Chapter 12
The Sunday gala was everything the cocktail party hadn’t been.
Grimm’s eyes found them the moment they entered. That was the first thing she noticed. The chandeliers and the orchestra and the waiters carrying things that weren’t champagne — all of that came second.
The partners sat at the head table like a tribunal from another century. Malphas’s too-long fingers drummed on the tablecloth. Even Azrael seemed more present than usual.
Which, Ava reminded herself, they did. The soul bond humming between them wasn’t fake. The way Victor’s hand found hers under the table wasn’t performance.
But the partners didn’t know that yet.
Lilith arrived late, sweeping through the main doors in crimson silk that caught the chandelier light like fresh blood.
She paused just long enough for every head to turn, every conversation to falter, before gliding to her seat at the partners’ table.
Her nose was healed from yesterday’s dodgeball incident. Her pride clearly was not.
“She’s planning something,” Ava murmured, watching Lilith settle into her chair with the grace of a predator arranging itself for the hunt.
“She’s always planning something.” Victor’s hand found hers under the table. His thumb traced circles on her palm, and she felt his tension flow through the bond: not fear exactly, but careful watchfulness. The wariness of someone who’d survived centuries by never underestimating his enemies.
Dinner progressed with excruciating slowness.
Five courses of excess: foie gras, lobster bisque, beef Wellington, each dish more elaborate than the last. While the partners observed every gesture, glance, and breath between them.
Ava caught Beleth watching when Victor refilled her wine glass.
Saw Azrael’s green eyes narrow when she leaned into Victor’s shoulder during a particularly tedious speech about quarterly earnings.
They were being evaluated. Measured. Weighed against some invisible standard that would determine whether their bond was real or fabricated.
The irony wasn’t lost on her. They’d started fake and become real, and now they had to prove the realness they’d never intended to have.
Dessert arrived: dark chocolate mousse with gold leaf, because apparently even dessert needed to remind everyone how expensive this weekend was.
Grimm finally stood, tapping his glass with one long finger. The crystal rang out clear and sharp, silencing the room.
“A soul bond,” he announced without preamble. “Unexpected.”
The room went silent. Even the junior associates at the back tables stopped their whispered conversations. The orchestra’s music faded to nothing.
“The last time we saw such a thing attempted at one of our retreats was…” Grimm paused, ancient eyes fixing on Victor with something that might have been amusement or malice. “When was Prague, Victor? 1920?”
Victor went still beside her. His hand tightened on hers, not painfully, but with sudden desperate pressure.
A wave of old pain flooded through the bond. Shame, regret, guilt: emotions so heavy they’d been carried for a century, worn smooth by time but no less crushing. The force of it hit her sternum like a physical blow. She pressed a hand to her chest, suddenly struggling to breathe.
“1923,” Victor said quietly. His voice was steady, but she felt the effort it cost him.
“Ah, yes. The centennial retreat.” Lilith’s voice carried perfectly across the ballroom, pitched to reach every ear.
She rose slowly, crimson dress catching the light, her smile sharp enough to cut glass.
“When that French woman tried to force a bond. Though I suppose this one succeeded where Celeste failed.”
The name silenced the room for a beat before whispered speculation began spreading from table to table.
Lilith’s eyes found Ava, and her smile widened. “You always did have a way with the cattle, Victor.”
“Lilith.” Grimm’s warning was sharp as a blade.
But she continued, circling the head table like a shark scenting blood. “Oh, did your new bond not know about Prague? About what happens when someone tries to claim the great Victor Morningstar?”
“Enough.” Victor stood, his chair scraping against marble. The temperature in the room dropped; Ava could see her breath misting in the suddenly frigid air.
“I think your bonded deserves the truth, don’t you?” Lilith’s voice dripped false concern. “About what happens to humans who get too close. About Celeste. About all the others who thought they could—”
“We’re leaving.” Victor turned to Ava, his expression locked down tight, revealing nothing. But through the bond she felt everything: rage and shame and a desperate need to protect her from whatever ugliness Lilith was about to expose.
She nodded and stood with him, her fingers finding his without hesitation.
They walked out together, back straight, heads high, ignoring the whispers that followed them like hungry ghosts.
Ava made it to the women’s restroom before she vomited.
Victor’s rage hit first — white-hot, aimed at Lilith, burning up her throat. Then something colder underneath. Older. Guilt so heavy it sat on her chest like a stone.
And tangled through it all, her own shock, her own fear, her own desperate confusion about what any of this meant.
She couldn’t tell which feelings were hers anymore. Whose anger made her hands shake? Whose grief made her eyes burn? The bond had seemed manageable before: warm pulses of emotion, echoes she could identify and set aside. This was different. This was drowning.
The bathroom door opened. Victor appeared in the doorway, ignoring the “Women” sign entirely, his face pale and drawn.
“Ava—”
“Stop.” She held up a hand, pressing the other against the cool tile wall. Breathing hard. Trying to find herself in the chaos. “Stop feeling so much. I can’t think when your emotions are this loud.”
Every muscle in his body locked. She watched him force stillness into his frame, watched him try to bank the fire of his emotions like smothering flames with a blanket. It helped, marginally. The roar in her head dimmed to a manageable thunder.
“You feel my anger?” His voice was hoarse.
“I feel everything.” Tears streamed down her face, hers or his, she didn’t know anymore.
“I don’t know whose anger this is. Something about Celeste — I keep seeing a woman’s face and I don’t know if it’s your memory or mine.
And there’s this sickening guilt that doesn’t feel like it belongs to either of us. ”
She pressed her hands to her temples, trying to massage away the pressure.
“It’s all just—” She gestured helplessly. “Noise.”
Victor knelt beside her on the cold marble floor. Careful not to touch, though she could feel how much he wanted to. Could feel the restraint it cost him.
“The bond is amplifying everything,” he said quietly. “Emotions feeding off each other. Your fear makes my fear worse, which makes your fear worse. It’s a feedback loop.”
“How do we make it stop?”
“We don’t.” He looked helpless in a way she’d never seen: the ancient demon, the master negotiator, reduced to someone who couldn’t fix what was breaking.
“This is what we chose. For better or worse, we’re connected now.
Our emotions, our thoughts… they’re going to bleed together. Especially during stress.”
“So when I’m terrified…”
“I’ll feel that terror. And when I’m planning how to eviscerate Lilith…”
“I’ll feel your rage.” Ava laughed, brittle, broken, edged with hysteria. “Great. We’re going to drive each other insane.”
“Or we learn to manage it.” He offered his hand, palm up, waiting. “Side by side.”
She stared at his hand. Counted three breaths. Then she took it.
His determination flooded through the contact: steadying, solid, something to hold onto while the storm passed. She clung to it, letting it ground her, letting his certainty quiet the storm in her head.
“Okay,” she said, breathing easier now. “Okay. We figure it out.”
He helped her to her feet, and she didn’t let go of his hand. Not because she needed the physical support, but because the contact helped her sort his emotions from hers. When they touched, the bond felt less like drowning and more like swimming: still overwhelming, but navigable.
“I need air,” she said. “Somewhere away from all those people watching us.”
“The beach. Behind the resort.” He led her toward a service exit, avoiding the ballroom entirely. “We can talk there.”
A full moon hung in the sky, painting the surf silver.
The beach stretched empty in both directions, private and pristine, the kind of sand that cost more per square foot than her parents’ restaurant. Waves rolled in with hypnotic regularity, and the salt air helped clear the last of the emotional static from Ava’s head.
Victor stood at the water’s edge, hands in his pockets, looking like he was gathering words from somewhere very deep inside. The moonlight caught the sharp planes of his face, the tension in his jaw. She could feel him struggling through the bond: not with whether to tell her, but with how.
“Tell me,” she said simply.
He didn’t turn around. Just kept staring at the waves, letting the rhythm of them count out the silence.
“Her name was Celeste Dubois.” His voice was flat, controlled, the way it got when he was trying very hard not to feel.
“She was a contract specialist from our Paris office. Brilliant. Ambitious. Obsessive.” A pause.
“She’d studied infernal law for years before joining the firm, specifically researching claims and bonds.
I thought she was just dedicated to her work. ”
Ava waited. Through the bond, she felt his shame building like pressure behind a dam.
“In 1923, she orchestrated a public claiming at the centennial retreat.”
The words hung in the salt air. Ava stood frozen, processing.