Chapter 15 #2
Shelves stretched into infinity in every direction, curving up walls that had no ceiling, spiraling into distances that shouldn’t fit inside any building.
Books floated past like schools of fish: some bound in leather, others in fabric that seemed to breathe, a few in materials Ava couldn’t identify at all.
The air smelled like old paper and something else. Something that wasn’t quite incense, wasn’t quite ozone, wasn’t quite anything she’d ever encountered.
Samael flourished his fingers and a set of plump armchairs manifested from thin air, arranged around a low table that appeared a moment later.
“Sit, please. Make yourselves comfortable.”
Ava lowered herself into the nearest armchair. It adjusted itself to her exact shape, molding around her like it had known her body her whole life. The comfort was so perfect it unsettled her more than if it had been full of nails.
“Peterson Holdings,” Samael said, settling into his own chair with a sigh that seemed to come from somewhere very old. “Oh, that’s an ancient trap. Vicious work.”
“You know about it?”
“My dear child, I know about most things.” He gestured, and a book drifted down from the shelves above: thick, bound in something that might have been leather but moved slightly under the light.
“Your parents were caught fifteen years ago. A loan for a restaurant renovation, they thought. But the binding went much deeper than money.”
“Binding?”
“Blood magic. Very old. Older than the firm that administers it.” He opened the book, showing her a page covered in symbols she didn’t recognize.
“Nine generations forward, nine generations back. Everyone connected to your parents by blood, past and future, claimed by the same power that holds them.”
The number landed. “That’s eighteen generations of people.”
“Yes. Your grandparents. Your children, should you have them. Their children. Their children’s children.” He said it almost admiringly, the way a craftsman might appreciate another’s work. “Quite the collection of souls.”
“Serve who?”
Samael’s smile widened. “Now that’s an interesting question.”
“You know. Don’t you.”
“I know many things, Ava Feng.” He closed the book. It vanished, absorbed back into the library. “The question is what such knowledge is worth to you.”
She met his ancient eyes. “What do you want?”
“Something precious.” He leaned back, studying her with patient attention. “I can tell you who truly binds your family. Show you how the magic works. How it might be undone.” His voice remained warm, reasonable. “But I don’t traffic in favors or gold. I collect moments. Beautiful ones.”
“What kind of moments?”
“Your eighth birthday.” His smile was gentle, almost kind. “The afternoon your grandmother gave you that pendant.”
Ava’s hand went automatically to the jade at her throat. Still warm from her skin. Still present. But suddenly, terribly vulnerable.
“I’ve glimpsed it,” Samael continued. “The warmth of her kitchen. Flour on your hands from making dumplings together. The way she laughed when you got more on yourself than in the bowl. The words she said when she clasped the chain around your neck.” His eyes were soft.
“Such a lovely thing. Such a perfect moment of unconditional love.”
“And you want to take it from me.”
“I want to keep it safe.” He tilted his head, considering her.
“I’m a collector, Ava. Beautiful things belong in beautiful places.
You’d still know she gave you that gift.
You’d know it was your eighth birthday. You just wouldn’t remember how it felt.
The warmth. The love. The flour on your fingers. ”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No.” He watched her with ancient patience. “But you’d have what you need. The name behind the binding. The way out. Your family, freed.”
Ava thought about her parents. Her mother’s panicked texts that kept coming, no matter how many times she said she was handling it.
Her father, who’d worked eighteen-hour days for thirty years to build something his children could inherit, now trying to understand legal documents designed to destroy him.
She thought about eighteen generations. Her grandmother’s parents, who she’d never met. Her own children, who didn’t exist yet but would be born into bondage if she did nothing.
And then she thought about her grandmother’s kitchen. Flour everywhere. The smell of ginger and pork. Small hands learning to fold the edges just right. “Like this, Bao Bei. You have to pinch it closed or all the goodness escapes.”
The pendant going around her neck. Cool jade against her skin. “This is for protection. So you’ll always know you’re loved.”
“I don’t know if I can,” Ava whispered.
“You don’t have to,” Samael said gently. “You can walk away. Keep your memory. Try another path.”
“Is there another path?”
His silence was answer enough.
Thirteen days. Eighteen generations. Her parents’ souls.
“Tell me,” she said, and her voice cracked on the words. “Tell me who did this.”
“Is that your answer?”
She closed her eyes. Saw her grandmother’s face one last time: the crinkles around her eyes, the flour in her gray hair, the love that needed no words.
“Yes.”
Samael’s smile held no triumph. Only a collector’s satisfaction.
“The binding was cast by Marchosias. A Duke of Hell, one of the oldest, most patient. He wove this trap on your family decades ago, along with dozens of others across the world. A net of souls, waiting to be harvested when the time was right.”
“Why my family?”
“Proximity to power they couldn’t have predicted.
A daughter who would one day bind to Victor Morningstar.
” He leaned forward. “But there’s a way to sever it.
A loophole in the old magic. Someone else can take the binding.
Willingly. Someone whose soul is worth as much or more than those already caught. ”
The words sank into her like stones into water.
“Someone like me.”
“Yes.” He held out his hand, palm up. “The knowledge is yours. Shall we complete our transaction?”
Ava looked at his hand. Thought about what she was about to lose. Thought about what she was about to gain.
She placed her hand in his. His fingers were ice-cold.
He pressed his thumb against her forehead, and everything folded inward.
Visions flooded through her, not memories, but knowledge.
A clay tablet covered in cuneiform. Words in a language older than Babel.
Marchosias’s own hand, three thousand years ago, carving the ritual into stone.
The binding could be severed if another soul took its place.
Equal value. Willing sacrifice. The words had to be spoken at the moment of moonrise on the fifteenth day of…
She memorized it all. Every syllable. Every gesture. Every requirement.
The knowledge burned itself into her mind, sharp and permanent.
And then Samael took his payment.
It didn’t hurt. That was the cruelest part. No pain, no tearing sensation. Just a gentle unraveling, like a thread pulled from fabric so carefully you couldn’t even feel it leaving.
She stood in Samael’s library, hand still in his grip, and something was missing.
“It’s done,” he said.
“I don’t feel any different.”
“You wouldn’t.” He released her hand, and his eyes held something that might have been compassion. “The knowledge is yours to keep. The memory is mine to treasure.” He smiled. “I hope it serves you well, Ava Feng. I truly do.”
Cassandra stood, her expression unreadable. “We should go.”
Ava’s hand found the jade at her throat as they left. Smooth and cool beneath her fingers. Her grandmother had given it to her for her eighth birthday. She knew this the way she knew her own name.
But she couldn’t remember what it felt like to receive it.
Cassandra led her back through the shifting streets, past beings that didn’t look and buildings that couldn’t exist, to the chalk doorway.
They stepped through into the firm’s sixty-first floor.
-—
The bond slammed back into her consciousness like a wave breaking: Victor’s presence flooding the empty space, and with it, his terror. He’d felt her vanish. Felt the connection go silent. Had no idea where she’d gone or if she was alive.
“How do you feel?” Cassandra asked.
“Fine. I got what I needed.” Ava checked her phone. 2:47 AM. “There’s a way to…”
“Ava.”
Victor stood twenty feet away, still in yesterday’s suit, looking like he hadn’t slept at all. His face was pale. His hands were shaking.
“Where were you?”
Cassandra stepped forward. “Victor, I can explain…”
“I wasn’t asking you.” His eyes stayed on Ava, burning with fear and fury and something that looked like grief. “The bond went silent. For over an hour, I couldn’t find you. I couldn’t feel you. I thought—” He stopped. “Where were you.”
“Getting answers you couldn’t give me.”
“Where?”
“The In-Between. To see Samael.”
Victor stopped moving. Stopped breathing, it seemed—the kind of pause that came before violence, or tears, or both.
“You went to see an exile.” He moved closer, each step deliberate. “An entity that Heaven and Hell both fear. Without telling me. Without warning me. While I lay there feeling you vanish from existence.”
“He had what I needed.”
“And he took what he was owed.” Victor’s voice cracked. “What did you give him, Ava? What memory?”
“My eighth birthday.” She touched her pendant. “My grandmother giving me this.”
“No.” The word came out broken. “No, that was… you told me about that. The dumplings. The flour in your hair. The way she—”
“I don’t remember anymore.” Ava’s voice was steady, even as she felt the absence where the memory used to live. “I know the facts. I just don’t remember how it felt.”
Victor closed his eyes. Through the bond, she felt his anguish, grief so sharp it cut through the bond like a blade. Grief for something she’d lost that he could still remember her describing.
“I learned about Marchosias,” she said. “About the binding. There’s something called the Right of Substitution. There’s a way to save my parents…”
“I know about the Right of Substitution.” His voice was flat. Empty. “Someone has to take the binding willingly. Someone whose soul is worth as much as those already bound.”
“I could do it. I could take their place.”
“And damn yourself to a Duke of Hell forever.” He opened his eyes, and they were wet. “You paid a memory you can’t get back to learn that the only way to save your parents is to destroy yourself.”
Ava had no answer.
“There has to be another way,” she said finally.
“Maybe.” Victor closed the distance between them, pulling her into his arms with desperate strength. His fear cycled into determination, into something that felt like a vow. “But promise me: no more secrets. We do this together or not at all.”
“Side by side,” she echoed.
The words tasted like ash.
Because even as she held him, Ava felt the knowledge burning in her mind. The ritual. The words. The way out that Victor would never let her take.
Not if he knew what she was planning.
-—
In his impossible library, Samael lifted a glass jar from his desk.
Inside it, something shimmered, not light exactly, but the memory of light. A young girl laughing. Flour on her small hands. An old woman’s voice, patient and warm: “Like this, Bao Bei. Pinch it closed so the goodness stays inside.”
Small fingers touching cool jade for the first time. “So you’ll always know you’re loved.”
He smiled, not cruelly, but with the satisfaction of a collector who’d acquired something rare.
“Beautiful,” he murmured.
He placed the jar on a shelf with countless others, each one holding someone’s most precious moment.
Then he returned to his books, and waited for the next petitioner to come seeking what only he could provide.