Chapter 26
The silence lasts an eternity.
It stretches across the library, filling the space between the shelves and the candles and the mortified witch standing three feet from a half-naked incubus.
Nobody speaks. Nobody moves. The coven witches are frozen in various states of shock, and Newt looks as though he is considering whether the floor might be persuaded to open up and swallow him.
Annabeth clears her throat.
“He’s yours to do with as you see fit,” she says.
Her voice has regained its clinical edge, though Dimitri can hear the strain underneath.
“Newton is indebted to you. The terms are yours to dictate.” She folds her hands in front of her, composure reassembling itself.
“And virgins are exceptionally powerful when it comes to sex magic. Their energy is unspent, concentrated. There must be a use for him.”
She says it as though she is discussing inventory. As though Newt is a commodity with an unexpected feature that simply needs to be marketed differently.
Knox’s outrage hits Dimitri through the bond with the force of a fist. White-hot, protective, volcanic.
Knox’s hands curl at his sides. His jaw locks.
Those green eyes blaze with the particular intensity of a man who has just heard a family member discussed as livestock and is calculating how many people in this room he needs to fight.
Dimitri can see the horror on Newt’s face. The boy is staring at Annabeth with an expression that isn’t surprise. It’s confirmation. The look of someone who always suspected they were expendable and has just received proof.
The incubus regards Annabeth.
The seductive ease is gone. The languid charm, the slow smile, the theatrical sensuality, all of it has been replaced by something cold and sharp and ancient. He looks at Annabeth the way one might look at an insect that has crawled uninvited across one’s floor.
“Is everyone in your coven,” the incubus says softly, “so quick to sacrifice their own?”
Annabeth blanches. A fractional loss of color, a tightening at the corners of her mouth. “Newton chose this fate. He summoned a demon. He made a pact with it. He owes a debt. The consequences—”
“What pact was made?”
The question cuts through Annabeth’s justification. The incubus’s purple eyes are fixed on her, unblinking, and his voice has lost its silk. What is left is something harder. Something that expects answers.
The room turns to look at Dimitri.
Dimitri spreads his hands. “We never got that far. The boy summoned me, I appeared in the circle, and before we could negotiate terms, the rift opened, the dogs came through, and he panicked and bound me to a Templar instead.” He pauses.
“There is no pact. A contract was opened when he cast the summoning, but no terms were ever agreed upon.”
The incubus goes very still.
His purple eyes move from Dimitri to Annabeth, and the temperature in the room drops again. Sharply.
“You summoned me,” the incubus says, each word precise and deliberate, “to fulfill a pact that was never made?”
Annabeth’s composure cracks. The slight widening of her eyes, the involuntary step backward, the way her hands unclasp and reclench.
She can feel the anger crackling in the air.
Everyone can. The incubus isn’t hiding it.
It radiates off him in waves, cold and electric, the fury of a being who has been pulled across dimensions under false pretenses.
Dimitri understands the anger. He understands it intimately, because the same thing was done to him a week ago in a meat packing plant. But an angry incubus in a room with Knox is not a situation he is willing to tolerate. He pushes Knox backward. One hand on his chest, firm.
Knox grabs his arm. “No—Newt—”
“Wait,” Dimitri says. His eyes don’t leave the incubus. “Just wait.”
The incubus turns to Newt.
His gaze lands on the boy, and Newt shrinks.
His shoulders curl, his chin drops, his whole body contracting under the weight of that attention.
But he doesn’t run. His feet stay planted on the hardwood and his trembling hands ball into fists at his sides and he looks up at the incubus with eyes that are terrified and resolute in equal measure.
“I wanted a familiar,” Newt says. His voice shakes, but the words are clear.
“Something to help me channel my magic. I can’t—my power doesn’t listen to me.
It’s too much. It comes out wrong, or too strong, or not at all, and I’ve tried everything the coven can teach me and none of it works.
” He swallows. “I found a spell in a book. It said I could summon a bonded companion, a familiar, who could help me focus. Help me control it. I didn’t know it was a demon summoning. I didn’t know the difference.”
The incubus holds up a hand. Annabeth, who has been opening her mouth to interject, stops. Mid-step, mid-sentence, mid-breath. She just stops. The whole room pauses with her. The coven witches go still. The candle flames stop flickering. Even the shadows hold their positions.
Dimitri files this away. The incubus is stronger than he looks.
The incubus turns back to Newt. His expression has shifted, the cold fury receding, replaced by something more nuanced.
More considering. He looks at the boy the way Dimitri has seen very old beings look at very young ones, with the particular attention of someone who can see potential the way mortals see color.
“You want a familiar,” the incubus says. “To help you control your magic.”
Newt nods. His throat is locked.
“And you would accept me in that role. Knowing what I am.”
Another nod.
“Even though the original pact was never completed. Even though no terms were set. Even though you owe me nothing, technically, except the debt of the summoning itself.”
Newt’s brow furrows. He opens his mouth, closes it, looks at Knox and Dimitri.
Dimitri’s chest tightens. This is the moment. If Newt refuses, the debt stays on Dimitri’s ledger, and the bond between Dimitri and Knox will never seal, and Knox will die. His hand finds Knox behind him, fingers pressing into the Templar’s hip, holding on.
“Yes,” Newt says.
He straightens. His shoulders come back. His chin rises. His hands are still trembling, but his voice is clear and firm, and his determined green eyes meet the incubus’s purple ones without flinching.
“I consent to the contract,” Newt says. “Complete the pact.”
The incubus studies him for a long moment.
Whatever he finds in Newt’s face seems to satisfy something, because the cold edge in his expression softens by a degree.
He raises one hand, palm up, and the air above it shimmers.
Smoke curls from nowhere, dark and fragrant, laced with something that smells of jasmine and burnt sugar, and coalesces into a document.
It hovers in the air, the text written in glowing script that shifts and moves.
The terms write themselves as Dimitri watches: a familiar bond, channeling assistance, duration until mastery of magical control, followed by a debt to be named.
The incubus produces a pen from the same smoke. It glows faintly, warm amber, and he holds it out to Newt.
“Sign,” the incubus says. “And I am yours until you control your power. When you do, you will owe me a debt of equal value. Those are the terms.”
Newt reaches for the pen. His hand stops halfway.
He turns and looks at Dimitri and Knox.
Knox is pressed against Dimitri’s side, one hand gripping Dimitri’s arm, his green eyes bright with worry and something deeper, gratitude, maybe, or awe, or the complicated aching feeling of watching someone sacrifice for you and being unable to stop it.
Dimitri stands beside him, his hand on Knox’s hip, his red eyes fixed on the boy who ruined his life and is now saving it.
Newt smiles at them. It is small and shaky and brave, and it transforms his freckled face into something that almost looks like peace.
He reaches out and signs the paper.
The pen leaves a trail of light across the document, Newt’s name scrawled in the handwriting of a twenty-year-old who never learned calligraphy, and the moment the last letter is complete the document erupts into flames.
The fire is violet and gold, and it consumes the smoke-paper in seconds, and the ashes drift upward and dissolve, and the contract is sealed.
The bond in Dimitri’s chest shifts.
He feels it. The open contract, the chain threaded through the door of his bond with Knox, loosening. Releasing. The debt transfers, sliding off Dimitri’s ledger and onto the incubus’s, and the soulbind between Dimitri and Knox shudders and settles and begins, finally, to close.
The sensation is extraordinary. The grinding friction that has been tearing Knox apart, the angelic rejection fighting the demonic tether, eases.
Not all at once, not dramatically, but the way a fever breaks, the way a held breath releases.
Through the bond, Dimitri feels Knox’s body responding, the cellular war quieting, the reserves beginning to rebuild, and the relief that pours through from Knox’s side is so vast and so sudden that Dimitri’s knees nearly buckle with the weight of it.
The bond seals. Dimitri feels it close, feels the final click of the lock, and the tether between them is no longer a tether.
It is a bridge. Permanent, stable, woven into the architecture of their shared existence, and it hums with a warmth that Dimitri has never felt before, a warmth that is not his and not Knox’s but theirs, a third thing born from the joining that belongs to neither and both.
The incubus rolls his shoulders. His purple eyes sweep the room and his gaze lands on Knox.
It lingers. There is something wistful in his expression, the particular regret of a being built for desire looking at something desirable and knowing it belongs to someone else.
His purple eyes trace Knox’s face, Knox’s blond hair, the faint glow of divinity beneath Knox’s skin, and his mouth curves in a small private smile of genuine appreciation.
Then he looks at Dimitri.
And winks.
The fury is instantaneous. It detonates in Dimitri’s chest, hot and possessive and completely disproportionate to the offense, and his hand tightens on Knox’s hip and a snarl builds in his throat.
The incubus grins. It is dazzling and infuriating and entirely deliberate, and he turns back to Newt with the satisfied air of a being who has accomplished exactly what he set out to accomplish, and Dimitri is left standing in the library with his teeth bared and his blood boiling and the absolute certainty that this incubus is going to be a problem.
Knox puts a hand over Dimitri’s on his hip and squeezes gently, and through the bond comes a wave of warm exasperated affection that says breathe.
Dimitri does not breathe. But he stops snarling.
It’s a start.