Nyx and Spencer met again in a small and dimly sparkling dungeon room. Faint shafts of light connected them to the passages outside. The only reliable way in was through walking like a demon, following the rules of movement in the underworld. The only way out was probably either by killing Spencer or by kissing him.

“What the hell, man!?” barked Nyx. “Are you trying to kill me again?”

Nyx intended for this statement to come off as brash and silly. Nyx figured he would probably laugh at this. He did.

“Ha! Yeah,” he said, hands hooked in his pockets. “I knew you weren’t gonna be killed by those assassins.” He pointed a thumb over his shoulder as if Darkworld District were right behind him. “Frankly, I would’ve lost interest in everything about you if they did.”

“Wouldn’t that be a mercy for your reputation?”

He shrugged and grinned. “Old habits die hard?”

There was a stretch of silence.

“Can you take that off for a minute?” he said, gesturing toward Nyx’s clothes, gear, ponytail, and entire body. They were still in disguise, after all.

A second later, Nyx had un-transformed into their typical self. It had happened against their will, quick and turbulent. Some of Athalie’s clothes and, worse, hard armor had actually been incorporated into Nyx’s own current flesh. Nyx couldn’t feel the armor per se, but their body had the uncanny knowledge that it was there, scattered within them. This was just as uncomfortable as it had always been. Goosebumps rose on their skin.

“Well,” said Nyx casually, “while I have you here”—Spencer smiled—“can I make a request?”

“No one’s stopping you,” he said.

“I feel like I’ve been scraping along for a while now. Can you make me more powerful? Within limits, of course.”

Spencer nodded a little. “Sure. You know I could give you anything.” He looked aside for a moment. “You haven’t given up on being a demon lord yet, have you?”

“Is that contempt I hear?”

“Nah, it’s just confusion.”

“I had to go it alone and try weird things. I won’t be satisfied for a thousand-plus years unless I have at least that much freedom once in a while.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, sounding distracted.

Nyx sensed that he was impatient to have them back in his grasp—not because he experienced time and boredom at the same rate as mortals, but because he knew Nyx had been doing wacky mortalish things lately and he didn’t like it. And because he knew that mortals lived fast, were tainted fast.

He asked, “You still interested in me?”

The first thought to appear in Nyx’s head was a baffled, Uhhhh...

Never once had he asked that before, or anything like it. Between all the self-flattering questions he had asked Nyx about his strength or stealth or general fineness, he’d never asked if Nyx considered him interesting, let alone entertaining or just—vaguely neat. He had never been interested in Nyx’s opinions beyond his ready-made assumptions of what those opinions might be. Nyx knew that if humans typically didn’t change in a day, then demons sure as hell wouldn’t and Spencer wasn’t seeking a genuine answer.

“Did you ever need me to be interested?” said Nyx.

He said, “I’m starting to!”

From the earth around and underneath his feet, a dirt-colored tangle of centipedes started rising. They moved in a miraculous swarm to Spencer’s side, building themselves up into a constantly crawling throne. Spencer smiled quite politely and gestured toward it.

Nyx returned the smile, glowed. They darted over to the throne and plunked themself into the seat. Smiling gave their face something to distract itself with while the other ninety-nine percent of their body sent constant messages of warning and shock up their spine.

“You’ve had enough of those chucklefucks out there, haven’t you, sweet?”

“Hm...yeah,” hummed Nyx, still smiling, “but sitting on this crappy throne you’ve made reminded me of how much I can’t stand you. Or being around you. And I know that’s by design—it’s kind of how you planned it, it’s the whole idea of us being together—but damn, vengeance can’t come soon enough! I just wanna get old enough so that I can—bam!” They punched the air. “Pull an Electra Complex!”

Spencer coughed out a laugh.

“And you don’t even know what that is,” said Nyx, who was beginning to laugh themself. “But you had your chance to.”

Now Spencer was downright chortling.

“Alright, Bev,” he said, “I can tell you’ve had a long day. Get outta here, I can always come back tomorrow.”

“What?” said Nyx in mock disbelief. “No way! Fuck off!”

In the next moment, a sword of otherworldly wood whirled under Spencer’s chin and lopped off his head. It rolled to the side, its hair sticking to the slightly slimy ground. The centipedes of Nyx’s throne slowly melted away.

“M-m-my lord,” said Felicity, who was being held by the scruff of her neck, and whose hands had combined into a sword twice her size, “I should warn you that I was just in a state of torpor, so I won’t be operating at peak performance...”

“Oh, don’t worry about it. In fact, go back into torpor.”

“Yes, my lord!”