“Baal, what are you reading?”

  The Sacrifice raises his gaze from the book in front of him and looks at the crippled maid of the tavern—the Hungry Wolf. He’s just recently learned the name.

  “It is a treatise on local history, milady,” he lies smoothly, offering her that practiced, warm smile that usually makes others stop breathing. “I find the local customs... fascinating.”

  “Is it boring?” Cecilia asks, balancing a tray on her single arm with a dexterity that the Sacrifice’s analytical mind notes is statistically improbable for someone with her injuries.

  “History is rarely boring, Lady Cecilia.”

  The Sacrifice wishes he was in another place, honestly. And he did think of switching to someplace else--yet, something in the Hungry Wolf made him too curious to leave the place.

  Well, not something but someone.

  “You look bored,” she states matter-of-factly, dropping a fresh cup of juice on his table with a clack that threatens to spill the liquid. “You have that look again, Baal.”

  “Define this look you talk about, milady,” The Sacrifice slightly tilts his head, looking at her. It is absurd that this broken thing, this collection of missing parts, speaks to him with such casual insolence. Yet, he feels amused.

  “You just look bored,” the maid says.

  “I assure you, I am captivated,” he replies, his voice soft. “And I see that you have decided to persist with that name.”

  “Baal? Yeah,” she shrugs. “Fits you better than ‘The Blood of the Devils.’ That’s a mouthful. Plus, you responded to it, didn’t you?”

  “I suppose I did,” he murmurs, his eyes tracking the scar tissue on her face. Weak, he thinks. One strike and she would turn to dust. “Thank you for the juice, Lady Cecilia.”

  The Sacrifice, who was not on guard, realizes that he did. He did finally respond to the name.

  “You don’t look bothered,” Cecilia says with clear disappointment in her voice.

  It is her favorite game to bother the monster that, in her mind, does not exist.

  A feeble mind, The Sacrifice thinks. A fool’s mind. But bold. Courageous. She does not shy away. I have threatened her and she’s seen my aura. Yet, here she is. Everyone else at the Hungry Wolf avoids my eyes. They know. She might too, but she doesn’t care. Is it because she’s broken?

  “Well, it happens that you sometimes lose an exchange or two. No matter how strong you are, you must take some losses,” The Sacrifice says.

  “Why would I be bothered?” The Sacrifice asks, deliberately turning a page of the book he hasn’t actually been reading for the last ten minutes. “It is a name. A sound used to capture attention. You used it, I responded. It served its function.”

  “Bo-ring,” Cecilia draws out the word, leaning her hip against the sturdy wood of his table. She ignores a patron across the room waving an empty cup in her direction. “I named you after a demon king, Baal. You’re supposed to scowl, or threaten to curse me, or at least look a little bit dangerous. Right now, you just look like a librarian with a sword by his side.”

  “My kind does not take names. They have power. And if you accept one, people can wield that power against you. Devils used to acquire names only when they were powerful enough to defend them.”

  “Aren’t you super powerful or something?” Cecilia frowns.

  “In the grand scale of things, milady, I am nothing,” The Sacrifice smiles warmly. “May I resume my reading now?”

  “Could you...” Cecilia seems to hesitate, something that surprises the man.

  “Yes?” He nudges her with his words.

  Cecilia hesitates again.

  “Since you won’t teach me how to fight,” she blurted out, her gaze fixed on the dense text of his open book, her voice losing its mocking edge for a rare moment of vulnerability. “Teach me how to read.”

  The Sacrifice blinks. Of all the possible requests—gold, protection, or another pestering inquiry about his non-existent horns—this is the one he had not calculated.

  “You cannot read?” he asks, his tone neutral, though his mind instantly catalogs the socio-economic implications of her station.

  Orphan. Laborer. Cripple. Of course she cannot read.

  “I’m a maid in a tavern, Lord Baal. I don’t exactly get a lot of library time,” she retorts.

  She calls me ‘Lord’ whenever she’s quite a bit hurt by my words, The Sacrifice thinks. Anyway, my real training is suspended until I go back after the mission. I cannot reveal anything to the outsiders. I might as well entertain myself.

  The Sacrifice looks at the crippled maid and almost smiles.

  I’m doing this because I have nothing better to do.

  “Sure. I’ll teach you your way around letters.”

  “Nice,” Cecilia fist pumps with her one good arm and then nods, “and fighting’s next.”

  “I never said that.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  He taps the leather cover with a pale, manicured finger.

  “Sit, Lady Cecilia.”

  The owner of the tavern takes a good look at his maid and then, wisely, says nothing.

  If any other maid were to slack off during work hours, he might have yelled at her. But not only Cecilia was hired mostly because he pities her and because she’s good at entertaining clients, but he’s not taking his chances with the monster she just befriended. If anything, he’s going to start spreading the voice around as much as he can so that this guy’s fame is going to keep thieves and thugs away.

  * * *

  A Few Days Later

  The tavern is particularly raucous, filled with the smell of roasted pork and stale ale, but in the corner farthest from the hearth, a bubble of silence persists.

  “The...” Cecilia furrows her brow, her single eye narrowing with such intensity that it looked painful. She runs a finger under the letters The Sacrifice has elegantly scrawled onto a scrap of parchment. “The... K-ni... ght...”

  “Knight,” The Sacrifice corrects gently, sipping his juice. “ The ‘K’ is silent. A ridiculous linguistic redundancy, I agree, but we must adhere to the rules.”

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “The Knight...” she repeats, testing the word on her tongue. She takes a breath, steeling herself for the next one. “St-ood... t-all.”

  “Acceptable,” he nods. “You are reading at the pace of a dying snail, but you are reading.”

  Cecilia doesn’t snap back this time. She stares at the words she has just deciphered with a mixture of awe and disbelief.

  Then, she looks up, her expression shifting from pride to a pensive frown.

  “Baal?”

  “You have lost your focus,” he notes, setting his cup down. “We still have three sentences to go.”

  “You said something the other day,” she says, ignoring the lesson. She leans forward, resting her chin on her remaining hand. “When I was annoying you.”

  “You are always annoying me, Lady Cecilia. You must be more specific.”

  “You said that no matter how strong you are, you must take some losses.” She pauses, searching his face for a reaction. “What did you mean by that?”

  The Sacrifice studies her. It is a simple question, yet it pokes at a concept he finds himself contemplating often.

  “I meant exactly what I said,” he replies evenly. “Existence is a series of transactions. Conflict is inevitable. Statistical probability dictates that no entity maintains a one-hundred percent success rate indefinitely.”

  When The Sacrifice sees the blank stare the girl is giving him, he sighs.

  “I’m sorry, milady. Transaction means... a deal. Statistics is... we’ll get into it another time. What I meant to say is that no one can always win. At some point, you will find someone able to defeat it.”

  “I don’t understand the...” Cecilia narrows her one eye. “What’s the word you used yesterday?”

  “Implications?” The Sacrifice offers.

  “Yes!”

  “Good use of the word,” The Sacrifice is satisfied. Cecilia is as ignorant as they come, but when it comes to learning, she’s like a sponge. “As for the implications, they’re complex. There are many. One of the most dangerous, for example, is fear. If you think you can always lose, you won’t ever be able to accept a loss. And--wait milady, be patient, I can see you racing to speak. If you are not able to accept a loss, you will be ready to do anything to win.”

  “I don’t follow,” Cecilia says. “What do you mean? Why is that a problem?”

  “Winning is not the only thing in this world. If you lose everything in order to win, if you must completely destroy yourself in order to come on top, why fight at all? Why not flee, milady?”

  “Fleeing is for cowards,” Cecilia replies, frowning, but also clearly confused.

  “It is when you’re fighting for something or someone. Not when you fight for yourself. If I challenged you to a duel to the death, would you not back down?”

  Cecilia opens and closes her mouth.

  “There you go. Some people would see insult in the challenge and would rather die. Or worse.”

  “What’s worse than dying?” Cecilia asks.

  The Sacrifice sighs.

  “Betraying your kind, your family, your friends. Or much, much worse. Betraying yourself.”

  “What does that mean, Baal?” Cecilia asks.

  “It means looking in the mirror and not recognizing the face staring back,” The Sacrifice answers, his voice dropping a fraction of an octave. “It means carving away pieces of your soul to fit into a mold someone else cast for you.”

  He stares at the grain of the wooden table, but he isn’t seeing the wood. He is seeing the chains he cannot see.

  Oaths, The Sacrifice thinks, the word tasting like ash in his mind. Contracts written in blood and fire.

  He understands loyalty. He respects it, even. It is the framework of order, the backbone of armies. Without loyalty, there is only chaos. But he is an observer of the concept, not a participant. How can a weapon be loyal? A weapon has an owner, not a conviction.

  His very soul is mortgage to the Infernal. His bloodline is a leash held by hands far more ancient and cruel than any human king. He is bound by duty, by the terrifying mechanics of his own existence, to serve a purpose he did not choose.

  I am outside of it, he reasons coldly. Loyalty is a luxury for those who own themselves.

  And then, unbidden, the name rises in his mind like bile.

  Jacob Cloud.

  The thought of the ‘Champion’ acts as a spark in a room filled with gas. For a fleeting heartbeat, the tavern vanishes. The smell of pork is replaced by the copper scent of blood. The Sacrifice sees himself standing over a broken form—Jacob Cloud—his hand buried deep in the chest of the Leader of Champions.

  The impulse isn’t a thought; it’s a hunger. It starts in his stomach and rushes to his fingertips. It screams for the snap. The release of tension. The moment the noise stops and he is finally, blissfully, the only thing that matters in the room.

  Crunch.

  The sound of ceramic obliterating snaps through the tavern like a gunshot.

  The Sacrifice blinks. The hallucination shatters.

  He is not holding a throat. He is holding a fistful of dust and jagged shards. The clay cup has not just broken; it has been pulverized. Dark red juice drips steadily from his clenched fist onto the open pages of the book, soaking into the word Knight.

  He stares at the mess.

  Across the table, Cecilia flinches. It is a small movement, a sharp intake of breath, but for the first time, she pulls back. Her single eye is wide, fixed on his hand covered in the red juice, then darting up to his face.

  The color has drained from her cheeks. The playful mockery is gone. She looks like a rabbit that has just realized the wolf wasn’t sleeping—it was waiting.

  “Baal?” Her voice is a whisper, trembling.

  The Sacrifice looks at her. For a split second, the mask is gone. His eyes are flat, dead things, void of the warmth he carefully paints over them. He is breathing too slowly, too deliberately.

  Then, the shutter comes down.

  “My apologies,” The Sacrifice says. His voice is smooth, but it lacks its usual melody. It sounds mechanical.

  He opens his hand, letting the wet clay dust and juice drop onto the table.

  He produces a handkerchief from his sleeve and wipes the slurry from his skin with methodical, surgical precision.

  “It seems,” he says, staring at the ruined page, “that I was distracted for a moment.”

  “You...” Cecilia swallows hard. She doesn’t look at the mess. She looks at his eyes. “You weren’t here. You were somewhere else.”

  “I was merely lost in thought. Just know, milady,” The Sacrifice says, “that there’s a high price to not knowing that losing is a possibility. This is all for today.”

  The Sacrifice is about to take everything and leave. He regrets his outburst. For the lack of composure, of course. Not for scaring a peasant girl.

  Cecilia doesn’t look at the book. She keeps her gaze fixed on him.

  She keeps her gaze fixed on him, her single eye searching his face with a terrifying, invasive clarity.

  “So,” she starts, her voice still shaky from witnessing his outburst, but gaining strength. “Which one would you pick?”

  The Sacrifice pauses.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You said losing is bad because you might do anything to win. But you said betraying yourself is worse,” she says, leaning forward slightly, ignoring the danger radiating off him. “So, if you had to choose. Would you rather lose everything, or betray who you are?”

  “It is a false dichotomy,” The Sacrifice answers coldly. “For men like me, the choice is usually made long before we enter the room. We do not own our victories, and we are not permitted our losses.”

  “But what if you had the choice?” Cecilia presses. She is relentless. A dog with a bone. A wolf with a scent. “What if it was just up to you?”

  The Sacrifice looks at her. He wants to mock her naivety. He wants to tell her that free will is a bedtime story told to children to make them sleep soundly while monsters rule the dark.

  But the mockery dies in his throat.

  He thinks of the chains. He thinks of the bloodline. He thinks of the crushing weight of being a tool in a hand he despises.

  “If I could ever take the chance, milady,” he says, his voice barely a whisper, slipping out before he can check it. “I would.”

  He expects her to smile, or to make a joke. She doesn’t.

  She looks at him with a sudden, profound sadness that insults him. She looks at him not like a monster, or a librarian, or a devil.

  She senses the anger roiling beneath his skin, the vast, hollow sadness he carries everywhere.

  “Promise me,” she says.

  The Sacrifice blinks, his mask slipping back into place. “Excuse me?”

  “Promise me that if you ever get that choice,” she says firmly, “you’ll take it. That you won’t betray yourself just to win.”

  “This is absurd,” he sighs, standing up. The movement is fluid, graceful, and dismissive. “It is never going to happen. It is a fantasy.”

  “Promise me nonetheless,” she insists, looking up at him.

  The Sacrifice looks down at the crippled maid. He is tired. He is so incredibly tired.

  He sighs, a short, sharp exhale through his nose. He nods.

  “Sure,” he says, his voice flat, offering her the lie she wants to hear. “On my honor.”

  He turns and walks away, heading toward the stairs that lead to his room, leaving the book and the girl behind.

  I have no honor, The Sacrifice thinks as he climbs the steps into the dark.