’m certain I’m hallucinating. The sheets smell like him, and the waves of the ocean become my backdrop. The necklace is warm against my chest, still completely unremovable. The bind hums in my chest like a second heart.

I press my face into his pillow and breathe him in, and I hate how much it feels like home.

My body has already decided. My soul decided the moment I took his hand in the cavern. And the part of me that is still Penelope—the psychologist, the rationalist, the woman who used to drink canned margaritas and cry on her balcony—that part is quickly losing the argument to the part that has loved this demon, somewhere in my past, and jumped removed my own beating heart from this Realm because she had to leave him.

I don't sleep for a very long time.

P E N E L O P E

Delirium greets me as I wake, fire living underneath my skin. My body is slick with sweat, the silk gown plastered to me, and the ache is everywhere, like a hollowness with teeth, gnawing at the inside of my chest, my stomach, lower.

The room swims when I open my eyes. My fingers grip the sheets, something in me aware that this fabric usually contain him.

Then his voice.

"This is the last one."

I slowly move my head, and he's there. Sitting on the edge, right next to me, a vial of amber in his hand. His jaw is set, his eyes burning gold in the low light, his hair down. He is watching me with an expression equal parts devotion and restraint.

I reach for the vial, and my hand shakes so badly I can't grip it. He takes my hand, steadies it, and brings the glass to my lips. I swallow it all down, the fire slowly retreating.

"This is too much," I whisper.

His hand hasn't left mine. His thumb traces the inside of my wrist where the pulse hammers. "Your body is already fighting the tonic. The bind is refusing to accept a substitute."

I close my eyes.

His hand moves from my wrist to my forehead, pressing his palm against the fever there. His skin is cool against mine, and I lean into it without thinking, a sound escaping my throat that I don't recognize. His fingers slide into my hair, cradling my skull, and the touch is so tender that it makes the ache worse.

His hand traces down from my temple to my jaw, then lower, along the side of my neck, over the shell of the necklace, across my collarbone. His fingers are slow, mapping the terrain of my skin as if relearning something he memorized long ago. His palm settles against my chest, just above where the bind twists the most.

"Kallúm—"

“Your mate is here.”

His hand moves across my shoulder, down my arm, then back up. I can feel the restraint in his fingertips, the way they hesitate, the way they press just hard enough to ground me but not hard enough to claim, like soothing a wild animal.

The tonic has cooled my body down, but now I’m lost in a fever dream. I can't tell if my eyes are open or closed. His hand is on my stomach now, the warmth of his palm seeping through the silk, and my hips lift toward it involuntarily. A sound escapes him, one that’s low, tight, controlled, and his fingers curl against the fabric.

"Please," I say, and I don't know what I'm asking for.