The Seventh Death of the Devil

The man she has killed six times is the devil she made her bargain with, and every death has been a step up for him. She does not know that. From where she stands, he forgets her after each one, and in the life that follows she falls in love with him again. By the seventh she has lost her family's money and is sold at auction, and he is the one who buys her. There is nothing between them by way of memory, and the pull is there anyway. When she finally gets the knife into his heart he stays alive, and he opens eyes that have turned gold. She runs from him. He tears his own godhood out of himself, five hundred years of power, to be mortal enough to go after her, and he takes a hundred lashes for one chance to hold her without hurting her, which leaves his back in pieces.