The Tribute

The cage smelled like iron and fear.

Not mine. Fear leaves a particular residue. Sour. Sharp. Animal. The tributes before me had soaked it into the metal bars over fifty years of journeys to this place. I could taste their terror on my tongue, feel it coating my skin like oil.

I didn't add to it. Not because I wasn't afraid. I was. But fear was a luxury I couldn't afford.

The cart lurched to a stop. Beyond the bars, I caught my first glimpse of the Hollow.

Obsidian walls rose from nothing, black stone drinking the light. No sun here, only a perpetual twilight that pressed down like a physical weight. The architecture was wrong, somehow. Angles that hurt to look at. Towers that seemed to lean in different directions depending on where you stood.

Beautiful. Terrible. Ancient.

The demons who'd collected me from the border unlatched the cage. Three of them, lesser demons, judging by their hunched forms and the way they wouldn't meet my eyes. Servants. Beneath notice.

I catalogued them anyway. Habit.

"Walk," one of them grunted.

I walked.

The halls swallowed us. My footsteps echoed on stone so black it looked wet, though it was dry and cold beneath my slippers. The air tasted of ash and something older, incense burned for millennia, blood spilled for longer.

We passed demons of varying forms. Some nearly human, dressed in dark finery. Others twisted, shadow-creatures that watched from corners with too many eyes. None spoke. All stared.

The tribute. The sacrifice. The payment.

I kept my chin up. My father's voice rang in my memory: You'll serve your kingdom. That's more than your kind is usually good for.

My kind. The bastard daughter. The forbidden magic. The unwanted spare, suddenly useful when Princess Lyssa fled and someone needed to take her place.

The throne room opened before us like a wound.

Black stone, silver torchlight, a ceiling lost to shadow. The court spread across the chamber, demons in silks and shadows, watching with hungry curiosity. And at the far end, on a throne carved from what looked like solidified darkness...

Him.

Lord Azrael.

Ruler of the Hollow.

Three thousand years of power made manifest.

He looked almost human, if you didn't look too closely. Tall, lean, dressed in black that seemed to absorb the dim light. Dark hair fell across a face that might have been beautiful once, before something carved all the warmth from it. His eyes were the color of old iron, ringed in something darker. I looked once. I didn't look again. Some things shouldn't be witnessed directly.

"Kneel," the demon at my back commanded.

I didn't.

A murmur rippled through the court. My escorts shifted, uncertain. No one defied a direct order in the Hollow. Not tributes. Not anyone.

Lord Azrael tilted his head. The movement was wrong, too precise, too predatory. A snake considering a mouse.

"Tribute." His voice filled the throne room, low and layered, settling over the court like ash. "You forget your place."

"I know my place perfectly." My voice came out level. Good. "I'm currency. Payment for fifty years of peace. You'll take my magic, drain me empty, and send what's left back to Solara as proof of collection."

The silence that followed was absolute.

I kept going. "But before you do..." I let the silence stretch, let every demon in that hall lean forward. "I have a proposition."

The tension in the room sharpened. Not the demons, their attention had already been on me. This was different. The air itself seemed to lean in, curious.

"She speaks." Azrael's voice carried amusement now, cold and distant. "They usually just weep."

"Weeping won't help me. Neither will kneeling." I met his gaze directly, forcing myself to hold it. The wrongness of him pressed against my mind, too old, too deep, a void that had swallowed centuries. "But a bargain might."

Movement from the side of the throne. A woman stepped forward, stunning, terrible, dressed in crimson that looked like fresh blood. Her smile was a blade.

"Lord Azrael." Her voice was silk over iron. "The tribute forgets herself. Shall I remind her?"

"Peace, Ravenna."

The woman, Ravenna, went still. The smile didn't waver, but something hardened in her expression when she looked at me.

Mark her, I told myself. Remember that face.

Azrael rose from his throne.

The court held its breath. I found I was holding mine too.

He moved like something that had learned to wear a body, each step deliberate, the shadows in the room inclining toward him as he passed. When he stopped before me, I had to tilt my head back to face him.

This close, I could feel his power. It pressed against my skin like heat from a forge, ancient, overwhelming, hungry.

"You would bargain." Not a question. "With me."

"I would."

"You have nothing I want."

"I have my magic." I kept my voice even, though my hands wanted to shake. I laced my fingers together, hiding the tremor. "Untapped. Forbidden by Solaran law. You could drain it like every tribute before me, get your fifty years of power, move on."

"Yes." He drew the word out. "I could."

"Or." I swallowed. "You could let me serve you instead. Seven years. I'll use my magic for the Hollow, work for you willingly. At the end, I leave with my power intact."

Ravenna laughed. The sound was beautiful and cruel.

"She thinks she has something worth seven years of service. How precious."

Azrael didn't look at her. His attention was fixed on me, and I felt the weight of it like stones piling on my chest.

"Why would I agree to this?"

"Because willing magic is stronger than drained magic." The words tumbled out, the desperate gambit I'd been planning since they threw me in that cage. "Everyone knows that. You could drain me now and get fifty years of power, or you could have seven years of someone actually trying to help you. Someone with abilities they've barely used, all that potential focused on your court instead of leaking away."

The corner of his mouth twitched. Not quite a smile.

"You've thought about this."

"I've had three days in a cage. Nothing else to do."

He studied me. I felt his gaze like fingers on my skin, assessing, weighing. Three thousand years of reading tributes, and I was trying to be different.

"You're not afraid." He said it like he was tasting the words, trying to understand their flavor.

"I'm terrified."

"You don't show it."

"Showing it won't help." I kept my focus on him, pushing through the wrongness. "Neither will begging. You've heard both before. You've heard everything before. So I'm trying something new."

The silence stretched.

Then Azrael turned to address the court.

"The tribute wishes to serve." His voice carried to every corner, ringing off the black stone. "Seven years of willing magic instead of one evening of draining. She has spirit, I'll give her that."

Ravenna stepped forward. "My lord, surely you're not considering..."

"The terms." Azrael cut her off without looking at her. "Seven years. Service to the Hollow. Your magic at my disposal. At the end, you leave whole."

"Yes." My voice didn't waver.

"And you trust me to honor this agreement?"

"No." I almost smiled. "But I trust that you're bored. I trust that no tribute has ever bargained with you before. I trust that curiosity is more valuable to an immortal than power."

His expression shifted, brief and unguarded. Curiosity, perhaps. Or recognition.

"Clever creature." He extended his hand, palm up. "Give me your hand."

I looked at his hand. Long fingers, pale as marble, completely still. The hand that had drained a hundred tributes. The hand that had killed countless more.

The hand that might, just might, let me live.

I placed my palm against his.

His skin was cold. Not winter-cold. The cold of something that had forgotten warmth existed. His fingers closed around mine, gentle but inescapable.

"Bound by blood and word," he said. The ancient language rose from somewhere deeper than his throat, syllables that crawled against my ears. "Bound by service freely given."

The words hurt to hear. Not physically, somewhere else. Somewhere deeper.

"Seven years and a day," he continued. "Magic for sanctuary. Power for protection."

Gold light flared between our joined hands.

I gasped. It felt like something was reaching into my chest, wrapping around a part of me I didn't know existed. The sensation spread, warmth and pressure and something that resonated in places I didn't know existed.

Then it changed.

The gold light intensified. Azrael went still, the first genuine emotion I'd seen from him. His grip on my hand tightened, no longer gentle.

"What..." I started.

Pain burst through my wrist. I looked down to see golden lines etching themselves into my skin, forming a pattern like flames frozen mid-dance. The mark burned deeper than my flesh, deeper than my bones.

Azrael made a sound low in his throat, bitten off before it could become a word.

I looked up. His other hand had gone to his chest, pressing against his sternum like something was carving itself into him too.

The court had gone silent. Not the waiting silence from before, this was horror. Demons were backing away, their alien faces showing expressions I couldn't read but understood anyway.

Something went wrong.

Something went very wrong.

Ravenna's face had drained of color. She was staring at Azrael's chest, at the matching golden flame now pulsing through his black clothing.

"My lord." Ravenna's voice had gone thin. "That's not... that can't be..."

The golden light faded. The pain subsided to a constant ache.

But the marks remained.

Azrael released my hand like it had burned him. He stumbled back, the first ungraceful movement he'd made, and stared at me with an expression now filled with something human.

Shock. Fear.

And underneath it, a flicker of something I couldn't name.

"What did you do?" His voice cracked on the words, raw in a way it hadn't been moments ago.

"I..." I looked at the mark on my wrist. Beautiful and wrong. "I didn't do anything. You cast the spell."

"That wasn't the binding I cast." His hand was still pressed to his chest. Because I could feel it now. A thread of gold behind my ribs, reaching toward him. I felt his confusion, his fear, his ancient mind racing through thousands of years of knowledge trying to understand what had happened.

I felt him.

And from the way he was staring at me, he felt me too.

Ravenna's voice cut through the chaos, sharp as a blade.

"My lord." Her composure had returned, but she was reassessing the situation, and me, in ways I didn't like. "That mark. That bond. It's not a service contract."

"I know what it is."

"Then you know what this means."

"I know."

"What?" I demanded. My hand was shaking now, I couldn't stop it. "What does it mean? What did you do to me?"

Azrael looked at me. Through the new, impossible connection between us, I felt his answer before he spoke it.

Horror. Inevitability. And underneath, buried deep...

Hunger.

"You wanted to bargain, little mortal." His voice was different now, hoarse, raw, stripped of its ancient composure. "Congratulations. You've just bound yourself to me in ways neither of us intended."

He stepped closer. The bond between us hummed.

"That's not a service mark on your wrist." His finger traced the edge of the golden flame branded into my skin. "It's a mating bond. Ancient. Unbreakable."

The word hit me like a physical blow.

Mating.

Unbreakable.

"You can't leave," he continued, and I felt his certainty through the bond, felt his own surprise at what he was saying. "I can't let you go. The bond won't allow it."

"Then break it," I said. "Undo whatever you did."

"I can't." Grief threaded through his voice, or something older than grief. "No one can. We're bound now. For the rest of your life."

He leaned closer. So close I could feel the cold emanating from his skin. So close the bond screamed between us.

"You wanted to bargain with me," he said softly.

His gaze settled on me, heavy and absolute.

"You would bargain with me, little mortal?" His voice had changed, stripped of its careful composition, rough with something I had not heard from him before. "Then we have much to discuss."