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Now it happened on the same day, that Sarah, daughter of Raguel, received a reproach from one of her father’s servants, for she had been married to seven husbands, whom Asmodeus the evil spirit had killed, before they had lain with her.
Tobit, 3:7-8
You think of them less by name and more by how far each of them had gotten. If they’d managed to remove their sandals, their robe, before meeting their inevitable doom; or if they’d kissed you, touched you, how many times. It makes for a perverse litany: palmed-my-breasts, and removed-his-belt and three-and-one-half-kisses. Asmodeus is the only one who will laugh when you recite them, but then, he is a perverse thing himself. Of course it would make him laugh.
One of them—the third, you think—was just about to thrust inside you, the closest any has come to their wedding night. You remember, because your eyes were still screwed shut when Asmodeus split him open along the spine, like a fig.
You mistook the sudden spatter of warm blood on your thighs for his seed.
You hear your father weeping, sometimes, late into the night. (Oh, the curse of a girl-child who will not be wed!)
"Why me?" you ask, trembling and naked in your first wedding-bed. A thing that is smoke and blood and desire, fetid as water left out where there might be serpents, advances on you, and you say: "I don’t understand."
I love you, the demon Asmodeus says, cocking his monstrous head. Why else?
He nuzzles into your lap like one of your father’s dogs, and lies there, whining for your touch at his ears, his snout. You hum every song you know, sacred and profane alike, just to keep your fear away, and run your hands through his wire-brush fur until your palms are bleeding. He sleeps on the pillow of your thighs
He is not there when you wake, but the smell of cooking meat and bad water lingers in your hair, on the sheets.
It is attributed to the body of your first husband, rotting in bed beside you.
"Why do you love me?" you ask, perhaps not the next time, but after that. This husband did not even make it through to unbuckling his belt.
Asmodeus looks more a man than a demon these days—transference, he growled, when you asked why—though there is still blood at the corners of his mouth, ringed around his eyes. It makes the remnants of the wedding-feast churn in your gullet. (You should not have drunk so much wine.)
I do not know why, he says, looking furious and something like lost. Am I supposed to know why?
"No," you say, after a moment. "I suppose not."
His kisses taste of salt, and ash. You gag.
(You did not ask for their deaths, let us be clear. But no one had asked if you wanted to wed them either, so it did not surprise you when you were not consulted.)
"I liked that one," you say, stepping over your fourth husband and into the span of Asmodeus’ arms.
Sorry, darling, he drawls, crushing you to his chest. He is learning vocal patterns this week, and you have had to sit through every shade and tinge of anger, laughter, bitterness, joy. In his voice is Desire, number seven, and you would be more moved by it if you didn’t already know how he desired you. (He has had you more than any husband ever will.) I’ll find you another one to play with, promise.
"It is you who play with me," you say, listening to the absence of heartbeat in Asmodeus’ chest. Once, out of curiosity and boredom, you had slipped away from your father’s flocks to explore the nearby caves; the silence of the mountain pressed down on you, until all you could hear was a cavernous rushing, your own breath. That is what Asmodeus sounds like, with your ear pressed to his chest.
No, he answers at last. No, I would never. You are all and everything to me. There are no games between us.
"No," you echo. "No, of course not."
You are glad glad glad, when the new moon comes and you bleed. And then you are glad again, because you are not monstrous, not yet—all the men you have ferried out of this life with your hand in marriage, you still have no desire to birth new monstrosity into it. You hope that is enough.
Asmodeus doesn’t understand. He confuses love with that first, furtive afternoon in your room, trying vainly to understand where your material body ended and the world began. You mostly remember thinking that you had fire and some fragment of divinity lying between your thighs, and yet the bare walls of your father’s house were a reminder of how limited your world was, still.
His mouth fell open as he slept on your stomach afterwards. (Demons can’t grasp the immensity of human desire, the inexhaustible font of it, that I want is as much a challenge as a wish. You do not wish anything in Asmodeus’ hearing, but it’s there, on the tip of your tongue.)
It’s easier, not to see the fire in your hands, to pretend you cannot feel it licking at your skin. To say, no, no one is burning alive, even as you choke on the foul incense of your blackening skin. You would stop, smother the flames and breathe air instead of smoke but, but—
The alternative is so cold.
Do you love me? Asmodeus asks.
Sometimes you answer, ‘yes’. Sometimes you answer ‘yes’ and mean ‘no’. Sometimes you kiss him, and do not answer at all.
Tobias has kind eyes, and a wide mouth, and you can see your father measuring his shoulders for the grave from the moment he asks for your hand. I don’t like him, Asmodeus mutters in your bed that night, and it occurs to you too late that the note in his voice is fear. (It was too uncomplicated and human, you didn’t know what to make of it, and not with his hand—what feels like his hand, it’s harder to be sure in the dark—between your thighs.)
Tobias’ belt, sandals, robes, form a neat pile on the swept floor. Tobias’ hands are warm on your breasts, and then lower, lower still. You cry out the name of the Lord your God, and Tobias does not muffle your screams with a hand, whispering, don’t, don’t, I’m here, only me, there is nothing holy about us, He shouldn’t see—
Tobias is your husband, and so of course he sleeps in your bed, the bed you have so often shared with Asmodeus. It is the right of a husband, to have a wife, and sleep beside her.
When he has fallen away from the world, you turn onto your side, away from the strange face of your cousin-husband, and choke on a sob. In the grey that comes before dawn, you whisper, "Asmodeus," but nothing comes. No one comes.
There is a scar at the corner of your husband’s—the last, the only surviving—mouth. It is white and rough to the touch, like someone held a live coal to the soft skin there. "Where did you get this?" you ask once, brave with the wine at your son’s wedding. "I do not remember it from our wedding, and I thought I mapped out all your skin, and its weaknesses."
"Oh," Tobias says, and you can see him flush. "It is the parting kiss from the angel, Raphael. It burned, it—felt as though I was dying."
"I had a demon like that," you say thoughtfully. The sky above your son’s wedding feast is full, heavy with stars and each of them shines, too bright. "But he never kissed me in parting. Just—left."
"He did love you," Tobias says after a long moment, which is not a confirmation of all you had suspected, so much a capstone, a circle completed. You shut your eyes, breathe in, breathe out.
"Yes," you say, opening your eyes to look up a the too bright stars. "Yes, I know."