The first thing the Demon Lord ever said to me was, "You're late."
I had fought my way through three fortresses, two mountain passes, and an entire army that was very rude about it. I was bleeding. My sword was chipped. The sky over the Ashen Plains was a dark, bruised purple.
And there she stood at the end of the broken road. She was small, and she stood perfectly straight. Her long black hair, with a hint of violet, whipped in the wind. Her tail lashed behind her, as if she were personally offended by the weather.
Her eyes were red around the edges and gold in the center. They found me from across the battlefield and did not let go.
I'll be honest about what happened next. I was a girl chosen to become humanity's Hero, the one person everyone was counting on to stop the demons. I looked at the ruler of all demons, and I thought, very clearly:
Oh. It's you.
"Surrender," I called out, because it seemed polite.
"Kneel," she said.
We both ignored each other. The fight lasted until sunrise.
She was ruthless. Every attack came from a different direction, and every spell landed exactly where I had been standing a moment earlier. At some point her claws raked across my back. The pain was sharp and hot, and what I felt, heaven help me, was not fear.
It was joy.
She had put everything she had into that strike. She had looked at me, out of a whole army, and given me her full attention. I laughed. I couldn't help it.
"What is wrong with you?" she snapped, out of breath, her cheeks red from fighting. "That should have knocked you to your knees!"
"It did hurt," I admitted happily. "Please do it again."
The Demon Lord of the Black Throne, the terror of nine kingdoms, took one step back.
That evening, I told her I loved her. I said it right there on the battlefield, while both of our armies stared. She told me to go away. The next morning, I told her again. She told me to go away, louder this time. I came back the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that. I counted every time. It took one hundred and twelve confessions.
On the hundred and thirteenth, she didn't say a word. She just turned her face away, and her ears, her pointed little ears, turned bright red.
That was the end of the war, though neither of us ever said so out loud.
Now it's morning, and I'm sitting at our kitchen table, watching my wife glare at a teacup as if it had betrayed her.
"Stop staring," she says, without looking up. "You look like an idiot."
I feel it all the way down my spine, right where the old scar is. I smile even wider.
"Say that again."
Her tail twitches. Her ears are turning red.
"...Eat your breakfast, you hopeless fool."
I have never been happier.
Maybe someone should have warned the world that the war with the Demon Lord would end like this. But the war is over now, and so is the hardest fight of my life: convincing her to let me stay.
I married the Demon Lord.
She still insists it was a strategic decision.