PRESENT DAY
“I… don’t get it,” Ophelia said, hating how her voice began to shake.
My name is Salemaestrus Erasmus Blackwell, Prince of the Devils.
“I know,” Blackwell said, a sad smile on his lips. “You’ve played a good game, though, angel. And now I can give you what you’re owed.” He began to circle her slowly. “Since you made it to the last level, I’ll cut your payment to me for our blood bargain from ten years to five and you can otherwise walk away unscathed.”
She frowned at him. “No, I get to choose what I use my Devil’s Grant for.”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid you entered this level too early to technically be the grand prize winner. The rules are that you have to be the last person in Phantasma, alive, to win the Devil’s Grant, and there were still other contestants playing the game when you entered here. So, your choice is to take the reduced sentence or to be disqualified altogether.”
She stared at him in disbelief. Of all the times she’d thought about the end of her journey in Phantasma, this had never been in even her wildest imaginings.
Salemaestrus Erasmus Blackwell. Prince of the Devils.
“So, what will it be?” He moved to stand right in front of her.
The Devil had a wicked mouth and a voice as smooth as bourbon.
“What is your decision?” he pressed as he trailed the tip of his index finger down one side of her throat, his lips mere centimeters from her racing pulse on the other.
“You tricked me,” she whispered.
He laughed in response, his breath caressing her feverish skin.
He was so close that she could barely think.
Any coherent response to his question eluded her as another shot of adrenaline rushed through her veins, but the events leading up to this moment were burned into her mind with vivid clarity. She had done this to herself. She had been so foolish.
“But you don’t have a Devil’s Mark,” she whispered. “And you were a Phantom.”
He gestured to his silvery white hair. “I admit my Devil’s Mark is particularly convenient for blending in as a Ghost.”
“Are you kidding me?” she growled.
“Don’t feel bad, angel, you aren’t nearly the first person I’ve fooled. I’ve been at this for a very long time.”
“Why?” she demanded.
“Sinclair told you a story of my past, did he not?”
“Yes.”
“And what did he say?”
She swallowed. “He said that you fell in love and chose your lover over the King of the Devils—your father. As punishment, your lover was killed and now you must run Phantasma for the rest of your existence.”
“All true,” he confirmed. “Except my father did give me one mercy—a loophole. All I’ve needed was a heart and a hidden key and I would be untethered from this place. The only problem is that every time a new game begins, the memories of my true self are wiped away completely. The only time I am returned to my full self is when a contestant reaches this level until the start of each new game. My one reprieve. And even the memories I have as this version of myself have become murky with every passing century.”
She gasped. “You mean the first time I met you…”
“You met the real me—this version of me.” His smile was sad. “What’s left of me at least. You’re the first person in centuries I was ever able to talk to outside of the competition and the manor. Who I was able to tell about the heart and the key. And it still did me no good. How could it, when my own memories worked against me? I hardly remember anything before I was tethered to this place. Except the rage for my father. That has remained.”
Deep sorrow was laced beneath his words, and—despite the shock and betrayal of his true identity—her heart ached for him. What a miserable existence not to remember your own self.
“So, you choose a contestant each competition to help you find this mysterious key,” she said. “What about the contestants you don’t choose? Are they actually playing to win?”
He shrugged. “Sure they are. And if they do, they get their prize. But more often than not my chosen one makes it to the end. As you can clearly see. And those who lose their lives here simply fuel the manor’s power.”
“I don’t understand why Sin talked about you as if you were two different people,” she said. “Or why you were referred to as the creator if it was your father that made this place.”
“Ah.” He laughed. “That’s because as part of the punishment he can tell people about me but never directly who I am within the competition. The two entities must be kept separate—the Devil and the Phantom. My father gave Sinclair his own loophole when he banished him here with me—as well as Poe, the little spy.”
“Wait, even the cat was in on this?”
Blackwell snorted, before continuing, “The title of the creator is used for my alter ego’s benefit since I become unaware of my true identity within the game. I suppose I am the creator, in a sense, considering Phantasma wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t a punishment for me. Sinclair’s job is to make sure I don’t break free. If he succeeds for long enough, he may be pardoned early, and some other fool who pissed off my father would have to take his place. A sort of insurance policy that I stayed as long as possible. My father is a spiteful man.”
“I’m sure,” she deadpanned.
He tilted his head thoughtfully now. “What I find most interesting, however, is how hard Sinclair tried to stop you. He’s never worked so hard at it before.”
She looked down at her hands. “I really thought… I thought I could save you. I thought I was getting close.”
“Me too, angel.”
Something about the way he said those words, the way he still called her angel, unraveled something within her.
“Was… was any of it real?” she whispered.
“As real as it could’ve been with only half my memories,” he said, eyes shutting before she could see whatever emotion he was hiding in them.
“I know I should be furious at you, murderous even, but I…”
“Don’t,” he ordered. “Don’t waste any of your emotions on me. This is where we must part ways, and feeling anything for me at all isn’t worth it for you. It would be best if you just forgot me altogether.”
“Everyone who falls in love within Phantasma is cursed… because falling in love is what got you into this in the first place,” she stated, remembering the realization she’d had the first time she’d heard the story from Sinclair.
“My father has a sense of humor, don’t you think?” He shook his head. “Yet he wondered why I chose someone over him.”
“I’m sorry you lost them,” she said sincerely, though the words made her ache inside. “Truly.”
“It was a very long time ago,” he told her. “I’m ashamed to say I can’t even… I can’t even remember them now. Sometimes, I get flashes of details, small hauntings from the past, but they’re gone so quickly. Now they’re just another thing time has taken from me. I’ll never forgive my father for that.”
“Blackwe—Salem,” she corrected herself. She needed to separate the Phantom she knew and this Devil she was still unsure of. “I want you to know that it was all very real for me. It still is. I was going to ask to use my Devil’s Grant to find and break your tether.”
He froze in utter shock. “Ophelia.”
“The bargain was that I had to find it before I left the grounds. So, it would have counted, right?”
He swallowed. “You would have done that for me?”
“Of course,” she said. “You don’t get it. I—”
“No.” He lunged forward, clapping his hand over her mouth. His green eyes burned with new intensity as he ordered, “Don’t.”
She pushed his hand away and declared, “It’s true, though.” A single tear slid down her face. “And I know it’s foolish, I know we’ve spent this entire time making sure we avoided this very thing. Does it really matter if I say it aloud or not? You’ve changed me.” She took a deep breath, reaching up to hold on to the locket beating wildly around her neck for comfort. “Even the necklace has always seemed to know it. My heart is completely and utterly…”
She gaped at him in shock.
“What?” he asked.
“That’s it,” she realized.
“What’s it?”
“What you’ve been searching for is… me. This.” She yanked at the necklace until the chain snapped away and dangled the heart-shaped piece between them. The heart in her chest began to slow ever so slightly.
He looked at her as if she had gone a little bit mad, but there was also a spark of something like hope in his eyes, and that was what she was going to hold on to.
“Your father trapped you in a place where it’s forbidden to fall in love or there’s a dire consequence. You told me you needed a heart and a key… but what if that’s not two separate clues? This necklace, it’s enchanted, it beats with my own heart. In my fight with Cade, he ripped it off me and my heart, it…
“It what?” Blackwell prompted.
“It nearly stopped.”
Blackwell sucked in a breath before reaching forward and flattening his palm over her chest to feel her weakening heartbeat. “But what about the key portion?”
She shrugged. “That, I’m not sure. Maybe the key is inside of it? But no one has ever been able to get the damn thing open. But this has to be right, doesn’t it? Sinclair taking such an intense interest in me… making you jealous… trying to drive any wedge he could between the two of us… my mother warning me to stay away from you… telling me to never, ever take the necklace off… always warning me away from Devils…”
Blackwell rocked back on his heels in shock, and that was all she needed as confirmation.
“Here.” She took his hand and set the locket in his palm before curling his fingers over it. “My heart, it’s yours.”
“If you give this to me, you will die,” he told her. “Do you understand that?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I could have died plenty of times in this manor. But I love—”
“No. Listen to me,” he implored as he recovered, moving to grasp her face in his hands, the warm metal of the necklace pressing against her cheek. “Your heart is one thing. Hearts can be fixed. But you will still be cursed. If I’m set free, I will be immune to the curse, my prize for beating my father, but you will still face the consequences for breaking Phantasma’s cardinal rule. Even if Phantasma crumbles to dust.”
She smiled sadly at him. “It’s okay.”
“Ophelia, don’t—”
“I love you,” she whispered. “I love you so much. You saved me. So many times, in so many ways, and it barely took you a week to change me so intrinsically. I may never be rid of my inner demons, but for this single sliver of time, whenever we were together, you made them quiet. I was able to hear myself for once. And I want you to know that I will gladly take on whatever this place is going to curse me with knowing you will finally get out of the Hell you’ve been trapped in for so long.”
Tears flowed down her face as he shook his head at her confession, his expression marred by agony.
“No,” he pleaded.
The pain hit her an instant later. Phantasma’s cursed magic forcing itself through her system, making her knees buckle to the ground.
Loving him will only ruin you, her mother had warned her, but only now did Ophelia realized what she had really meant. She had meant that loving Blackwell would only affect Ophelia. Blackwell would walk away unscathed. She wondered if her mother had known about this all along. Or if Tessie Grimm had only learned of the scope of Phantasma’s rules in the afterlife.
She doubled over as another shot of pain cut through her thoughts. And then Blackwell began to transform as well.
Her locket began to glow in his hand, a bright, icy blue. Grimm Blue. The locket lifted into the air, prying itself open and bursting with a light that enveloped the darkness around them completely. Blackwell roared as power and magic began to swirl around them from the necklace, flooding into his body. His full powers were returned to him. He was officially untethered from Phantasma. He was free.
“No,” he snarled as soon as the light dissipated, and the locket fell to the ground with a pitiful clink. Her heart was now a slow faint thud in her chest. “He will not take you from me, too. Not again. Never again.”
She cried out in misery as the curse continued ripping through her, her fingernails turning purple as her blood circulation slowed.
“Ophelia,” he pleaded, scooping her necklace up from the ground, to clutch it safely back in his hand. “I can return a working heart to you as your payment for setting me free—but you have to verbally tell me you agree to that as your payment. The curse, though… that’s another ordeal entirely.”
She gritted her teeth against the pain as she forced herself to look at him, her next words coming out breathless. “The heart… yes… I agree to the heart… as my payment.”
“This might hurt a little,” he told her as his hands began to glow blue. He placed them both over her chest, and she felt the warmth of his magic move through her instantly. For a loaded moment, there was a heavy pressure within, an ache as something bloomed beneath her flesh. And then it was over, and she felt it.
A heartbeat. She took a deep breath of air, and Blackwell cupped her face in his hands, pressing his forehead down to hers in relief.
“Thank fucking Hell,” he whispered.
She cleared her throat, her words still weak as she pressed, “Phantasma’s curse…”
As soon as she mentioned Phantasma, an aftershock of pain rolled through her body.
He leaned back so he could look her directly in the eyes, soothing his hands over her face in comfort. “The only way I can break a curse of my father’s that is this powerful is by making you a deal.”
“If you…” He hesitated. “If you sign your soul over to me, I can eradicate the curse from it. I promise to return it to you, unblemished, after.”
A sob racked through her chest. Signing over her soul to a Devil—no, the Prince of the Devils—was possibly the most inadvisable thing anyone could do. As much as she wanted to trust Blackwell’s word to return it… she couldn’t risk such a thing. If she perished without her soul, she would have no afterlife.
It’s another trick, the Shadow Voice seethed. All of this is a trick to get your soul.
“I can’t,” she cried, holding onto the lapels of his shirt. “Please, anything else. Anything. I’m begging, alright? Please.”
His gaze was full of remorse. “To break something like this, I need a significant amount of energy to balance out what’s being destroyed. I would need a permanent tether.”
Her breath hitched as the agony slowly began to subside, the curse beginning to settle deep in her marrow.
His green eyes held her gaze. “Phantasma was my permanent tether before. The souls that came through here supplied me with energy, and I supplied it back to the manor. Even with my full power returned, now that the ties between me and the manor are cut, Phantasma is falling apart. Which means that without bargains to sustain me, I’d have to return to the Other Side.”
“Phantasma is falling apart?”
He nodded. “I can feel it. It’s crumbling. The Devils will have to go elsewhere for business. The Apparitions will be released from the estate. Sinclair will have to return to my father for the remainder of his indebted sentence for failing to keep me tied here.”
“If I agree to be your new tether,” she began, her vision beginning to blur, “what would that entail?”
“Forever. With me.”
“And?”
He smirked. “Is that not enticing enough for you?”
“Don’t toy with me right now,” she grunted. “What else?”
“Your soul would remain yours, but your energy and life span would not.”
“Life span? You mean—?”
“If I lived for eternity, so would you,” he confirmed. “I would be able to use your newly immortal lifeforce to fuel my magic and stay on this linear plane as long as I want without having to worry about constantly making bargains as other Devils do.”
She took a deep breath. “Okay.”
“Forever is a very long time,” he warned. “Are you sure you know what you’re agreeing to?”
“I know,” she promised. “Especially considering I’m going to have to deal with your mouth for eternity. I don’t take that lightly.”
“Please,” he drawled. “We both know how much you love my mouth.”
She glowered. “I am already regretting this, honestly.”
His face became serious once more. “Ophelia I… I am so fucking in love with you. I think I fell in love with you when you asked me how you could help me that first time we met. Prince of the Devils, and you wanted to save me. Maybe, somehow, I knew then that you could be the one to set me free. And I meant what I said that night, that you should hope we never met again, and I fucking hate that this is what it’s coming down to. But… every single second I’ve spent with you has reminded me what it’s like to be alive. And I would trade every other soul in the world if it meant I would get to keep you forever.”
A tear rolled down her face. He swallowed as he brushed it away.
“But…” he continued, “whatever the curse did to you—whatever unique side effect it has chosen to inflict—it would only affect you when it comes to being in proximity of me. You can still walk away, Ophelia. Go back to your life with your sister that you’ve always planned. You set me free of Phantasma, you don’t owe me a decade of your life anymore. It will all be like this never happened.”
“But it did happen,” she told him. “And if I walk away now, the curse will make sure we’d lose each other forever.”
He pressed his forehead against hers. “I worry you don’t understand the burden of eternity. You don’t need to tie yourself to me in worry that we’d lose each other. Now that I’m free, I will carry the memories of this time with you forevermore. The matter of my soul will always have your name etched into it. I may not have been able to remember my true identity within the manor, but I was still me. I know the truth of what I felt for you then and I know the truth of what I feel for you now.” He took a deep breath. “And if you do choose to be my tether, I need you to know that does not mean you have to stay with me. You’d be free to live your eternal life however you want. Even if that means you decide you never want to see me again.”
She took a shaky breath.
“Now or never, angel,” he told her.
This was it. What everything since her mother’s death had led to. Her choosing what sort of future she was going to have. What sort of legacy.
“What’s your decision?”
