Mensa clung against Hesi's arm as they went out of the lecture hall in the bridal palace. They were on their way to visit the trading courtyard again because Tagara forgot to buy something the last time. If Hesi was really concerned about it, she'd conclude the woman was only making up an excuse to go sightseeing because the bare walls of the palace might have been boring her.

Hesi didn't mind, though. She enjoyed walking and breathing fresh air, no matter how scratchy and filled with particles of sand. The lush gardens brimming with greens, pinks, and other colors she couldn't quite name had grown in on her. They were beautiful in their own right.

Kharta had once told her that most of the flowers in the landscapes were native to Ser-Tehra despite what everyone seemed to think. "It's my way of getting back at those demons and my only reminder of the home I once had."

She could understand that to a certain degree. She was born to her parents a few years after the Mayaware took over most of Ser-Djare so everything she knew was running, hiding, and never making a sound. That was her life and she's willing to bet every nakti she had that it was still her life even if she was running and hiding from and staying silent for all the wrong things, if not merely different ones.

The trip to the trading courtyard took longer than necessary, with Barteset getting dragged around by Mensa and Uzare after letting go of Hesi's arm. Hesi fell into step with Asrate who strolled with a pace to match a sloth. Their silence was accentuated with the occasional brushes of their sandals against the dusty floor.

"So," Hesi started, clearing her throat and turning her head in Asrate's direction. "What do you think of this life so far?"

Asrate flicked her gaze from the high ceiling to Hesi. "It's better than I anticipated," she said. "But, at night, I couldn't help but think that all of this was temporary. That the nightmare will begin soon. I never forgot my duty here and I certainly didn't forget the end that would greet us here."

"What if..." Hesi gripped her arms, digging her manicured nails against her tanned skin. "What if we didn't have to?"

Asrate stopped walking. "What do you mean?"

Hesi looked around, past the horde of colorfully-dressed merchants, the braying animals, and the mingling Mayaware nobles in their jeweled collars and towering heights. She moved closer to Asrate and lowered her voice. "What if we didn't have to end that way?" she asked through the painful churning in her gut.

"Have you found a way?" Asrate knitted her eyebrows and started pulling Hesi off the trading courtyard and away from prying ears. "What are you getting about?"

Hesi pursed her lips. Asrate had been taken from her beautiful homeland and watched her people get slaughtered. If anything, the girl should have more drive to kill the Mayaware prince. She should have the dagger and not Hesi. "I know of a way to kill the Demon Prince," she said. "Once you kill him, we can move to the Demon King and all the other nobles. Then..." she met Asrate's eyes again, watching the worried look slowly forming on her features. "Then, we can end their reign. Just like that."

"We don't have to die, Asrate," Hesi said. A coward. That's what she was. She couldn't finish the job so she's passing it on to another. "We could kill them all."

"How long did you know that?" Asrate's question made the bitter taste creeping towards Hesi's mouth more flavorful.

Hesi looked at her feet adorned with gold-plated sandals and rubbed with oils before they went out. Her skin glinted in the sunlight flitting through the gaps in the stone ceiling. "A long time," she admitted through the lump growing at the base of her throat.

"Why didn't you do it?"

It was the question Mezophis asked her. Kharta said the same thing to her. And now...even Asrate was asking her something she might not have a proper answer to. Hesi shook her head. "I couldn't," she said. "It seems so wrong despite what everyone was telling me. I understand the Mayaware killing humans because they have to survive. What I don't understand is killing innocent demons just because they are thought to be evil."

Asrate didn't speak for a while. When she did, it was a gentle whisper—far from the reproach Hesi had expected from her. "It's not a weakness, Hesi," she said. "But it could be your biggest mistake."

Something was moving in Hesi's periphery and the courtyard's bustle was louder than normal. She knitted her eyebrows. What's going on? She left Asrate and trudged towards a crowd forming at the entrance of a building she had come to know as the Servants' Quarters. Whispers were as thick as smoke from a blazing fire by the time Hesi got to the rim.

Then, she began elbowing her way through, muttering under her breath saying she's sorry, when in reality, she's not. When she got to the front of the crowd, her heart stopped. Her knees gave way and she fell to the ground. A strange ringing started in her ears as her eyes took in every detail of the scene before her.

Kharta was there. But the blood painted on the walls and pooling around him in a semi-dried puddle told Hesi he's not. He's never going to be here anymore. His body was thrown against the stone wall, no doubt breaking his backbone first. His eyes were still open; his mouth hung open, giving way to more streams of blood pouring from it.

A huge chunk of his torso was missing, the curved bite marks tearing through his exposed ribs telling Hesi this was the work of a demon. Flies flitted in and out, kissing Kharta's pale gray skin. Cold. Hesi didn't need to approach him to tell he's cold. His fire had burned out.

Kharta's gone.

It's a message—one Hesi was sure was aimed directly at her. Kharta didn't live in the servants' palace so why was his body found here, of all places? It's like saying this was where Kharta belonged in the first place and this was going to be his grave.

Tears broke free from her eyes and scorched a trail down her cheeks. She pushed herself up and shoved the crowd on her way out. A hand gripped her wrist and she looked back at Asrate who saw the whole thing with her. "Where are you going?" the girl asked, her voice laced with concern Hesi didn't deserve.

She took her hand away from Asrate's grip. "Somewhere you don't want to go," she hissed. Mezophis. That scum of a demon. So this was what he meant by making sure Hesi kills him. Oh, she'd kill him alright. She'd see him writhe and beg for mercy.

It takes a monster to kill a monster but to make a monster was to kill the innocent. For Kharta, for her weakness and her cowardice—she'd gladly be a monster everyone would fear. She had her chance for salvation and she didn't take it. Now, she must bear Kharta's blood on her hands. For all eternity.

Asrate's cries faded behind her as she stomped towards the bridal palace. At some point, the other women followed her into the communal quarters. Hesi unearthed the sheathed dagger still coated with poison made by Kharta's delicate hands. She drew it out, throwing the useless scabbard aside, the sounds of it clattering to the ground lost in her ears.

Undiluted anger burned in her veins, eating all her reason and burning what's left of her soul. She's a monster and she's out to kill more.

The guards at the prince's quarters met her head on with spears and their demonic forms out. Scales and fangs lashed out at Hesi but all of them proved futile under the rage of her blade. Black smoke curled from her feet when she slashed at their neck, separating their heads from their shoulders with a satisfying rip.

Hesi struck the chains with her blade and kicked the door open. Inside, the demon prince was waiting for her. She lunged and pinned him against the wall. Tears blurred her vision but she could see with clarity the smile of triumph etched on his lips. Ivory fangs flashed against the meager sunlight streaming from the fallen door.

"So, it's the villain's win this time," Mezophis said ever so gently.

She slammed him against the stone floor, his mere weight sharing a few debris loose from it. "You filthy demon," she seethed. Was she angry at him for pushing her by killing Kharta or was she angry at herself for letting him? "You scum."

"You know," Mezophis started. "In another world, I would have chosen you as my bride. But I know what's going on behind closed doors. I sensed it in your scent—"

Hesi screamed and drove the dagger into the spot where human hearts were. Mezophis didn't fight. When did he ever? His skin smoked against the blade's sharp edges, the beige slowly turning onyx. "Shut up," she dug the blade deeper, twisted it until Mezophis started writhing in pain. "Don't talk."

"Once I'm gone," the prince rasped, his eyes rolling at the back of his head as the poison started taking effect. "Take control of the palace and unravel Iren-Washep from there. Use the Demon King's head. Use mine."

Hesi let out the rawest shriek she could and rammed her blade deeper until the tip sprouted through the prince's back and hit the stone with a sharp thunk. "You don't get to tell me things," she hissed. "You just don't."

Mezophis smiled, his features morphing to resemble a snake more than a bald human. "But I already did," he said. "In the end, we both got what we wanted, Hesi, just not in the way we wanted."

Before Hesi could have the last word, the prince's body exploded into wisps of black smoke flecked with white stars. She stepped back, eyeing the demon's puru flicker in the sunlight before dissipating completely, leaving no trace of it behind.

She...did it.

And she's not done.

The Royal Palace erupted with activity when Hesi burst through the entrance after dealing with the guards. Pulling from her memory, she located the Demon King's chambers where the rest of the nobles awaited her. Generals with huge scythes, curved kesres, and glinting spears. They're all there—protecting the one thing that would guarantee their reign for ages to come.

"Move aside," Hesi lowered herself to a stance and gripped the hilt of her blade tighter.

The demons answered as one: they matched her stance and charged.

Hesi sprang into action, jabbing her blade in lightning strikes on unattended necks, exposed arms, and unprotected stomachs. All it took was a slash from her blade and they turned to smoke. By the time the dimwits realized this, Hesi had already curbed past the middle flank and was pushing the tall wooden doors to reveal the Demon King lounging on a couch.

It sat up in surprise at the sight of her—with black blood from the Mayaware outside the door running down her hair, her face, and staining her white gossamer dress and the last traces of star-speckled Mayaware puru reflected in her dark irises. She shut the door and jammed it with a nearby spear.

She stalked towards the Demon King who brought his reptilian demon form out. What was the subject of her nightmares a few months ago was nothing to her now. They're all the same. They're all monsters.

Hesi included.

When the Demon King lunged, Hesi ducked the usual swing of an arm to catch her throat and rammed her blade into its stomach. Before he could dissolve fully, she pulled her blade out and with a slash like cutting a fleshy fruit open, she yanked the Demon King's head free. Blood stained the floor black, its warm rivulets coating her toes and filling her nose with the smell of burning rubber.

The Mayaware soldiers froze in their tracks when they saw Hesi lugging the Demon King's head out of the Royal Palace. None of them dared a step near the blade still dripping with the blood of their king and the woman wielding it.

Hesi kept her chin high and her gaze straight as she led a parade on her own towards the center of the trading courtyard. Then, without a word, she threw the Demon King's head into the air, watching it climb down before slamming against the bricks coating the floor with enough force to crack it. The sound of rocks splitting surely got everyone's attention.

And on they looked. The brides pushed their way through the crowd and came across Hesi who had the blade and the Demon King's remains a few feet in front of her. Then, they realized what she had done. All of them realized what Hesi had done.

She had brought the beginning of the end, the reckoning millions had uttered in the darkest and most silent nights and had wished upon their graves. A girl of the desert. A force everywhere and nowhere. They see it all.

What they didn't see was a girl carrying the blood of the only man she had loved in her hand and the anger no amount of Mayaware blood could erase. They didn't see Hesi with her heart breaking into pieces and her skin burning with the passion she wouldn't get anymore. The tears of regret. The sound of her pieces hitting the floor and shattering upon impact. They saw nothing of that.

Because the day the Mayaware's reign ended was the day Hesi Renen ceased to be human.