Chapter 18 #2
“You were right.” He moved closer, slowly, giving her room to stop him. “I offered to sacrifice myself like it was simple. Like the cost didn’t matter. Like the years I’d lose with you were just… numbers.”
“Aren’t they? To someone who’s lived six thousand years?”
“No.” He sat beside her on the ledge. Close, but not touching. “That’s what I need you to understand. A century isn’t nothing to me. It’s everything. Because every day of it would be a day without you.”
The wind cut between them. Ava waited.
“I’ve lived six thousand years,” Victor said slowly.
“Everything I’ve ever cared about has ended.
People die. Empires fall. Connections fade until they’re just…
memories of memories. You learn to hold things loosely.
You don’t let yourself believe anything is permanent, because permanence is a lie mortals tell themselves. ”
“So you offered yourself to Marchosias because you don’t believe we’ll last anyway.”
“No.” He finally looked at her, and his eyes were wet. “I offered myself because I’m terrified we will.”
The words hung in the cold air between them.
“I’m terrified,” he continued, “that I’ll have you for sixty years and then lose you. That the grief will be worse than anything I’ve survived in six thousand years. Part of me thought: if I leave first, if I choose the ending, maybe it won’t hurt as much.”
“That’s…”
“Incredibly fucked up. I know.” A ghost of a smile. “I’m a six-thousand-year-old demon with intimacy issues. Not exactly a surprise.”
Ava didn’t smile back. Not yet. But something in her chest loosened.
“I need to know this is real,” she said. “Not obligation. Not the bond forcing your hand. Not protective instinct you can’t control.” She met his eyes. “I need to know you actually want to be here. With me. Even when it’s terrifying. Even when your brain tells you to run.”
He reached for her hand. She let him take it.
“When I was in Prague,” he said slowly, “after Celeste died, I swore I’d never let anyone that close again.
A century of perfect isolation. I was good at it.
Untouchable. Safe.” His thumb traced circles on her palm.
“And then you walked into my elevator with your coffee and your student loans and your absolute refusal to be intimidated, and I felt something I thought I’d killed centuries ago. ”
“What?”
“Hope.” He brought her hand to his lips, pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “Terrifying, irrational hope that maybe this time would be different. That maybe you would be different.”
“I’m not different. I’m just…”
“You’re…” His voice broke. He stopped. Started again. “Three weeks ago you were worried about student loans. Now you’re invoking blood magic in your parents’ kitchen and telling a six-thousand-year-old demon he’s not allowed to martyr himself.”
“Is that a complaint?”
“It’s…” He shook his head. “I don’t have a word for what it is. I just know I don’t want to miss any of it.”
Her breath caught, and the knot behind her sternum loosened by a fraction.
“Promise me something,” she said.
“Anything.”
“Promise me you’ll stop trying to leave first. That you’ll fight for this, for us, even when it’s terrifying. Even when your six-thousand-year-old brain tells you to run.”
“I promise.” His eyes held hers. “No noble sacrifices. No choosing the ending early. We fight together. We stay together. However long we have.”
“Both of us,” she repeated.
This time when she kissed him, it was slow. His hands came up to cup her face, careful of the brand still burning on his palm.
They stayed on the roof for a long time. The city lights blurred and shifted below them.
“We should go inside,” Victor said eventually. “You’re freezing.”
“I’m fine.”
“Your teeth are chattering.”
“Romantic ambiance.”
He laughed, a real laugh, surprised out of him. She felt it through the bond, felt the release of tension he’d been carrying for hours. Maybe longer.
“Come on.” He stood, pulling her up with him. “I’ll make tea.”
“Tea.”
“I’m capable of making tea.”
“You have people for that.”
“I have people for everything. That doesn’t mean I can’t…” He stopped at her expression. “What?”
“Nothing.” She leaned into him as they walked toward the door. “I just like seeing you like this. Arguing about tea. Being normal.”
“I’m a six-thousand-year-old demon. Normal isn’t exactly my baseline.”
“Normal for us, then.” She reached for the door handle, then paused. “Victor?”
“Yes?”
“The brand.” She touched his injured hand gently. “Does it still hurt?”
He looked at his palm. The three flames were still raw, still silver against his skin. Still a permanent mark of what he’d given up.
“Yes,” he said. “It probably always will.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He lifted her hand, pressed a kiss to her wrist where her own pulse beat steadily against his lips. “Some costs are worth paying. This one was.”
They went inside, and Victor made good on his promise to make tea, or tried to, anyway.
The kitchen was enormous, all marble countertops and professional-grade appliances that had clearly never been used. Victor stood in front of a kettle that probably cost more than Ava’s monthly rent, frowning at it like it had personally offended him.
“It’s not that complicated,” she said, hopping up onto the counter to watch. “You put water in. You turn it on. You wait.”
“I know how kettles work in theory.”
“In theory.”
“I haven’t actually…” He stabbed at a button. Nothing happened. “There are a lot of settings.”
“It’s a kettle, Victor. Not a spaceship.”
“Spaceships I could figure out. This has seven different temperature options.” He squinted at the display. “Why would anyone need seven different temperatures for water?”
“Different teas steep at different temperatures. Green tea is lower, black tea is higher.”
“Now you’re an expert?”
“I’m a person who’s made her own tea before. Unlike some immortal demons I could mention.”
He shot her a look that was pure wounded dignity, then turned back to the kettle with renewed determination. After three more button presses, water started heating. He turned around with a triumphant expression.
“See? Perfectly capable.”
“You put in way too much water.”
“There’s no such thing as too much water.”
“For two cups of tea? That’s going to take twenty minutes to boil.”
He looked at the kettle, then back at her. “We have twenty minutes.”
She laughed despite herself, a real laugh, surprised out of her by the absurdity of the moment. Here they were, fresh off an argument about immortality and sacrifice and the nature of love, and he was standing in his designer kitchen looking genuinely confused by a kettle.
“Come here,” she said, holding out her hand.
He crossed to her, stepping between her knees where she sat on the counter. This close, she could see the exhaustion in his eyes. The lingering pain from the brand. The way he was looking at her like she might disappear if he blinked.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said quietly.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He leaned his forehead against hers. His answer came not in words but in a wave of emotion that rolled through her. He didn’t answer in words. But through the bond she felt him stop bracing for impact.
“I’m learning to,” he said.
The kettle beeped. He kissed her once, quick and soft, then went to deal with the tea situation.
It took another ten minutes and two YouTube tutorials on Ava’s phone before they had two actual cups of tea: green for her, something dark and smoky for him that he’d found in the back of a cabinet and couldn’t remember buying.
They moved to the couch, sitting close enough that their knees touched. The apartment was still dark except for the city lights through the windows, and the quiet felt different now. Less heavy. More like rest.
“My mother texted,” Ava said, checking her phone. “She says my father hasn’t stopped talking about you.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Unclear. He keeps saying things like ‘that demon has honorable hands’ and then staring at the door you can’t walk through.”
“Honorable hands?”
“I think it’s a translation thing. He means you did something worthy.”
Victor was quiet for a moment, looking down at his branded palm.
“Honorable,” he said, like he was testing the word. “That’s new.”
They talked about other things after that. Derek’s research into Marchosias. What they might find in the archives. Whether Lilith would stay quiet in Tokyo.
Later, much later, they went to bed. Not desperate this time. Just close. Just together.
Victor fell asleep first, unusual for him, but it had been a long day. Ava lay beside him in the dark, feeling his presence through the bond, watching the city lights paint shadows on the ceiling.
Ten days until the deadline. A Duke of Hell waiting to review their case. Two million dollars still hanging over her parents’ heads.
Victor shifted in his sleep, and his branded hand brushed against hers.
She closed her eyes.