Only a fake marriage will save me from real damnation.

I’m lucky to catch the beautiful demon prince Lamian’s eye. He offers me a way to escape the hell dungeons of Ti’lith.

To be his fake bride.

He needs a fake human wife to regain favor with the King. I need salvation from my torment.
But on this hellish world, we dare not fall in love.

It would be twisted and used against us.
My heart can't give in to its desires.
And yet we tempt each other with our very presence.
Unable to look away. Unable to touch. To love
Is it worth risking my eternal soul?

I’m willing to find out.

Chapter 1

June 

I bat my eyes open, slowly coming to as the rest of my senses awaken with me. Many nights I’ve spent praying to the gods that this is all some nightmare I’ll escape from, that I’ll be wrapped up in my own bed, in the arms of my love.

Alas, now I wake up looking forward to that night’s slumber, for my dreams are the only place I can escape to now. Sitting up, I twist and stretch a stiff back, courtesy of a flat block of stone covered only by a thin rag.

The usual sights and sounds greet me. Dampened grimy walls caked with mold of a dark green, its reek of piss and shit worsened by years of neglect, and distant ambient sounds of water dripping a few cells down.

I don’t dare touch the walls, already knowing how they’d feel. Like dragging your fingers through viscous, granulated clay. Sometimes I think that’s what they scrape off the walls to feed us twice a day.

My stomach rumbles, its hunger inducing a slight numbing headache. This isn’t any tavern, I know I won’t be given a choice between taura stew or grilled daette with roasted burgona and phenson. No, now I eat purely for survival.

Yet it doesn’t make the taste of the shit they serve any better. I’ve already lost count of how many times I’ve gagged and thrown up from the sustenance they feed us. But it keeps me alive, it keeps me fighting, as well as the rest of the girls who start to awaken right after me.

I nod my head at them. I don’t say good morning anymore. Why should I? What reason do I have to lie to myself and others anymore? They rise from their beds, folding back their blankets and coughing from the musty air.

“Hey, June,” greets one of them, taking a seat beside me.

“Elise, how did you sleep?” I ask her.

“My back isn’t as sore today but I slept on my neck wrong,” she tells me. “I can barely turn it to the left.” She demonstrates her injury, groaning in pain.

“Turn the back of your neck to me, I’ll try and relieve some of the stiffness.”

As I rub Elise’s neck, my eyes wander over our living space. It has its space but a girl needs her privacy. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to get undressed in peace. Save the embarrassment for the rest of the girls, it’s the prying eyes of the damned Zonak guards that bother me the most.

I reminisce on being in a room alone, where it was just myself and my mind’s thoughts, being able to listen to my internal self without the voice of another running through my head. That is unless it was him, the love of my life…

 ***

 “Careful with those thorns. I’ve nicked myself with tizrets too many times to count.”

I cautiously pick up the fruit from his hands, tearing it open at the incision he’s made for me. With a spoon, I scoop out a piece of its flesh, its juices dripping down my arm.

“Here, Tyson,” I say to him, holding the spoon near his mouth. “You have the first bite.”

“Heh, don’t mind if I do,” he replied with a warm smile. I guide the spoon to his mouth. As he chews it, juices squirt out from his mouth, landing on my cheek.

“Oh no!” he babbles with his mouth still full.

Tyson holds me as I collapse onto his chest, sharing laughter as sweet as the fruit we eat. He grasps my chin, gently bringing my gaze up to meet his. Our eyes lock, brewing a fresh burst of joy within my body.

I wrap my arms around his neck as he pulls me closer, our lips coming together in a kiss that I don’t want to part from. We lay down on the grass, staring up at the blue sky peppered with the whispers of clouds.

“What do you think is up there?” Tyson asks.

“I used to dream that I lived there when I was just a kid. I had this big mansion all to myself with loads of servants to bring me anything I desired to eat. Then, whenever I’d get bored, I’d go outside and bounce around from cloud to cloud.”

“Maybe that’s what it’s actually like.”

I turn, laying my head on his chest.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“I feel like if you lived amongst the clouds, you could have anything you’ve ever wanted.”

“Do you think you can’t have that here?”

“I do but I can’t help but think that to live up there must carry a whole different type of meaning, a different purpose. Whatever that is, I imagine it to be a million times better than here.”

“Hmm, maybe you should find a way to the clouds then,” I joke.

“Hah, well I wouldn’t go anywhere without you,” he replies, planting a quick kiss on my lips.

“And me with you too.”

A sudden explosion almost bursts my eardrums as we scramble to our feet. The village nearby is engulfed in flames with folk running to and fro. Behind them are creatures of some sort that we’ve never seen before, titans stretching at least fifteen feet.

“Fuck, what’s going on!?” I stutter in terror, watching as one of the invaders jumps over a house with ease, crushing a man on impact.

“Where are they coming from?” asks Tyson.

“Forget about the house, just run!” I scream.

We spin around and start sprinting but are suddenly halted at an advancing group of more soldiers. They aren’t as towering as the ones laying waste to the village but still loom over us.

They wear high-grade armor and brandish weaponry that sends shivers down our spine.The moment they see that we’ve noticed them, a wicked smile spreads across their faces. The leading soldier points directly at me.

“That one there,” he commands in a fiendish voice.

His men stomp toward us as I grab Tyson’s arm.

“What do we do?” I plead, starting to cry.

“You run, get out of here now!” he yells.

“Wait what? What about you?”

“Don’t worry about me, just go!” he screams.

I turn and run, looking back over my shoulder as the soldiers gang up on him. Tyson throws a punch that knocks one back and pushes another away but the numbers game catches him out. Three more soldiers use the blunt ends of their weapons to subdue him.

Visions of what they’ll do to him run through my mind, making me lose control of my body as I turn around in an attempt to save him. Completely ignoring the fact I won’t be able to fight them, I can’t let him suffer for me.

I can barely see his face when he looks up at me coming back for him, his face coated in blood. He starts shaking his head in disbelief, screaming for me not to come back.

“No! June, get out of here, what are you doing?”

One of the soldiers turns around, shouldering me to the ground as I try to tackle him. As they pin me down to the ground, Tyson bursts free from their grip, pouncing on the soldier who hit me. He unleashes a fury of punches on him but the soldier pushes him off.

“Take her away!” he orders.

“No! Tyson!” I yell as they whisk me off the ground and take off running.

“June!”

They continue beating him down, and soon he’s just a speck in the distance.

 ***

“That creep is staring at us again,” says one of the other girls as I finish up with Elise.

I turn to look at the bars, seeing the small man-like creature peeking through at the girls. He makes no effort to disguise his perverseness, only sticking out his tongue at us.

“I bet he’s going to mess with our food again, I’m sick of only getting half-portions of food with his spit” hissed the same girl.

“Don’t worry, Hailey. I’ll make sure he doesn’t do any of that shit anymore after today.”

“What are you going to do?” asks Elise.

“He’ll hear a piece of my mind, and feel the weight of my foot.”

“Oh June, you’re as fiery as the color of your hair,” says Hailey, running her fingers through my bright red strands.

“Fucking assholes. You relax girls, just wait for mealtime and I’ll sort things out.”

“Thanks June,” say some of the other girls throughout the cell. “For being there for us.”

I nod back at them as I think of how to tell that piece of shit guard not to fuck with our food. These girls are just like me, having been snatched away from their home without warning. Some, like me, are just trying to survive but others seem to have long lost hope.

Maybe it’s my feistiness, my lack of fear with the guards that’s made these girls look to me for leadership of some sort. I do my best to be kind to them to the best of my abilities but sometimes I wonder if day by day, I’m losing my own humanity.

A few minutes pass and soon, it’s time for us to eat. We hear a door open, and the familiar footsteps of the guard approach. He holds a rare sight, a full portion of our food. Perhaps he’s had his fun, having grown bored of being an asshole.

That thought dissipates in an instant when he digs one of his rotten hands into our meal, scraping half of it off the plate and shoving it in his mouth. The sight of its gross texture in between his decaying teeth makes me want to throw up but not as much it makes me want to kick his head in.

He spits in the remaining part of the food and moves to open the metal flap to our cell. He shoves the food in with such force that most of it spills across the ground. Before he can retract his arm, I bring all my bodyweight down with a stomp, pinning his arm in place.

“Agh! You bitch, get the fuck off my arm!” he yells in pain.

The other girls gasp in surprise, running over to hurl insults at the lowly piece of shit.

“You garbage, that’s what you deserve!”

“Let go, damn it!” he begs, looking me in the eye.

“I’m going to make something perfectly clear for you, so listen well you fucking punk.”

I lean down, pressing more weight onto his arm. His moans of pain etch a smile across our faces.

“What is it for fucks’ sake?”

“You’re no longer to mess with our food. That means no more taking it for yourself, no spitting in it, and no dropping it on the floor!” I scream at him. Adrenaline pumps through me, my voice seething with fury.

“Who are you to make demands you bitch! You’ll suffer for- AGH!”

“Want me to amputate that arm? Us girls will happily take it for ourselves.”

“Alright alright!”

“Promise me,” I order him.

“Why would I promise you anything?”

The look I give him tells the scumbag all he needs to know.

“Alright, I promise!”

I let him go, proud of the wound I’ve inflicted on him. He gets to his feet, fighting back tears as he walks away. The girls gawk at me in astonishment as I walk back to my bed.

“I can’t believe you did that, holy shit,” gushes Hailey.

“June,” says Elise concerningly. “That guard has no reason to keep his promise. He’s a Zonak, his kind are used to being pushed around, that’s how they’ve come to understand this world.”

I know that ultimately she’s right about his empty promise, nodding my head in response.

“Even if it does nothing, I just wanted the satisfaction of seeing him suffer. I feel nothing but hatred for every single… thing that has us trapped in this godsforsaken place. I intend on making their lives as hard as I fucking can.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“Being disobedient, disruptive, whatever I can think of. I’ll probably never get back home and it’s all their doing.”

The doors swing open again. Expecting to see the injured Zonak guard, we’re alarmed at the sight of a guard twice the size of him. He glares at us through the bars as the girls grab my arms in fear.

“All of you dust yourselves off. We have a royal Prince on his way for an inspection and he likes his girls pretty and presentable.”

He looks directly at me.

“So you’d better not disappoint.”