I don’t remember what they said first. Maybe it was my mother calling me ungrateful, or my father shouting that I’d never be enough. Maybe it was the way they all looked at me—like I was a burden they regretted keeping.

But I do remember the way I screamed.

I ran outside barefoot, cold cement biting into my soles, my throat raw from crying. I dropped to my knees under a black sky and raised my arms like something sacred would listen. But I wasn’t praying to gods.

I was done with them.

“TAKE ME!” I screamed into the dark. “IF THERE’S A MONSTER OUT THERE—IF HELL WANTS ME—THEN TAKE ME INSTEAD!”

Thunder cracked above. But it didn’t feel like weather.

It felt like an answer.

The shadows peeled themselves from the trees, from the corners of the world, twisting and rolling into a shape—a boy, my age, with eyes like dying stars and horns sharp enough to pierce the heavens.

He stepped toward me, barefoot too. His presence melted the cold around me like a fever.

“You called,” he said, voice deep and velvet-smooth. “So I came.”

I blinked up at him. My lips trembled. “You’re… real?”

His smile was crooked. “Real enough to ruin everything.”

And he offered his hand.

I took it.

I didn’t even look back.

They burned.

Not because I asked.

Because he wanted them to.

Elior didn’t tolerate cruelty—especially not from those who called themselves family.

“You hurt her,” he said, standing before my trembling parents. “Now you’ll feel what she felt. Tenfold.”

And then he raised his hand.

The fire was instant. Not the slow, creeping kind. It was a storm. Wild, angry, divine. It swallowed everything—walls, floors, memories, names. All of it turned to ash while I watched, unmoved.

His arm wrapped around my shoulder.

“You’re mine now,” he whispered. “You never needed their love.”

Only his.

Hell wasn’t flames and pitchforks.

It was soft silk and obsidian towers, warm baths of starlight, and halls carved from living shadows. It pulsed with Elior’s power—and now, mine.

He made me drink from a silver chalice, thick red liquid that wasn’t blood, but something older. Magic. Heat. A piece of him.

I coughed once, then collapsed.

When I woke up, I wasn’t the same girl who knelt crying under the stars.

I was something else.

Wings bloomed from my spine, laced with embers and black lace. My skin shimmered under the moonless sky. My voice held power. My eyes bled gold.

I was his.

His consort. His equal. His destruction.

Elior was obsessed.

Possessive, terrifyingly so.

He didn’t let anyone near me without his permission. He kissed the corners of my eyes when I cried, held my hand even when I slept, and whispered stories of how he'd collapse dimensions if I ever left.

And I believed him.

One time, a lesser demon joked about "sharing me." Elior crushed his skull with a smile.

“They forget you’re sacred,” he muttered, cleaning blood off his sleeves. “Let them keep forgetting. I enjoy reminding them.”

And the gods?

Even they began to take notice.

At first, they raged. How dare a demon love so fiercely? How dare he turn a mortal into his queen?

But they watched, and they saw.

Even chaos, when wrapped in love, can become divine.

The goddess of Fate gifted us a dagger that could cut through time. The Moon wove your name into her phases. The god of War bowed his head when we passed.

“You two…” he once said. “You’re not just lovers. You’re prophecy.”

Some nights, Elior curls around me like armor. His voice is low, tired, eternal.

“You saved me,” he whispers.

I laugh softly. “You burned a family and two kingdoms to do it.”

“They deserved it,” he growls. “You deserved more. You deserve everything.”

I touch his face—my creature of ruin, my demon of devotion.

And I tell him what he always wants to hear.

“I’d scream for you again.”

His eyes glow, soft and dangerous.

“I’d answer every time.”