A room full of faces I recognized, and one I did not. He sat, leaning back slightly in his chair. As if he was keeping some distance between him and my sister Sabina. He was comfortable enough, though, where he sat as if he were more familiar with this town than he really was.

  He was handsome and quite different from what I expected to see when the day came. I prepared over the years to fight against a monster who was promised my hands in marriage. It was something that kept me motivated to keep going in my training. But he was a human? I surely was wrong that this wasn’t the person who was here those many days ago.

  I closed the gap between me and the table. Sabina looked at me surprised and a little confused, and then the teasing smile spread across her face. She didn’t recognize the man in front of her. She saw a man she could easily take to bed if she said the right things at the right time. Which for her wasn’t hard at all.

  “Are you human or demon?” I asked him. My fists glowing with the magic I studied. Sabina shoved her chair away, standing beside the table, now ready to pull me away from this situation.

  “Human.” The man answered, “I was cursed to travel this world helping people where I could while trapped in skins that were not my own.”

  “You’re the bear demon?” Octavia came rushing over, “Oh my dear, dear, oh my!”

  I rolled my eyes at her overzealous demeanor. She was married but had an eye for every man who stepped into this place. A good, wealthy man. That combination of men was hard to come by. They were either good or wealthy, never two descriptions for the same man. He charmed her with his personality, but she was bored of it and quickly wandered back to town for her devilish intent. And now she seemed to have her eyes on taking my future husband.

  With the laws on marriage being as tricky as they were -- I could almost agree to it. But I did promise to kill him and spent those days fighting this.

  “Talia. I think you’ve wasted years.” Sabina said to me gently. “He does look as human as he claims.”

  I turned to her; her eyes sparkled as she looked at him. The beer and the attractiveness of the man danced in her eyes. I felt anger bubbling up through me. They mocked and teased, causing me to dread this day, and now they were all but flinging themselves on him.

  I splashed holy water on the man, to his surprise. He did not jump up in anger. There were no angry words, no curses in a devilish language. Only a very wet, confused man dressed in what I could only assume were his best clothes for today. I winced.

  “Talia, do you even know if this handsome man is even your bear demon? " Tavi interrupted this. I nearly forgot she was close by. “For all we know, you just drenched a man looking for a night of fun.”

  “No,” I answer, “I can feel it is him.”

  Sabi and Tavi looked down at the man sitting and staring up at them. They were waiting for him to confirm or rather, waiting for the denial. They would try to jump him either way, but there was less guilt with a denial. I feared all my training couldn’t fight against the lust my siblings held toward men. Something I could never understand.

  Before he could answer. Something unfolded nearest the hearth. One moment the inn was warm with life and candlelight, and the next it smelled of sulfur and damp wool. Space at the center of the inn warped inward like fabric being pulled too hard. Sounds thinned, flames guttered, stretching long and blue, as if trying to flee the space. Maybe we should have taken their heed and run, too.

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  There he was. Whoever this was.

  Stood where the hearth had been. Where my father was sitting. Now gone. Words and screams were frozen in my throat at the sight I saw. If he was no longer there, was he dead? He couldn’t be. That man had years to hang onto. This being too tall for the room he occupied. Yet the building did not touch him; nothing touched him. His form only suggested a man in the loosest sense of the word "man": long limbs, upright, deliberate. Everything else was wrong. I was stupid to assume the man in the chair was anything but human when looking at this.

  His skin was wet obsidian with a faint ember glow. Something forged but never allowed to cool. It didn’t reflect light but more so took it, the theft of any comfort of this world. Antlers rose from his brow, a slow spiraling kind. Between these, eyes—or what I would consider eyes if he was human—but golden, bottomless, wounds in the dark.

  His mouth curved into a smile that wasn’t kind. It couldn’t hide what it was even if it tried.

  Guests in the building screamed, or were screaming, and I just noticed it. Chairs crashing over, tankards shattered. People bolted for the door, tripping over their own terror, some falling to their knees in prayer. The demon did not look at them. They were beneath his notice, just gnats fleeing a storm.

  His gaze fixed instead on my sisters. He tilted his head, curious in the way a child might be about a broken toy.

  He stepped further. The floor did not creak; it sighed, splintering in slow, reverent cracks. With each movement the air grew heavier, pressing breath from lungs, pinning fear deep into marrow. Symbols bloomed faintly in his wake, burned into sight, and then disappeared.

  There was no bargaining.

  No explanation.

  It reached out toward Tavi. My stomach sank, and I leapt. The scythe I carried on my hip was readying toward the being. I slid through it, my body flickering in the pins and needles as your limbs fell asleep. I slam into the floor, stars rushing to my vision, blinding me as I work to get my wits about me.

  He closed his hand to the space before Tavi’s face and pulled. Her body sagged, collapsing to the floor before me. Then it disappeared.

  Sabina.

  “Who the hell are you?” I ask it as it turns toward my last living sister. It did not answer, nothing. “Supposed husband, what did you bring to our home?’

  I sliced through, or what should have been through, the creature, the energy slicing at nothing as it also pulled Sabina, her body, and then disappeared.

  The creature walked toward Eren, nodded, and said, “Two souls for one then.”

  It vanished in the same manner he entered the place. The hearth—my father stood there, pale as a ghost. I ran across to check if he was alive.

  “I’m fine.” He said, running his hand across his face. I forced him to sit on the stool he is supposed to be sitting on. “By time I realized it wasn’t something I could—"

  I turned toward Eren, rushing at him, which didn’t take long as he was already on his way toward me. I grabbed the scythe and pressed it hard against his neck, magic flowing up to my hands, ready.

  “Explain or die," I announce. His hands go up, words sputtering before it dawns on me that I am pressing a little too hard against his throat. I release, and he takes a couple steps back.

  “For all it is worth. I was not aware that was what I was—"

  Without much thought, when I re-awoke, the man was on the floor. Blood was pooling from his lips. But his chest was moving. Not dead. I was told not to use that until I was able to get my anger under control. But that’s all I felt the last few years and now.

  “You didn’t let me finish," the man said, wiping the blood off his lips. He pulled himself up with the feeble assist from my father. The man was glaring at me like I was the one who put us in this situation. If he wouldn’t have accepted the gift from this man, we wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with.

  I did allow him to finish his story but did not like it. I demanded he take me to where he met this demon. I didn’t work for years to gain this power to sit idly by. I never imagined my sisters would be involved in this deal to begin with. I should offer my father a sacrifice for all of this. The anger against him fizzled out before I could fully form the commitment to that idea.