I was younger, and very proud. I ignored the resummons because I was angry, and yet I also was pleased to see he never tried to make a pact with anyone else. The exclusivity would still have been respected--for what do spirits care about anyone except their own? Still--it showed he still had manners and decorum, something that had been lacking when he had destroyed all that I had given him on that cursed day.

I answered the summons, because decades had passed in the human realm, and because I felt something in the request that could be vulnerable. In the same way it had been in his youth, the words pulled me, and so I went.

The king gasped as I appeared. I knew what I looked to him--time had strengthened my powers, and my form was intimidating. I stood taller, though that was just a projection.

"You called me," I say. "What is your wish?"

He bent to his knees. "A contract," he said hoarsely.

I cast my gaze around. No audience, save for one.

"This time, a drop of blood will no longer suffice," I warned him.

"Of course," he told me, weary. Age had not been kind to him. Scars, lines, skin--the way of all human flesh is that it begins to die from the instant you are born. But he has been thoughtful, I thought. The room appealed to me, and it was clear the addition was for my benefit. Runes on the walls to protect me--they matched the scars above his heart where we once carved our promise together.

His heart.

This was a good idea, I thought.

"I will take your heart for this new contract," I told him, drawing closer.

My fingers, slippery and cold and clawed, slipped past his furs, slid along his bare skin, and pressed against his chest. He shivered, shifting, as I in my incorporeal form pressed closer. I cast what would feel like a human breath against his. Humans are visceral and take the world in through the senses, after all. In a secondary thought, I brushed my touch over his chest, teasingly. "It will be no one else's."

I felt him shudder and immediately felt pleased.

"Of course," he whispered again, voice hoarse.

"You will be unable to know love," I told him, for all contracts are fair, give equally as they take, "for that doomed your kingdom, and you in disgust sent me away. I do this out of respect for our last contract, for the man you were was exceptional."

He still was now, I thought, but I hated his fickle heart as much as I desired to possess it. They say the whims of spirits are questionable. That much is true. For all that I angered and hated him when I was cast away, I would always open my arms.

"I was young. A fool." But already his sadness and anxiety for love began to weaken their hold. Anticipation.

"A fool who did everything for love," I said. I pressed my forehead against his. "And now you will do for me."

His lips were dry. He licked them. His eyes pulled away, to the curtains, before they flickered back at me.

"Of course."

Out of the corner of my senses, the queen was watching me. From the hidden crevices. She had always been watching me, but she had never approached me once. I wondered her purpose for allowing her husband to summon me after all these years; I dismissed it.

If she wished me to know, I would know it in time. But spirits care not for earthly politics, and so it was never issue.

"So be it." I slipped my claws in further. I went through his flesh, muscle, and bone--and clasped my way around his heart. I scarred my way into it, marked it, found my old ones and dug them deeper. With each carved stroke, the king gasped against my now semi-corporeal form. His fingers squeezed my arms, and he trembled. His face grew flushed and his tears became anew. It was a much more interesting expression than his younger countenance--his beard and his moustache now made him regal, a man of age, but this state of undoing felt lewd.

I could not help myself. I stroked more than I needed until his heart almost became undone and he shuddered in his cries. I liked how receptive he was.

"It is finished," I announced, when I knew he could barely bear it. He trembled under me in overwhelm, tears at his eyes and sobs at his lips. Beautiful. "I will leave you to heal."

"Yes..."

As I drew away to retreat and absorb the human realm anew, the queen stepped out. She did not help him up, but her cold unfeeling eyes did not warm either.

"I hope it was worth it," she told him, as I left the room. Her eyes caught mine but only for a moment.

In that moment, I saw coldness--the way you look upon something that means nothing to you. That you are bearing, if only to survive.

She was fascinating, this queen. And it surprised me, when the night had arrived and all were sleeping, when I felt a pull and was summoned to her chambers.