Chapter Text
Postpartum depression didn’t knock politely. It kicked the door in, spikes first, and didn’t bother wiping its feet.
Lilith had braced for the pain, the exhaustion, the sleepless nights, and a body that no longer quite felt like hers.
She had not braced for being hollowed out.
Pregnancy and birth had stripped her down to something raw and unrecognizable, a stranger wearing her crown. She had not expected to look at her own newborn daughter and feel, buried beneath the numbness, something dangerously close to hate.
Charlie did this to me.
The thought arrived uninvited and never bothered leaving.
Charlie took my body. Charlie took my life. Charlie took him.
Every intrusive thought came stapled to a fresh wave of guilt, and the guilt did nothing to quiet the thoughts. If anything, it sharpened them.
She had become a ghost haunting her own palace.
Queen of Hell, Mother of its heir, and utterly, unbearably invisible. Just the cruelest joke Hell had ever played on her.
Lucifer never noticed. He couldn’t. He was drowning in a depression all his own, the kind that made him a doting father and an absent husband in the same breath. He’d fallen for his daughter instantly and completely; late-night feedings, half-hummed lullabies, sleepy smiles whenever tiny fingers curled around his own.
A joy he hadn’t felt in centuries.
Charlie was his little miracle. His entire world.
And while he poured every last scrap of himself into fatherhood, he never once looked up long enough to see his wife disappearing right beside him.
So Lilith stewed.
Alone, and spiraling, night after night, until alone and spiraling curdled into something dark and dangerous. Something she never would have done with a sound mind. But she didn’t have one anymore, so she did it anyway.
That was the state she was in the night she called out to Roo.
The room had gone dark hours ago, but not dark in any ordinary sense. The candles had guttered out, yet the shadows along the walls pooled deeper than they should have, gathering in the corners like something with a pulse.
Ancient, starving Roo lay bound somewhere beneath the marble and gold of the Morningstar Palace, deep in the pits of Hell. Only able to see the world above only through the borrowed eyes of the sinners she’d swallowed over the centuries. Limited, hungry, and waiting patiently for exactly this kind of opening.
Lilith sat beside Charlie’s crib, staring down at the sleeping infant, hands trembling in her lap.
“Roo.”
Nothing answered for several long seconds. Then a voice came from everywhere at once.
“Lilith.”
She flinched as the shadows beneath the crib shifted.
“You called,” Roo murmured, honeyed and patient.
Lilith forced the words out. “I want you to take her.”
The shadow stilled. “Take who?”
“You know who.” Her jaw tightened.
“Oh, I know.” The darkness seemed to smile. “Your little princess.”
Lilith looked away. “Take her somewhere else.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. She couldn’t look at her daughter.
Not then. Not now.
“Somewhere else?”
“Somewhere safe.” Her voice, flat and empty of anything but exhaustion.
Roo hummed, soft and almost amused. “And what would you like me to do with her, once she’s there?”
Lilith’s fingers curled into her palms. “I don’t care.”
“Don’t care?”
“I said I don’t care.” Gritted teeth, and something fragile cracking underneath.
Roo heard it. “You’re certain?”
Lilith met the shadows head-on. “Yes.”
“Because once I take her, Lilith. She will no longer be yours.”
That gave her pause. Only a second’s worth. Then, quietly: “Good.”
The word came out like it hurt to say.
“You’re angry with her,” Roo said, gentler now.
“Don’t.”
“You blame her.”
“Stop.”
“You look at that little face and see everything you’ve lost.”
Lilith shot to her feet. “Stop.”
The shadows went still. For one held breath, there was only the soft, rhythmic sound of Charlie breathing.
Then, almost tender: “You don’t have to pretend with me.”
Lilith’s breath caught. “She ruined everything.”
“No,” Roo said immediately. “She didn’t.”
Lilith’s eyes snapped open.
“She took my body.”
“She was born from it.”
“She took my husband.”
“She didn’t ask him to love her.”
“She took my life.”
Roo let the silence stretch before she answered.
“Yes.”
Lilith’s expression crumpled.
“And you want it back,” Roo continued, voice smooth as poured wax.
Lilith looked toward the crib. Her daughter slept on, utterly unaware of the negotiation happening a few feet from her cradle.
“I just—“ Her voice broke. “I just want to be myself again.”
There it was. The opening Roo had been waiting for all along.
Somewhere in the dark, she smiled.
“I can give you that.”
Lilith’s eyes narrowed. “What do you want?”
“Nothing complicated.” The shadows crept slowly across the floor. “You loosen my chains.”
Lilith went rigid. “Your chains?”
“Just a little.”
“And in return?”
“I take the child somewhere safe.”
Lilith stared at the crib, throat tight. “How far?”
“Far enough.”
“Will she be alone?”
“No.”
“Cared for?”
Roo’s smile widened, though Lilith couldn’t see it. “Yes.”
“Hurt?”
A pause. The shadow, considering, then said, “No.”
“And she’ll be safe?” The words came out shaking.
“Safe enough.”
The word lingered between them like smoke that wouldn’t clear. Lilith closed her eyes.
“Then we have a deal.”
The shadows surged. A thin black tendril slid toward the necklace at her throat, and the black diamond at its center pulsed once, like a heartbeat that wasn’t hers.
“Yes,” Roo whispered, “we do.”
Somewhere beneath Hell, something ancient and starving finally smiled.
The deal, Roo would later reflect with no small amount of amusement, hadn’t specified nearly enough.
Lilith hadn’t asked what safe meant beyond the word itself.
Hadn’t asked where. Hadn’t asked with whom, or how.
She’d only wanted the resentment gone; the resentment that had, inconveniently, grown a face. A small, sleeping face.
Her daughter’s face.
But Roo had lived long enough beneath Hell to know that words mattered most exactly where they went unsaid. And Lilith had left quite a lot unsaid.
The instant the bargain sealed, Roo lifted baby Charlie from her crib with something disturbingly close to gentleness. Not kindness, never kindness, just the careful handling of something ancient toward a fragile thing it had decided, for now, not to break.
Charlie stirred, let out one small sound, and settled again. Roo looked down at her with the faint, unreadable curve of something that almost passed for a smile.
A sliver of her consciousness peeled away with the bargain, slipping through the dark like smoke before folding itself neatly into the diamond at Lilith’s throat. A window, or a leash—whichever the moment demanded.
Somewhere safe was doing an awful lot of work in that sentence. The deal had never actually required the baby to survive. Only that she be delivered somewhere secure. And technicalities, as it happened, were Roo’s favorite kind of loophole.
So she went looking through the endless sprawl of Hell, and she didn’t have to look long. Almost at once, something caught at the edge of her borrowed sight. A sinner’s soul with a strange, magnetic pull toward shadow, his presence flickering like static, faint but unmistakable.
Roo paused.
That’ll do.
She didn’t check on him. Didn’t learn his name, didn’t care what kind of sinner he’d been or what kind of monster Hell had carved out of him.
He was useful and that was enough.
She simply let the baby fall into the dark pooled around him.
The shadows curled on instinct, cradling rather than crushing, and with one subtle twist of power, Roo bent the darkness just enough to make the sinner believe the child had been summoned by his own hand.
A trick. A convenient little lie.
Then she checked the only detail that mattered.
A tiny chest, rising and falling.
Breathing.
Good enough. Bargain fulfilled. Roo withdrew, her presence slipping out of the sinner’s world as if she’d never been there at all.
There was, however, one small problem.
Roo had chosen him for what she’d sensed; the darkness, the potential, that strange pull between his soul and the shadows.
What she hadn’t accounted for was the person underneath it. Hadn’t accounted for what he’d do the moment he opened his eyes and looked down at the small bundle she’d left in his arms. Hadn’t accounted for the fact that, buried under all that darkness, there was still a heart stubborn enough to choose.
And that, Roo would eventually discover, was the one variable she should have been watching all along.
One second, there was nothing.
The next, a baby was screaming in his shadow like she’d been born straight out of the dark, and the sinner nearly dropped her from sheer, gut-punching shock.
He’d only been in Hell a short while; still raw from the whole eternal-damnation learning curve, still figuring out how to survive a realm that had made its opinion of children abundantly, viciously clear.
Hell had no patience for the young. It barely had patience for anyone.
He’d died at twelve, and Hell hadn’t cared. If anything, it seemed to hold a particular grudge against children.
His name was Alastor.
A small, half-feral deer demon surviving on instinct, scraps, and a shadow-power he didn’t fully understand yet. He used it to scavenge, to hide, to slip through places adults couldn’t follow. Anything to survive one more day on streets that ate the weak for sport.
And now, apparently, his own unpredictable magic had produced an infant.
Did I just kidnap someone’s baby?!
Alastor spun in place, panic shooting through him as he searched the alley, the rooftops, the windows, every darkened corner where a frantic parent might come sprinting toward him.
Nothing.
No footsteps. No shouting. No desperate voice calling for their child.
Just the baby, the dark, and him.
Then he noticed the basket.
It had appeared with her, tucked neatly beside the shadows. Alastor crouched down and found a note resting inside, written in careful, elegant handwriting.
Her name is Charlie. Make sure to look after her.
— R.
He stared at it, read it again, and felt the bottom of his stomach drop out as the truth of it settled in.
Someone had left her on purpose.
They’d simply handed a helpless infant off to whatever unfortunate soul happened to be standing in the right patch of shadow, and hoped for the best.
How am I supposed to look after a baby? His gaze dropped to the tiny bundle in his arms. I can barely keep myself fed.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
I’m a kid too!
His first instinct was the sensible one: find an adult, shove the responsibility into someone else’s arms, walk away fast, preferably before anyone could pin anything on him.
He’d already turned to do exactly that when he felt it: a tiny hand closing around his finger.
Alastor froze as Charlie had woken up. She blinked sleepily up at the strange creature holding her; small antlers, sharp teeth, blood-red eyes, and a face that, underneath all of it, still belonged to another child.
She didn’t cry, didn’t so much as flinch at the sight of him. Instead, her fingers tightened around his, and she looked at him with something so simple and so complete that Alastor didn’t know what to do with it.
Trust.
He went very, very still.
No one had looked at him like that since his mother. She’d been the only soul who ever loved him without condition, without expectation, without asking him to become something in return.
And she was in Heaven now, forever on the other side of a door he’d never get to open again.
The thought came quietly.
She wouldn’t hesitate. His throat tightened. Not for one second.
He could almost see her. The way she’d have gathered the baby to her chest, fussed over whether she was warm enough, smiled and promised him they’d figure it out together, somehow.
She’d have already picked her up.
Alastor looked down. Charlie was still holding his finger.
That settled it.
Whatever Hell wanted to do to children, it wasn’t getting the chance to do it to this one. Not while he still had a say.
He didn’t know the first thing about raising an infant. Knew even less about a demon baby specifically. Knew less still about surviving in a realm built to grind anything soft into dust.
But he knew someone who might.
He tucked the note carefully back into the basket, then adjusted the blanket around Charlie, wrapping her a little tighter against the chill. She let out a small, contented noise, and his ears twitched despite himself.
“Don’t get used to this,” he muttered, as Charlie promptly snuggled closer, entirely unbothered by the warning.
Alastor sighed, shifted her into the crook of his arm, and looked out toward the distant skyline of Hell.
There was one name even the streets whispered with something like respect. And fear.
Overlord Zestial.
He swallowed hard.
Then, with a baby tucked securely against his chest and absolutely no idea what he was doing, the twelve-year-old sinner stepped out into Hell.
For the first time since his death, he wasn’t walking alone.
The rumors all agreed on three things.
Zestial was ancient. Zestial was powerful. Zestial was dangerous.
Some called him cruel. Others insisted he was merely indifferent. A few swore he’d been in Hell longer than some of its oldest buildings; others claimed he’d simply always been there, lurking in the shadows long before anyone thought to give him a name.
But one detail kept surfacing no matter who told the story: Zestial might grant an audience to anyone courteous enough, or entertaining enough, to earn it.
It wasn’t much to go on. But Alastor was fresh out of better ideas, and he’d never been the sort to let poor odds stop him from trying anyway.
It took several days to track the overlord down. Several long, exhausting days.
Charlie, mercifully, turned out to be a tougher baby than she had any right to be. She survived on expired milk fished from dumpsters and the occasional carton lifted from a corner store, while Alastor kept one eye on the door and the other on her.
He did his best. Which, at the moment, amounted to keep her warm, keep her fed, keep her breathing.
It wasn’t much. But it was something.
And somehow, Charlie never got sick. Small miracles. Alastor would take every single one he could get, because Heaven knew he had absolutely no idea what he was doing.
By the time he finally found Zestial’s estate, his shoes were worn thin, his stomach was perpetually empty, and Charlie had developed the irritating habit of falling asleep exclusively when pressed against his chest. He’d also discovered that carrying a sleeping baby made it considerably harder to look intimidating.
Not that he’d had much intimidation to work with in the first place.
Zestial’s estate didn’t announce itself so much as loom.
A crumbling gothic sprawl half-swallowed by black ivy, its towers vanishing into the crimson haze above. Gargoyles crouched along the rooftops. Every window sat dark.
The silence was worse. It felt deliberate, as if the estate itself had learned patience centuries ago and had no intention of wasting it now.
Alastor stood at the gate longer than he’d ever admit to, Charlie resting against his hip, wide-eyed and unusually quiet as she stared up at the enormous structure.
Every survival instinct he’d sharpened over the past few weeks screamed at him to turn around. Overlords did not entertain uninvited children. Overlords ate them—some of them literally.
But the alternative was handing Charlie back to the streets, and Alastor had already decided that wasn’t an alternative at all.
So he lifted his chin, adjusted her blanket, and knocked. Several times. The sound disappeared into the estate like it had never happened.
For a moment, nothing. Then the enormous door swung open on its own.
A voice drifted out from the dark beyond it; old, dry, faintly amused, in the manner of someone who’d watched this exact scene play out a hundred times and somehow never gotten bored of it.
“A child,” it observed. “Carrying a child.”
Alastor’s ears flattened.
“Do come in,” the voice continued pleasantly, “before the street notices you’re standing there with something worth stealing.”
His grip tightened around Charlie. His heart hammered against his ribs. Every sensible part of him screamed that this was a terrible idea. Possibly the worst he’d ever had, which was saying something.
Still, he stepped through the doorway.
Charlie yawned against his shoulder, entirely unbothered by the overlord, the ominous mansion, or the distinct possibility they’d just walked into a monster’s lair.
Alastor glanced down at her. “You’re remarkably calm about all this.”
She made a tiny, sleepy noise.
“Right. Of course you are.”
Behind them, the door swung shut.
What Alastor didn’t know was that Zestial had been expecting him for days.
Word traveled quickly to old ears, and Zestial had been quietly tracking the boy since the moment the rumor reached him: a child sinner, alone, asking questions about the most dangerous name in the Pride Ring.
That alone was worth investigating. What sort of child went looking for that kind of trouble on purpose?
But what Zestial found trailing behind that question was worth considerably more.
The baby balanced on the boy’s hip wore a face Zestial hadn’t seen in longer than he cared to count; pale skin, fair hair, and those same faint, apple-red marks dusting her cheeks.
A face he remembered. A face Hell had all but forgotten.
Lucifer Morningstar had worn that face once, back when the King of Hell still bothered to walk among his subjects. Before he withdrew from public life. Before centuries of isolation reduced him to little more than a rumor wrapped in a crown.
Most sinners had long since forgotten what their king actually looked like. Memory in Hell was short, self-serving, and notoriously unreliable.
Zestial’s memory was neither.
He remembered exactly who that child was, and more importantly, exactly what it meant.
Still, he said nothing. Not yet. There were questions worth asking first.
So he let the boy find him properly, remaining hidden in the shadows until Alastor had nearly reached the estate, until the boy’s nerves were already stretched taut from the journey. Then Zestial stepped out, and Alastor very nearly jumped clean out of his skin.
His ears shot upright and his eyes went wide. In the same instant, his entire body turned. Not away, but toward the baby, curling around Charlie on reflex, making himself a shield before he’d even properly registered the threat.
Zestial watched, and a faint smile touched his ancient features.
Good instincts.
Perhaps there was more to this little sinner than rumor suggested.
“Why,” Zestial asked, his voice carrying the weight of centuries and a peculiar, archaic cadence, “doth a child such as thyself seek one as perilous as I?”
Alastor swallowed hard. His heart was pounding loudly enough that he was certain the overlord could hear it. But when he answered, his voice came out steadier than he felt.
“You know everything about the Pride Ring, sir.” His fingers tightened around Charlie’s blanket. “You’re the only one who might be able to help me with—“
He glanced down. Charlie had started chewing sleepily on the edge of her blanket, and his expression softened for the briefest moment before he looked back up.
“—with her.”
Zestial’s eyebrow rose. His gaze drifted to the baby, then back to Alastor, and for several long seconds he said nothing at all.
The silence stretched. Alastor shifted uneasily, beginning to wonder if he’d just made the worst mistake of his afterlife.
Then something flickered behind the overlord’s ancient eyes.
“Indeed.” The single word carried enough weight to make Alastor straighten. Zestial turned toward the estate. “Come.”
Alastor blinked. “...You mean it?”
“I did not invite thee merely to admire my doorway.”
He hesitated. Every nerve in his body screamed that following an ancient overlord into his private residence was probably a terrible idea.
Unfortunately, he’d already followed said overlord to his private residence. So really, the difficult part was over.
Alastor hurried after him.
Zestial led him beyond the grand entrance and deeper into the estate—away from the prying eyes of the streets, away from wandering sinners, away from ears that listened through walls and shadows alike—and into his own private quarters.
As the doors closed behind them, he glanced once more at the child in Alastor’s arms. He knew that face. He knew precisely whose blood ran through those tiny veins. But for now, he kept that knowledge to himself.
There would be time for questions. And if the boy had come seeking help for the child, then Zestial would hear him out.
After all, it wasn’t every day that a twelve-year-old sinner arrived at his doorstep carrying the daughter of the King of Hell.
Servants descended on them the moment they crossed the threshold.
Alastor barely had time to process the sheer number of people before he and Charlie were whisked toward separate rooms for baths, fresh clothes, and whatever other mysterious luxuries came standard with an overlord’s estate.
He very nearly bit the first servant who tried to take Charlie from his arms.
“Absolutely not.”
The servant froze as his ears flattened.
“I can hold her.”
A long, awkward pause. Then Zestial’s voice drifted in from somewhere behind them.
“Perhaps ’tis best the young sire retain the babe.”
The servant wisely retreated.
Once both of them were clean and dressed, the transformation was almost unsettling. Alastor wore clothes that actually fit him for the first time in weeks. Soft fabric instead of scavenged rags, sleeves that didn’t swallow his fingertips, shoes that weren’t threatening to fall apart beneath him. Charlie had been swaddled in something considerably softer than a stolen basket liner, and looked ridiculously pleased about it.
Alastor wasn’t sure whether to be jealous or relieved. He settled on both.
They were eventually led into an elegant tea room, where a table had been laid out with enough food to feed a small army.
Alastor stopped dead. He’d seen less food in restaurants. He’d seen less food in entire neighborhoods.
Bread still warm from the oven. Fresh fruit. Pastries. Meats and cheeses. Cakes. Tea and milk. Things he couldn’t even identify.
His stomach gave a painful twist but he didn’t touch a single plate.
Starving didn’t begin to cover what he was, but old instincts ran deeper than hunger. He had no idea what might be in that food, no idea what an overlord’s hospitality was actually worth, and he certainly wasn’t about to find out with his guard down. So he kept Charlie in his line of sight, his weight angled subtly toward the door, ready to run the second he needed to.
Zestial noticed.
Zestial watched him carefully, something between disbelief, amusement, and growing admiration settling behind his eyes. Most children, faced with a spread like this, would have abandoned every ounce of caution within seconds.
This one hadn’t touched a crumb. Not even the bread.
Careful, Zestial observed. Always an escape route.
His gaze flicked toward the boy’s feet.
Does not trust easily.
And beneath all that wariness, he could already see the shape of something considerable.
Potential.
Not the raw sort measured in claws or teeth or magic, but something more dangerous. The instinct to survive.
Zestial gave a quiet chuckle and deliberately reached for the nearest plate, helping himself first, making a show of eating.
“I assure thee, young one,” he said, “the fare is quite safe for consumption.”
Alastor watched him take a bite, then another. He still didn’t reach for the food. Instead, after a moment’s hesitation, he glanced down at Charlie.
“Could I—“ His voice caught. He swallowed. “Could I get some warm milk?”
Zestial paused. “For the babe?”
Alastor nodded.
Something in his expression softened, genuine pleasure flickering across his features. “Oh, yes.” He summoned a servant at once. “Prepare a bottle of warm milk.”
The servant bowed and hurried away.
But Zestial noticed the boy’s shoulders remained coiled tight, still watching, still suspicious, still waiting for the catch. So when the bottle arrived, he made certain the servant stayed exactly where Alastor could see them; every movement, every drop, nothing hidden.
The servant fed Charlie while Alastor watched with the intensity of someone guarding the most precious thing in the world. She drank happily, and soon had a full belly and a set of sleepy little noises to show for it.
Only once she’d settled comfortably against him did Alastor finally look back at the table. He hesitated. Then, slowly, he reached for the nearest piece of bread.
One bite. Then another. And that was apparently the last scrap of restraint he had left.
Alastor descended on the table.
He tore through the spread like the starving child he actually was, grabbing whatever sat closest and shoving it into his mouth with an urgency that made several servants quietly avert their eyes. Bread disappeared, then meat, then fruit, then the pastries.
Zestial simply watched, his expression shifting into something remarkably close to fond amusement.
The boy wasn’t greedy. He was hungry. So very hungry.
Zestial allowed himself to wonder just how long this child had been surviving on scraps, and poured himself another cup of tea. Across the table, Alastor was already reaching for his third pastry.
Zestial’s smile deepened. “Take thy time, young one.”
Alastor froze, hand hovering protectively over the plate.
Zestial raised an eyebrow and gestured toward the mountain of remaining food. “I assure thee. There shall be enough.”
With Charlie asleep in a crib beside the table, the real conversation finally began.
Alastor told him everything. The shadow that had split open. The baby that had tumbled out of it. The basket. The note, worn soft at its edges from being clutched too many times, folded and unfolded whenever he’d needed reassurance that he hadn’t somehow imagined the whole thing.
Eventually, hesitantly, he slid it across the table.
Her name is Charlie. Make sure to look after her.
— R.
Zestial read it once. Then again. The animation that had lit his features only moments before drained away, leaving something carved from an age older and colder than stone.
The silence stretched long enough that Alastor’s pulse began to climb.
Had he said something wrong? Made some catastrophic mistake simply by showing the old overlord a scrap of paper?
Finally, Zestial set it down with extraordinary care. When he spoke, his voice had lost every trace of its earlier warmth.
“Thou must keep this note, and the truth of it, secret from all souls. Dost thou understand?”
“Yes, sir.” The answer came immediately, without hesitation.
Zestial’s eyes stayed fixed on him. “Some matters in Hell are best left undisturbed. This be one such matter.”
There was something in his gaze then, something Alastor had never expected to see in an overlord. Fear.
Fear of something older, deeper. The kind possessed only by someone who’d survived long enough to recognize real danger when it looked back at him.
“Thou mayest tell the child the truth once she hath reached adulthood,” Zestial continued. “Until that day, this note—and the manner of her arrival—remains between us alone.”
Alastor nodded slowly. Whatever could frighten an overlord as old and powerful as Zestial was not something he intended to investigate.
His maman had always said it plainly: when the old ones get scared, you listen. They’ve survived long enough to know real danger when they see it.
So he listened. He reached for the note and folded it carefully back along its familiar creases.
Then Zestial said something that knocked the wind clean out of him.
“I wish to take thee as mine apprentice.”
Alastor blinked. “...What?”
Zestial leaned back, regarding him with those ancient, unreadable eyes.
“Thou possessest tremendous potential, young one. ‘Twould be a grievous waste to leave thee upon the streets, where such a gift might be squandered.”
Alastor stared. An apprentice. Him?
“I propose a compact,” Zestial went on, folding his hands atop the table. “I shall train thee myself, for a set number of years. In return, both thou and the child shall reside under the personal protection of Overlord Zestial.”
Alastor’s mouth fell open slightly. “Why…?”
Zestial’s eyebrow lifted.
“Why would you do that?” He gestured vaguely between himself and Charlie. “This deal sounds pretty one-sided. In my favor.”
A knowing glint appeared in Zestial’s eyes. “Consider it an investment,” the ancient overlord said, smiling.
“An investment?”
“I foresee thee accomplishing great things for Hell’s future.” The certainty in his voice made Alastor’s ears twitch. “I merely wish to see thee guided properly, that thou mightest not stray from thy path.”
His gaze drifted toward the sleeping baby. “Great things indeed.”
Alastor stared at him. He didn’t believe a word of the great things part. He was twelve. What could he possibly do that mattered to all of Hell? He couldn’t even reliably keep himself fed.
And yet Zestial spoke as though Alastor’s future had already been written somewhere, as if the old overlord had simply stumbled across the first page.
He didn’t know what to make of that.
What worried him far more was the apprenticeship itself. What if it turned into school again?
Back when he was alive, school had been less about learning and more about discovering how many ways other children could hurt him before an adult finally decided they’d gone too far. He remembered the whispers. The laughter. The hands that shoved. The teachers who looked away. The constant, exhausting reminder that he was different, and therefore an easy target.
He didn’t think he could survive living through that twice.
But then he looked at Charlie, asleep in the crib, one tiny hand curled beside her cheek.
The protection wasn’t only for him. It was for her.
Alastor already knew, with a certainty that sat heavy in his chest, that he couldn’t keep her safe alone. He could barely keep her fed. Here, she’d have food, shelter, warmth, protection — everything he’d been desperately trying to provide with two small hands and absolutely no idea what he was doing.
The choice wasn’t really a choice at all.
He looked back at Zestial, then slowly reached across the table. His hand looked very small against the ancient overlord’s.
“It’s a deal.”
For a heartbeat, Zestial simply stared at him. Then his smile changed, just slightly. No calculation behind it this time. No hidden amusement, no ancient game being played beneath the surface.
Just a genuine smile.
He clasped the boy’s hand and shook it once, firm and deliberate.
The bargain was sealed.
“A lone child found another lone child,” he murmured, gaze drifting toward the crib, then back to the boy who’d somehow wandered into his life carrying the daughter of a king.
“And so it begins.”