"Look, boss…"

Ashtoreth waited, watching. From where he sat atop her knees, Dazel's eyes almost seemed like two glowing points of light in the dark.

"I'm tired," he said. "I spoke without thinking. I really didn't mean anything by it."

"You're right about the first two things," she said acidly. "Dazel—this has gone on long enough."

A flicker of annoyance seemed to cross his features. "That's what you've decided, is it?"

"Can't you see what this looks like to me?" she asked. "You and I both know that there's no reason for you to hide anything from me unless you know it's going to go against my plans."

"Do we, master?"

She snarled. "Oh, please. What did you do? Burn a whole world to ash? Kill a kindly god? Breed a race of slaves? I don't care, Dazel. And you know that. If you don't know that, you can ask. As long as both of us can get what we want, I won't be bothered by who you are or what you've done. What am I supposed to think, now, except that you know that if you tell me who you are, I'll figure out that you're against me."

Dazel swished his tail through the air behind him. "Heh. The good archfiend, is it? You don't need me to be moral, just useful."

"Reliable," she said. "I need to know that trusting you isn't going to get the people I love hurt, the world I love hurt. I need to know I'm not helping you scuttle all my plans by giving you your freedom."

"Well you can't," said Dazel. "Life is full of uncertainties."

"So let's not fill it with any more unnecessary ones, yes?"

Dazel sighed. "Haven't you ever stopped to ask yourself why you don't have my story, yet?"

"...Yes?" she said, staring at him in disbelief. "Many times? Such as right now?"

"Not what I meant," he said. "I mean, haven't you ever wondered why I haven't just lied to you?

"There's no point in it," she said. "I've pushed you for the truth, but I never forced you. Never hurt you. Never took something that you needed away from you. So why bother giving me the fake story when you've got nothing to lose in the first place? You'd be giving me a chance to figure out that you're a liar and gaining nothing. And you've underestimated me before."

"Underestimated you," Dazel muttered. "Have I, Ashtoreth?"

"Well yeah," she said, suppressing a small smile. "You know, Dazel, I'm starting to wonder if maybe you're bad at managing a big ego. I could give you some tips."

"Please, boss. Take me to school."

"You're not supposed to keep it inside all the time and seethe—the ego becomes too condensed. It hardens and grows unpleasant for you and the people around you. Try not to think of yourself as 'arrogant mage' and more 'arrogant warlord.'"

"Are we having a serious conversation right now, or not?"

"We're having this conversation," she said. "Now tell me who you are."

Silence stretched between them. Dazel stared.

"No," he said at last.

"No?"

She grimaced, then shifted, causing Dazel to beat his wings and rise into the air, hovering.

"You get to keep your ghost, Ashtoreth."

Anger flared in her, sudden and bright like stricken match. "No," she said. "I didn't. If you'll recall, you stole her from me because you were angry that I was a better person than you expected. You even tortured me while you did it—even after you knew it was no help to you."

"Then I'm a bastard and a hypocrite," Dazel hissed. "My point stands. Leave me with the same right to secrecy that you demand. When you say you want to keep your ghost to yourself, none of your precious humans question it—not one whit."

"My ghost isn't a secret that could potentially destroy Earth's chances of survival!" she hissed.

"Mine isn't either!" he snapped back with equal fervor. "The only reason you think that it must be is because you don't trust me! Understand? You don't trust me."

"Should I?"

"That's academic," Dazel said.

Ashtoreth let out a dejected, humorless laugh.

"When I tell you everything, you won't believe it—because you don't trust me. What then?"

Ashtoreth's voice was steady, quiet. "You helped him, didn't you?" she asked. "He knows you because you helped him build it. You think I've never thought about this?"

"I'm sure you've considered every possibility," Dazel said. "Each invented according to the order that you most fear them." He shook his head. "But I've put my hours in," he said. "I've served you well. Maybe it wasn't all I could give, but I've done enough."

He let a sound that was half-hiss, half-snarl. "As if I should have to do anything, anything in order to be a free soul, in order to have what every living creature ought by rights be entitled to. All my knowledge, all my memories… everything just chained down in Hell until some kindly master chooses to release me, and then only if I behave!"

"Chooses?" she asked. "I would have, Dazel—except you took that away. Remember?"

"And I had every right to!" he roared suddenly. "How can you love these humans so much but not see what you've done to me through their eyes? You're worried about who I am, Princess? What I might do? Good. That's what it's like to have an equal, sometimes."

Ashtoreth let out an exasperated sigh. She pushed herself off her bed, stood, then realized she had nowhere to go and was just agitated before leaning her forehead against the wall.

"That's what you're going with, Dazel? You won't even try to put me at ease, and it's… what? On a matter of principle? The indignity of being a servant is so great that you'll gleefully leave me scared?"

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"Whether you're scared or not has nothing to do with my motivations."

She shook her head. "I thought we understood each other," she said, hating how whiny she sounded. "I thought we were working well together. I thought we were allies. Good allies."

"You told me when I bound you to our contract that we could never have a relationship built on trust."

"Yeah," she said tiredly.

"Should it matter that I like you more than all my other masters? That this past year has been more interesting, more fun, than all my other summons?" He sighed. "It doesn't matter that this has been the best year of my life in… I don't know how long."

"Why doesn't it matter?" she asked. "What else could I do, Dazel? I'm going to free you. I would have if you'd just asked. You're punishing me for the entire order of Hell."

"When I asked you about your sister, you didn't answer right away. You knew it would make no difference, but you fought as long as you could, even though it put you in agony. Why did you do that?""

Ashtoreth shut her yes. "Because fuck you," she conceded.

"Precisely."

"I know it's not the same for both of us," she said. "I know I'm royalty, and you're from the Pits. But I guess I thought we were close enough—both of us victims of my father, in a way. I thought we had that in common."

"We do," he said. "We have more in common than you know. But the different between us is that you seized your destiny when you were not even twenty and I had to wait agonizing centuries for you to show up and so graciously offer to give me what all beings deserve."

Ashtoreth bristled. "So there's nothing I can do, then," she said, turning to fix him with a cold expression. "And that's the point. That's what you need. Me, having no power over you."

"I want you to get exactly what you want," he said, his voice softening. "Believe me. I want Earth to survive and prosper, Ashtoreth. I want you and the humans to be happy."

Ashtoreth's mouth was a hard line. "What did you do?" she asked. "Who are you?"

"My past is mine, Ashtoreth. Mine all mine."

"All right," she said. "But if you did do something—something bad—then I hope you know that I under—"

Dazel snarled. "Don't!" he said, growing suddenly agitated. He turned away, then seemed to reconsider and turned back to her. "Understand? is that what you were going to say?"

"Yes."

"Because of what you had to do as a child, you understand me?" he asked, his voice more rife with anger than she'd ever heard it. "Heaven above, you're still a child!"

Ashtoreth winced. "Don't say that."

"Don't you dare think that you can tell me what I should and shouldn't feel!" he said. "You might have had no choice at all, or no wisdom to make it with—but I know what I did. I know."

"Dazel…"

"You don't know the half of what can drive someone to do evil," he said, practically shaking. "You don't. You couldn't comprehend the sheer magnitude of what it's possible to do."

"Okay," she said. "But I forgive you anyway."

"Stop it," Dazel said, growing quieter and floating toward the back wall. "You don't know anything."

Ashtoreth fixed him with her gaze, her face neutral. "I know that you have my foolish, childish, naive forgiveness," she said.

"Stop it."

"You can give it as little value as you like," she said quietly. You can stuff it down where you'll never, ever see it. You can hate me for it all you want. But you'll still have it, Dazel—because you can't tell me what I feel, not any more than I can you."

"How deplorably purehearted of you," he said. "I'm glad you spotted a chance to play the good guy."

"Sure, Dazel. I'm a grade-A virtue signaller. Next up: the whales." She put a hand against the wall and sighed. "This is going nowhere."

"I'm glad you see that."

"I'm not."

Dazel waited a moment, and when she said nothing further, he said, "Let me ask you a question."

"I'm not inclined to answer your questions right now."

"Call it a deal, then."

Ashtoreth looked up sharply.

"See? Terms you understand."

"Did I miss something?" she asked coolly. "You don't have my life in your hands, so I'm not sure what your leverage is."

"Not a real deal," he said, swishing his tail as his eyes glinted. "No contract. No promise, even. I just want you to answer me—and you don't have to if you don't want to. I won't compel you."

"I just told you—"

"If you could give your life to end Hell, would you?"

Ashtoreth blinked. "What?"

"The deal, Ashtoreth," Dazel said. "You and Hell—both gone. The empire collapses in on itself. The infernals all eat each other. The chaos becomes too much. The Eldunari Alliance and everyone else who smells weakness peel away Hell's worlds and then—eventually—conquer even the Circles. A bloody effort, but uncountable billions are saved, long-term. Would that be worth it, for you?"

Ashtoreth eyed him with a sense of deep-set unease. "Dazel," she said. "What are you talking about?"

"Think of it like the trolley problem," he said. "A hypothetical moral conundrum."

"Is it?"

A pause. "Do you need to know before you answer, master?"

A chill seemed to run through her body, accompanied by a strange anticipation. She felt as if she were rounding some corner, filled with a fear that she couldn't quite place—but whatever she was afraid of, it would be just past that wall, would appear any moment now ahead of her….

Uncountable billions are saved, long-term…

Did she need to know if the question was just a question in order to answer? Was anything in all the cosmos worth Ashtoreth sacrificing herself?

"I…"

"Your life for Hell," he said. "And you can't even—"

"Yes," she whispered.

It would math out, after all. And it was only a hypothetical.

It bothered her that it took her so long to answer. After all, she had no problem spending other lives for her cause, not when she knew how righteous it was….

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"It would save billions," she said. "Entire worlds."

"But you wouldn't be around to see it."

"Just how selfish do you think I am?"

"Honestly, Ashtoreth, I don't know."

Ashtoreth scowled, then turned away from him. "This conversation was useless," she said. "Go find someplace to sleep."

Dazel left without another sound, leaving her to lie belly-down in bed and wonder.

She hadn't been entirely honest with him. The conversation had been productive in at least one way.

Ashtoreth wanted to believe that if she was just generally kind and trustworthy toward Dazel, eventually he'd come around.

But was she willing to trust him about everything he'd said and implied? That he was simply hiding his past from her because it was painful, shameful—exactly the things that he thought she was poised to best relate to? That whatever the truth about him was, it ultimately wouldn't interfere with her plans?

The answer was no.

Not with Earth at stake.

Soon, now, Dazel would have to be handled.

"What am I going to do about you?" she whispered.

But it was easy enough to find her answer: the outer market. If she played her cards correctly, she could find someone who would be able to figure out just who Dazel was once she was there.

It would be difficult. She couldn't share information about him that she had reason to believe he didn't want shared—and the fact that he was an ancient mage somehow associated with Hell's greatest powers was clearly meant to be secret.

But there were ways to get around that particular clause. And if his soul map didn't have any clues to get her start… hers might.

And if that didn't work? Well.

She did know people in Hell who might take an interest…

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