Chapter 20
Ava waited until Victor left for the office.
He’d been reluctant to go, hovering in the doorway, watching her with that too-perceptive gaze. The bond hummed with his unease. Some flicker of her intent leaking through despite her best efforts to keep it buried.
“I’ll be fine,” she’d said, kissing him. “Go handle Grimm. I’ll rest.”
The lie came easily. Too easily.
Now she stood alone in the penthouse, morning light streaming through the windows, the tablet from the archives sitting on Victor’s desk.
They were supposed to use it together. Present it to Marchosias as leverage.
Appeal to a Duke’s vanity and hope he cared more about his reputation than Lilith’s fifteen-year investment.
Hope.
Five days until the deadline. Five days until her parents’ souls belonged to Marchosias forever.
Victor’s plan was good. Thoughtful. Legally sound. But “good” wasn’t the same as “certain.” And if it failed… if Marchosias ruled against them, if he decided Lilith’s contracts were valid, if he simply didn’t care about his reputation enough to void fifteen years of carefully constructed debt…
She couldn’t risk it. Couldn’t gamble her family’s souls on the ego of a demon she’d never met.
The ritual burned in her mind. Clear as the day Samael had carved it there. Every word. Every gesture. Every requirement.
A willing substitute of equal or greater value.
The words of binding, spoken freely.
A witness to anchor the transfer.
She opened her contacts. Scrolled to Mia’s name.
Her thumb hovered over the call button.
She thought about what she was about to ask. What she was about to do to her best friend. The betrayal dressed up as a favor.
Then she pressed it.
Mia arrived forty minutes later, still in her rehearsal clothes, hair escaping from a messy bun. She’d clearly come straight from the theater; there was still stage makeup at her temples, not quite blended into her natural skin tone.
“Your text said urgent.” She dropped her bag by the door, looking around Victor’s penthouse with suspicious eyes. “Also, you look like you haven’t slept in a week. And you’re wearing Victor’s shirt. And something smells burned. What’s going on?”
“I need your help with something.”
“Obviously.” Mia didn’t sit down. Didn’t move further into the apartment.
Her arms crossed over her chest, the defensive posture she used when she sensed she was about to be asked for something she didn’t want to give.
“What kind of help? Because I’m getting a weird vibe here, Aves. A really weird vibe.”
“It’s a protection ritual. For my parents.”
“The debt thing.” Mia’s gaze sharpened. “The demon contracts. I thought Victor was handling that. Wasn’t that the whole point of the archives heist? The tablet?”
“He’s trying. But there’s no guarantee it’ll work.” Ava moved toward the living room, hoping Mia would follow. She didn’t. “I found something else. An old ritual that can protect my family from the binding. Sever the connection completely.”
“Found it where?”
“In the archives. When we were getting the tablet.”
“And you didn’t mention it to Victor?”
Ava felt her prepared lies crumbling at the edges.
“It’s complicated.”
“Uncomplicate it.” Mia still hadn’t moved from the entryway. “You’re asking me to help with some kind of supernatural ritual that you’re hiding from your demon boyfriend. That’s not a small ask. That’s a huge red flag.”
“The ritual requires a witness. Someone to speak certain words while I complete the protection. That’s all.”
“That’s all.” Mia’s tone was flat. “Just words.”
“Ancient Sumerian. The language anchors the protection.”
“And Victor can’t do this because…?”
“Because he’d try to stop me.” The truth slipped out before Ava could catch it. She saw Mia’s expression change, saw the suspicion sharpen into something closer to alarm.
“Stop you from doing what, exactly?”
“From protecting my parents.”
“That’s not an answer.” Mia finally moved, but toward the door, not toward Ava. “Something’s wrong here. I can feel it. You’re not telling me everything.”
“Mia, please.” Ava heard the desperation in her own voice.
Hated it. “My family. My parents. They didn’t ask for any of this.
They signed contracts they didn’t understand, made deals they don’t remember, and now their souls are collateral for a demon’s fifteen-year revenge scheme.
I can fix it. I can save them. But I need your help. ”
Mia’s hand was on the door handle.
“What happens to you?” Mia wasn’t moving toward the door anymore. “During this ritual. What happens to you?”
“Nothing.”
“Liar.”
“Mia…”
“Your left eye is twitching. It does that when you’re hiding something.
” Mia turned to face her fully. “I’ve known you since freshman orientation.
I held your hair back when you got food poisoning from that dining hall sushi.
I was there when your grandmother died. Don’t stand there and lie to my face. ”
Ava’s prepared speech dissolved. She stood in Victor’s penthouse, morning light catching the dust motes in the air, and couldn’t find a single word that wasn’t a betrayal.
“If I tell you the truth,” she said finally, “you won’t help me.”
“Then maybe I shouldn’t help you.”
“My parents will lose their souls.”
“And if I do help you? What do you lose?”
Neither of them spoke. Somewhere in the building, an elevator dinged. A distant sound, ordinary, belonging to a world where best friends didn’t ask each other to participate in demonic rituals.
“I can live with the consequences,” Ava said. “I can’t live with letting my family pay for something they didn’t do.”
Mia stared at her. Her hand dropped from the door handle.
“If something goes wrong…”
“It won’t.”
“If something goes wrong,” Mia repeated, “I’m calling Victor. I don’t care what you say. I’m calling him and telling him everything.”
“Okay.”
“And after this is done, you’re going to explain everything. No more secrets. No more lies.”
“Okay.”
Mia’s shoulders dropped. The fight drained out of her, replaced by something that looked like resignation. Or maybe defeat.
“Show me what I’m supposed to read.”
They cleared Victor’s living room floor.
Ava drew the symbols from memory: chalk lines forming a circle, smaller circles at cardinal points, sigils she didn’t fully understand but knew were necessary.
The geometry refused to hold still. The angles seemed to shift when she wasn’t looking directly at them, like the chalk itself was trying to escape.
Mia stood outside the main circle, holding the paper where Ava had written the witness words. Her hands were shaking slightly.
“This looks like something from a horror movie.” Her voice was thin. “The kind where everyone dies at the end.”
“It’s just geometry. The shapes focus the intention.”
“The intention to do what?”
Ava didn’t answer. She knelt in the center of the circle, feeling the chalk lines pulse beneath her knees. The jade pendant lay cold against her chest, colder than it should be, like it knew what was coming.
She touched it once. An apology to her grandmother for what she was about to do. A promise that it was worth it.
“When I start speaking, count to ten, then read everything on the paper. Don’t stop until you finish, no matter what happens.”
“No matter what happens.” Mia’s voice rose. “What’s going to happen?”
“The ritual needs to complete without interruption. That’s all.”
“Ava…”
“Please.” She met Mia’s eyes. “Trust me.”
Mia’s resistance broke. She nodded once, gripping the paper tighter.
Ava closed her eyes. Drew a breath. Let it out slowly.
The words rose from somewhere deep, Samael’s gift, burned into her memory. They scraped against her teeth. Consonants clicking in patterns that predated human speech. Sounds that human throats weren’t designed to make.
“Marchosias, Duke of Contracts, Lord of the Wailing Court:”
The temperature dropped. Mia made a small sound but didn’t stop counting.
“I invoke the Right of Substitution. A willing soul in exchange for those already bound.”
The chalk lines began to glow. Faint at first, then brighter. Golden light bleeding upward like flames frozen in place. The light seared through her closed eyelids. Ava pressed her palms against her face.
“The bloodline of Feng, nine generations forward, nine generations back:”
The bond with Victor flared. She felt him notice from across the city—felt his attention snap toward her like a compass finding north. Felt his confusion turn to alarm, his alarm turn to panic.
He was coming. She had to finish before he arrived.
She spoke faster.
“I take their place.”
Mia started reading, her voice shaking: “By witness and word, by blood and breath, let the binding transfer:”
“I, Ava Feng, offer myself in substitution:”
The light blazed brighter. The ritual was fighting her, or she was fighting it. The words wanted to come faster, but her throat was closing, her body recognizing what her mind had decided to ignore.
This was going to hurt.
“For the souls of my ancestors and descendants.”
“From the bound to the willing.” Mia’s voice cracked on the last word.
“Freely given.”
Pain lanced through her chest. Not the mark, something deeper. Something being torn loose from the place where it had always lived.
“Freely taken.”
“Sealed and witnessed.”
“Now and forever.”
The world went white.
Then the chains came.
They didn’t materialize gradually. They erupted from the light, golden metal condensing from nothing, wrapping around her wrists, her ankles, her throat. The first touch was cold. The second was agony.
She heard herself scream.
The chains didn’t rest on her skin. They sank into it—burrowing beneath the surface like living things seeking warmth.
She could feel them threading through muscle, wrapping around bone, weaving themselves into the architecture of her body.
Each inch they traveled brought fresh pain, not sharp, but deep. The kind of pain that lived in marrow.