Page 64

I need to fix this.

Chapter 24

Eden

Ibury my hand in Vesper’s fur to ground myself, letting her claws needle my thighs as a tether to reality. Across the room, Malachi is a restless, leaking shadow, back to himself, silver and sharp edges. Between the cat's needling and his low muttering, I’m just barely keeping a full-blown panic attack at bay while the room fills with the cloying stench of a thousand rotten eggs.

He stops dead in his tracks, does a one-eighty turn, and makes a beeline for the⁠—

No.

“What are you doing?” I ask hesitantly as he scoops up the box containing my summoning supplies—the thing that started this whole nightmare—and drops it onto the coffee table with an unceremonious thud.

“I’m not doing anything,” he says simply. “You, however, are redoing the ritual. We’re going to Hell.”

The fuck we are. We’re still in the throes of my first stupid ritual, and he wants me to do it all over again? To take us to Hell?!

“Absolutely not,” I snap, shaking my head frantically. “That is not happening. Never. Not in a million years. Not in the next ten minutes.”

I shove the box back across the table so hard the candles rattle inside like chattering teeth. I want that box out of my sight. I want it at the bottom of the ocean.

“Eden,” he starts, his patience visibly fraying at the edges. “Let me explain⁠—”

“Explain what? How much fun the eternal lakes of fire are this time of year?” I stand up on legs made of jelly, depositing a disgruntled Vesper onto the cushions.

He drops to his knees on the opposite side of the coffee table, reaching for the manacles the Enforcer left there.

“You do not get to refuse,” he rumbles, the cold iron clinking between his long, sludge-stained fingers. “Pay attention and use that one working brain cell of yours for five minutes. That Warden threatened to end you specifically because of the blood-bind. And more will come.”

A cold, bitter wave of nausea roils through my gut. “So what? Your grand plan is to take me to Hell so they can kill me on your home turf instead? Is that the strategy? Just skip the middleman and deliver me to the door?”

“No,” he says, his eyes locking onto mine with a terrifying intensity as he pulls the candles out of the box, lining them up across the scarred wood. “I am suggesting we go to the one place they won't look. In Veraxia’s mind, why would I return to the place I’ve been so adamant about avoiding? It’s the perfect blind spot. No predator ever looks for the prey in its own bed.” He taps a candle against the table for emphasis. “In the mortal realm, we are a target. In Hell? We’re just noise.”

He pulls the yellowed, blood-crusted parchment from the bottom of the box, skims over the words, and begins setting the ritual up.

“I have the means to go back any way I want,” he mutters, not looking up. “I could tear a hole through the Veil with my bare hands if I had to. But if I go back the 'right' way, we’ll land directly at the Gates. I’d be processed, shackled, and delivered to Veraxia to do with as she pleases. And we would never get the bind off.”

My skin ices over, a fine, uncontrollable tremor starting in my feet and working its way up to my knees.

I can’t go there. Not willingly. Not ever.

“I first saw you in the Forbidden Zone,” he says. “It’s the only place where the Veil is thin enough for Hell to catch glimpses of you mortals playing with occult dealings. It’s a monitoring station, Eden. A blind spot in the bureaucracy.”

He strikes a match with a pop, and touches the flame to the first wick. “If we go back through that same crack, we slip in under the radar. I have colleagues and acquaintances who are as weary of the status quo as I am. They’re bogged down by the same endless admin, the same stifling queues, the same rotting hierarchies, and I’d bet they’d be willing to help us cut the bind safely just to spite the higher-ups like Veraxia.”

He looks up at me once the last candle is lit, a wicked glint in his eyes. “Spite is a very powerful tool when handed to a bunch of bored, middle-management demons.”

“And then what?” I ask, my voice cracking. “I just spend eternity down there? Wandering around some observation deck until I turn into ash?”

“No,” he says, sounding almost insulted, as if the idea of keeping me in his workspace is the most offensive thing he's heard all night. “I would throw you back through the Forbidden Zone. I would hurl you across the Veil with enough force to make your ancestors dizzy. You come back to this mortal realm, to your little apartment and your little life, and we both continue our miserable existences without the other.”

“You'd just... send me back?” I whisper.

“Yes.” He snatches the parchment from the table and thrusts it at me. I try to shove it back, my hands shaking too hard to even grip the edges, but he catches my wrists, forcing the paper into my palms. “Do it. Now.”

Ice crystallises in my veins. Images of Hell—of fire, hooks, knives, blades… they flit through my mind at a million miles an hour. My wrists burn with phantom shackles, my skin sears with invisible blisters, my nerves scream from volts of electricity being poured directly into my body.

The rotten air isn't enough. I can’t get it down. I pull in a breath, but it gets stuck halfway in, breaking into a wheeze. Dark, static-filled spots caress the edges of my vision, teeth chattering against the weight of it all, pulse thudding so damn hard my ribs might fracture.