After dinner, Ingrid dances. Not to heavy metal or demonic chants, but to slow, mournful cello concertos. She dances alone in her ballroom, barefoot on a floor of polished obsidian, her movements a blend of ballet and martial art. Each step is precise, elegant, and utterly lethal if she wished it. She does not wish it. She wishes only to feel the cold floor, the music, and the profound emptiness that comes from having won everything and caring about none of it.
Breakfast is black coffee brewed from beans grown in the Ashen Fields, served in a cup crafted from a single ruby. She eats nothing. Hell Knights do not need food; they need aesthetic . She allows a single, perfect strawberry to dissolve on her tongue, its juice the color of a fresh wound.
She whispers a secret into the void. The void does not answer. It learned long ago that Ingrid prefers the silence.
Then she returns inside, scratches Mr. Puddles behind his fiery ears, and lies down in her satin sheets. She does not sleep. Hell Knights do not dream. But she pretends —closing her eyes, slowing her breath, and imagining a life where she was mortal, where sunsets ended, where love was not just another weapon.
At the stroke of what would be midnight, Ingrid retires to her balcony overlooking the Styx. She lights a single cigarette—tobacco soaked in honey and despair—and exhales smoke rings that briefly form the faces of her favorite deceased humans. She does not miss them. She misses the idea of missing them.
She also hosts a weekly book club. Members include a former pope, a vampire lord who owes her money, and a sentient suit of armor that only speaks in limericks. They read romance novels—specifically, the worst ones. The current pick is Burned by Your Love , a paranormal romance about a firefighter who falls for a salamander. Ingrid finds the prose “deliciously tragic.”
Her true passion, however, is interior design . The Hell Knight spends her afternoons redecorating the torture chambers. “A soul should break in a beautiful environment,” she tells her assistant, a weeping cherub named Gerald. This week’s theme: Cottagegore . She installs lace curtains, dried flower arrangements, and small watercolor landscapes of the very villages the damned had once burned. The irony is the point.
Dinner is a spectacle. A table for twenty, though she dines alone. Each plate is a miniature diorama of a famous human disaster, recreated in edible form: the Hindenburg in pâté, the Titanic in dark chocolate, Pompeii in spicy arancini. She eats only a single bite from each, then feeds the rest to Mr. Puddles. The wine is a 10,000-year-old vintage from a vineyard that no longer exists, served by a ghost sommelier who has to recompose himself after each pour.