Title: Veins of Neon:;" A Cursed Love Story from the City's Underbelly

The pulsing blue lights of the Mirage cast veins of neon across the faces that drifted through the Friday night crowd. Behind two-way glass in her private booth, Scarlett King watched everything with practiced detachment, honing in on subtle cues: a regular greeting the bouncer by name, a fledgling vampire shying from the strobe, a fae sidling past the velvet rope. She knew her club, and she knew her city. Humans, monsters—her clientele was varied, and her own reputation danced somewhere between infamous and legendary within those circles.

But tonight, her attention kept drifting back to the man—no, the creature—across from her. Ecredithel was the kind of elf who made people uncomfortable: darkly beautiful in an unapproachable way, arrogance carved into his bones, death in his eyes. She might have never noticed him among a crowd of monsters if not for his request, whispered through a witch’s network: he was cursed, dying slowly, and looking for help from those with connections. From those like Scarlett.

Was it pity that drew her, or the heat that twisted around her belly whenever he looked at her, sharp and assessing? She wasn’t sure. Only that his presence in her booth made her heartbeat beat fast.

“Scarlett.” His voice rolled, lush and strange. “You’re somewhere else.”

She startled as he leaned in, his scent carrying that subtle woodland musk beneath city cologne, and with an unexpected tenderness, he tucked a copper tendril behind her ear. Scarlett’s breath caught. Once, she wanted to snap at him; instead, her lips parted as if to speak, but words deserted her.

They sat in the charged silence until she pushed herself to her feet, heels scraping the floor. At the sleek bar, she fixed herself a gin and tonic, and, despite herself, poured him two fingers of her best whiskey. She handed it over, their hands not touching, but the electricity thrummed all the same.

“I’ll help you,” she said, voice low, “but I want something, too.”

He arched a perfect brow in silent challenge.

“My sister, Isla. She’s missing. If you want my help—every contact I have, every witch I can sway—you help me find her. Deal?”

Ecredithel considered her, swirling the whiskey in his glass. His fingers looked oddly mortal, despite the shadows shifting beneath his skin; scars peeked from his cuffs, the pale silver of old magic. “Your sister vanished into the city’s underbelly?”

Scarlett nodded, setting her jaw. “I don’t know if she’s alive. If she is, I want her back.”

He watched her for a long, silent moment, then tipped his glass. “Deal. But you keep your promise or I’ll hold you to it, King. And I’m not gentle.”

A shiver raced down her spine. “You’ll have to prove yourself first,” she retorted, more bravado than she felt.

So it began.

---

By the first dawn, she regretted nothing and almost everything. Ecredithel didn’t sleep—he prowled the city all night, returning with dregs of information, never quite forthcoming, always making her feel like she owed him a second longer, a third glance, a secret she shouldn’t share.

Throughout the following week, Scarlett tapped all her supernatural connections. She met with a werewolf who owed her a favor, a pair of sirens with knowledge of the city’s waterways, a vampire archivist with a talent for missing persons. At last, she reached out to Meridian, her favorite hedge-witch, who set tea leaves spinning with answers.

“She’s alive—your sister. But someone powerful is hiding her facts, twisting memory. Not a witch. Not purely fae. You’ll need help outside this world, Scar.” Meridian’s eyes cut to Ecredithel, cowed for once. “You—the curse isn’t just on you. It ties you two together. She’s a part of this.”

Ecredithel’s gaze flared spectral green briefly. “She’s… binding me?”

“Maybe not intentionally.” Meridian shrugged, ancient and wise. “But you can’t untie the knot alone.”

Scarlett’s breath shook. Something hard formed in her gut—dread or hope, she wasn’t sure.

After, they sat at the roof of the Mirage, wind playing over the city. Ecredithel stretched beside her, for once unmasked.

“Were you going to tell me?” she challenged. “That Isla’s tangled up with you?”

He looked away, pride and pain at war. “Curses are rarely clean. She saved my life, once. Now, my end is bound to hers. If she dies, so do I.”

“If I help you, I might doom her?”

“No.” His fingers ghosted over her hand, featherlight. “The curse wants us forfeit. You and I, together—we break it. But it will cost. You trust me?”

Scarlett laughed, bitter and bright. “Not even for a minute.”

He smiled—then really smiled, cracks appearing in his arch self-control. “Good. Then you’ll fight. That’s what we need.”

---

The search for Isla began in earnest.

Scarlett spent her days negotiating with warlocks and tracking debts, her nights following Ecredithel into the city’s magical veins. They upended dens of glamour and decay, invisible doors in abandoned arcades, dens beneath homeless camps glittering with fairy lights and danger.

In the undercity, Scarlett’s contacts proved invaluable, but Ecredithel’s curse brought unexpected dangers—hungry shades, curses that lashed out, and some ancient fae that recoiled from his touch. More than once, he shielded her from a spell. More than once, she kept him from crumpling, dazed by the curse’s force.

All the while, something built between them. He infuriated her—arrogant, ruthless, sometimes callous—but he also made her feel seen. Not as a mortal, or as a crime family’s castoff, but as herself: strong, scared, hungry for justice.

On a storm-spattered night, they found Isla’s trail—a shadow-market where the desperate auctioned favors for memory. Scarlett’s pulse skittered as she squeezed Ecredithel’s hand, and he squeezed back, grounding her. Inside, they met a fae who demanded Ecredithel offer a secret in trade; he whispered a name, lips trembling, and shadows visibly loosened in his posture, menace revealed bluntly.

After, Isla was there, bound in glamour, dirty but alive. Scarlett wept at the sight of her—her impulsive, beloved baby sister, now tangled in magic not of her choice.

With ruthless efficiency, Ecredithel broke the spell, pain twisting his features as if it cost him blood. Scarlett rushed to Isla, holding her close.

“You came,” Isla gasped.

Scarlett nodded, tears streaming. “Always.”

A debt had been discharged, but the curse still snarled around Ecredithel. He staggered, falling to his knees as magic writhed through him.

“Scarlett—” he said, reaching for her. “You have to choose. Me, or her.”

Scarlett’s world shrank. Meridian’s words echoed: the curse wants forfeit.

So she did what she always did—she chose fiercely, recklessly. Her own blood, split in love. She took Ecredithel’s face in her hands and kissed him, grounding herself not in fear but in want.

“Neither of you die tonight,” she said, voice steady. “Not if love means anything.”

Magic crackled, blinding, and then—a snap. Air tasted like rain and static.

Ecredithel gasped, shuddering, and then—relief. The curse slipped off him like a second skin, revealing a different man underneath—aching, triumphant, shaken.

He leaned into her, forehead pressed to hers. “You saved me.”

Scarlett smiled, tears slipping down her cheeks. “You saved me right back.”

Their story didn’t end that night, nor began there. But they were bound now—by bargains, by love, by the impossible, relentless human desire to save someone, and to be saved in return. Even in the city’s darkest corners, miracles sometimes came to mortals who risked everything and dared to love a cursed elf, asshole or not.

This story was generated by user jess.jessie0 with assistance by one of OpenAI’s large-scale language-generation model; prompts used to help generate the story are shown below.

Images were generated with OpenAI's AI system, DALL·E 2, or uploaded by the user.

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