The sound of silverware clinking against a clay plate was loud in Hesi's ears as she watched Mezophis savor his hopefully only dinner. She clenched her fingers atop her lap, doing everything she could to avoid reaching for the dagger strapped to her thigh.

"I hope you can forgive the guards for forcing you to strip last time. I told them to lay off the stripping the next time," the prince said, his forked tongue flicking in and out every once in a while. "And I hope you can forgive what I did to you as well."

A demon apologizing? Hesi had never heard of it in all her lifetime and probably the next. This...this wasn't how the Mayaware were supposed to be. This simply wasn't. Still, Hesi pursed her lips and appeared to consider it. She even made it like she was thoroughly offended with it even though she had already expected that much when she went into this room back then. In fact, she was even happy she wasn't entirely wrong. She had been a little too right, as well.

"It's fine," Hesi said after a moment. "Please enjoy your meal."

Mezophis nodded. "It's a little bit ironic, isn't it?" he said, sipping from his goblet of Cani wine. "I always feel like the women would be bothered seeing me eat knowing it once belonged to your kind. You don't seem to be."

Hesi shrugged. "There's nothing I could do to bring that meat back to their bodies, right?" she said, not fighting the small grin creeping into her lips. "I just save what I could and hope for the best."

"Makes sense," the prince said, wiping the corner of his lips with the back of his hand. Then, he tilted his head upon looking harder at her face. "Something's different about you."

She reached up and rubbed the ends of her sheared hair. She seemed to have been doing that a lot lately. "Yeah," she said. "I chopped it off."

"Why?"

She leaned back and laid her hands atop the table. "It's getting in the way most of the time. Don't worry, it'll grow back."

A small smile played on the prince's lips. "No, keep it that way," he said before blinking and waving his hand in the air. "Or however you want to keep it."

"You're not angry?" That's strange. She thought the prince liked women with long, dark hair. It's the reason she was chosen in the first place. Her initial thought after shearing her hair with the dagger was that she might be dooming herself with that brash action.

Mezophis took another sip of his wine. "Why would I?" His tone carried a little bit of amusement. "It's your hair."

Hesi chuckled—something she shouldn't be doing in the presence of the second-to-the-highest Mayaware in the land. But, she didn't stop herself. She doubted she could, anyway. Relief flowed in waves into her gut, washing her intestines and drenching her limbs, forcing them to relax.

"About last time, I guess I should explain," the prince interjected.

All her amusement vanished without a trace, leaving only a shell of curiosity. She raised an eyebrow. It was something she didn't ask for but would be getting anyway. "Go ahead," she extended a hand towards him. "What happened back there?"

Mezophis scratched the skin by the collar of his tunic. "It's my lineage," he said, knitting his eyebrows as if lost in the memory of his story. "I was born from a mammal mother and a reptile father...you know, Demon King and all. And...I couldn't control when both sides would manifest in their demonic forms."

He locked gazes with Hesi. "That's what happened and what has been happening with the other women," he said. "I just...lost control. I really am sorry. I know I should have reined them better."

A hybrid, huh? Yobekh was right to say that the offspring were stronger and more demonic. That didn't mean the offspring themselves were having a good time with their uncontrollable abilities. "Does your father know?"

The prince nodded. "It's the reason why I'm hidden here. To keep the rest of the nobles and servants safe whenever I lose control," he said. "The Demon King wishes to keep it a secret to maintain his stance that hybrid offspring will bring more strength to the army and to the Mayaware, in general."

Hesi knitted her eyebrows. "Army?"

"My father is bent on taking Ser-Methon the soonest."

She bit the inside of her cheek. So...Kharta wasn't lying when he told her that. Way to go, O Great Steward to the Royal Mayaware. She scratched the side of her face.

Before she could open her mouth, Mezophis spoke. "And now he wants to see what kind of offspring would come out from a union between a human and a demon," he shook his head with a sigh. "They're probably telling you that our children will be strong and fierce but I know that's not going to be the case."

He raised his eyes to meet Hesi's and they're gleaming with a grim glint. "You could die just from conception as the child will attempt to eat your insides so it could grow. You would suffer and when it comes out, it's going to devour your flesh," he said. "Please. I don't want that to happen to you."

Hesi snorted. She watched the prince's face crumple in confusion. "As if you care," she breathed a short gust of wind out of her nose. "You're a demon. You'll always be one despite your kind words and your fake worries. I don't need it."

She leveled her gaze at him and gripped the dagger's hilt from her thigh. "I don't need your charity."

Before Mezophis could react, Hesi drew the dagger and lunged towards the prince. Plates clattered off the table and into the stone floor. Wine dripped from the edge of the table: spilled blood. They fell backwards, with Hesi landing on top of him. The dagger's tip rushed towards the Mayaware's exposed chest.

It paused mere inches from the warm beige skin.

"Why aren't you fighting?" Hesi hissed, her grip around the dagger's hilt shaking. Then, louder: "Why aren't you doing anything?!"

Mezophis eyed the glinting hilt and chuckled, letting his head rest against the floor and his eyes to stare up at the bare ceiling above them. "The gesture's welcome," he said. "I don't want to be here as much as any of you humans."

Tears stung her eyes as she tried to edge the hilt closer and into his flesh. Her hands shook further and her breaths turned jagged. She couldn't...she still couldn't do it. Why?

Why?

"You demons should change your consumption," Hesi reasoned. What was she saying? Why was she still talking? "Maybe...maybe our kinds could leave in peace."

Mezophis smiled, a far-off look crossing his features. "My, what a beautiful world that would be," he said. His gaze fell to Hesi once more. "But it cannot be so. It's our nature to hunger for human flesh and thirst for your blood. You cannot change nature itself."

"And if you don't do something about it as early as now, you will see a world destroyed," the prince continued. "What eats and does so without control is bound to consume for all their life. They would start wars, seize innocent lives in the palms of their hands, topple culture and civilization just so they would feel safe with their existence. They would do it—again and again—until there was nothing left."

He jerked his chin at the dagger pointed to his heart—if he ever had once to begin with—and smiled. "You have a chance to stop that now," he said. "So take it."

The first of her tears broke free from her eyes and dropped into Mezophis' clothes. "I can't," she shook her head as her shoulders hook without her consent. "You should've fought harder."

"It must have been hard to see the dream you've held on to for so long come this easily," he told her, sitting up to grasp her hand with both of his. "Kill me and end everything here, right this moment. Make me the villain you have concocted in your mind after all the years of anger and hopelessness. Paint me like the murals of old, with vicious claws and bloody fangs because that's what I am. Make me the villain of your dreams. Your villain."

Hesi screamed as she forced her hands to sink the blade deep, deep into the demon's chest. He's a demon—a filthy one at that. He deserved to die. He deserved to get the sharp end of his fate for terrorizing her kind for so long. For the lives the demons took. For the families they disrupted. For the children they made orphans of.

But why did it feel so unfair dumping all the sins of the many all on one being?

With a gasp, she threw the dagger away, the sound of it clattering against the stone floor a nuisance in her ears. She stepped away from the prince and wiped her tears with her forearm. "This isn't right," she shook her head. "This isn't right."

"If you don't want to kill me," Mezophis stared up at her from his place on the floor. "Then I'll have to find the reason to make you."

Hesi could only shake her head as she snatched the dagger from the ground, sheathed it on her thigh, and fixed her dress to conceal it again. Then, without ceremony, without a lasting look that would rend her heart into more pieces than it already was in, she turned and sprinted away from the prince's quarters as fast as she could.

She didn't stop running, didn't stop letting the tears of regret and anger from burning a scalding trail down her face. She ran, because it's probably the only thing she was good at.

Whatever happens after this encounter, whatever reason Mezophis would find, it would be her fault. It's something brought about her stupidity, her feelings. Being human was the one thing she had and now, it proved to be her weakness.

Never in this world had humans ended suffering and came home the hero. Because it takes a monster to kill a monster.