A week later, I was still there. Somehow every time I wanted to bring up the subject of me going home, something came up. The Prince never had time.

Okay so he had a delegation of ten gods visiting, apparently a large number to show up at one time. And he actually showed Ash how to use his powers. And gods are so needy. At least as far as their Prince was concerned, they couldn’t care less about each other.

I would wake up in the middle of the night to see him lying beside me, not sleeping. At times he watched me sleep. It sent shivers up my spine.

But every time I caught him, somehow I felt more sorry for him than anything else.

Then I found Ash crying in the giant walk-in closet.

“Sam?” I moved towards him before realizing he wasn’t Sam anymore.

“Em, I-I did something,” tears like drops of lava streamed down his face. He just didn’t look human.

I cringed, “Wha-” how do I talk to him now? “What did you do?”

“I-I killed someone.”

I stared at him. My first instinct was to laugh, it had to be a joke, right?

“Emma?” He looked up, misery etched so deep in his voice I sat down on the ground beside him. I felt like I sat next to a giant. He looked like a mound of coal; he looked like a Worshipper. He smelled like a grill. And he wasn’t joking.

“What happened?” I swallowed the big lump in my throat.

“I-I don’t know,” he buried his face in his hands, “I don’t know what came over me…I saw this woman, pretty, blonde--my type…you know.”

“Yeah,” it felt like winding up a jack-in-a-box.

“I walked up to her, started saying hi,” dun, dun, du-du-du-du-dun; the box was almost ready to pop, “But all I could picture was her screaming as she burned alive. That’s when I realized…I was burning her, actually…” he stared at the wall, his voice going monotone, “burning her, right there in the middle of the street.”

Pop. Goes the weasel.

I stared at him as the tears streamed down his face and I couldn’t…I couldn’t see my friend.

“Did she die?” no sympathy touched my voice.

His face was buried in his hands. His head bobbed, yes.

I continued to stare at him. How could I comfort this monster?

“I can’t…” I got up to leave feeling sick.

He grabbed my hand. “Emma, please,” I suppose he was trying to give me puppy eyes, “Please don’t leave me. I’m sorry,” the tears started anew, they should have burned him, “I am so sorry, please…” his voice went up a decibel, “I killed someone, Emma, what do I do?”

His voice, Sam’s voice, like an ice pick in my heart, the last shred of proof that my friend may still be in there.

I looked at him, really looked at him.

A giant hunk of a guy cowering in the corner of a walk-in closet, arms wrapped around his knees, crying like a little girl. What could I say?

“I’ll stay.”

He sprang to his knees so fast I didn’t know what was happening until he wrapped his hands around my waist and buried his head in my stomach.

Memories of Sam, my Sam, right after his mom finally succumbed to cancer, crying in a corner, hugging me so hard I could barely breathe. Oh God! What am I going to do?

Suddenly a searing pain hit my stomach. I screamed, pushing him away. There was a hole in my shirt and my stomach was burned!

“Oh my God, Em, oh my God, I am so sorry,” Sam ran around the tiny closet in a panic.

“Sam,” I snapped, he didn’t respond, “Sam! Get some ice, some aloe, something!” it still burned but the searing stopped. The door opened and the Prince stood there taking both of us in.

“I burned her, I burned her,” Sam ran up to him.

Without warning, without so much as looking at me, the pain was gone. I looked down, the wound healed like nothing happened.

“I’m glad you decided to stay,” he turned around and left.

That’s it? That couldn’t be it.

At first nothing changed, I came and went as I pleased. I couldn’t eat with the slaves, none of them talked--I had never seen people so subjugated. It reminded me to be afraid and I just couldn’t be scared all the time.

How did they pick people? Which to kill, which to keep?

I came back to my apartment one night, falling asleep in front of the TV.

I woke to find the Prince sitting in the armchair across from me. So much for freedom, bitterness rose like bile.

“Good morning,” I tried to smile.

“You didn’t come back,” he didn’t so much as twitch.

“Um, I fell asleep, humans sleep,” I snapped.

“Yes,” he rose. He leaned over me, I pulled back but there was nowhere to go, so when he kissed me I was entirely at his mercy. The desire that coursed through me wasn’t my own but it didn’t matter. I leaned into the kiss; I would have killed to keep kissing him.

The sex was nothing like when he pretended to be Nathan.

The only way I can describe it is…it was like the movies where a couple is so all over each other, there is no room for conscious thought. Desperate, clingy, passionate even. At least for me. Thankfully I was too far gone to see his expression.