Chapter 20 #2
When the light finally faded, she was on her hands and knees. The chalk lines had burned away completely, leaving black scorch marks on Victor’s hardwood floor. Her arms shook. Her vision swam with tears she didn’t remember crying.
“Ava?” Mia’s voice came from very far away. “Ava, what… what did…”
She looked at her hands. Golden light pulsed beneath her skin, tracing the paths the chains had carved. The glow followed her veins, wrapped around her wrists, disappeared beneath the collar of Victor’s shirt where she knew it continued around her throat. Beautiful and terrible.
“It worked.” The words scraped out raw. Destroyed. “My parents are free.”
“Free from what?” Mia was on her knees at the edge of where the circle had been, close but not touching, like she was afraid proximity might be contagious. Tears streamed down her face. “What just happened to you? You were screaming. I couldn’t… I wanted to stop but you said don’t stop and I…”
“I know.”
“That wasn’t a protection ritual.” Mia’s voice climbed toward hysteria. “Protection rituals don’t do that. They don’t… you don’t…” She gestured helplessly at the chains glowing beneath Ava’s skin. “What are those?”
“Binding chains.” Ava finally managed to sit back on her heels. The movement sent fresh waves of pain through her chest. “Proof of ownership.”
“Ownership.” Mia repeated the word like it was in a foreign language. “Whose?”
“Marchosias. Duke of Hell. The demon who held my family’s contracts.”
“Held. Past tense.”
“They’re free now. The substitution transferred the debt to me.”
Mia stared at her. The tears had stopped, replaced by something worse: the blank incomprehension of someone whose reality had just shifted beneath her feet.
“You traded yourself,” she said slowly. “For your family.”
“Yes.”
“You sold your soul to a demon. And you made me help you do it.”
“Yes.”
Mia’s face crumpled. She pressed both hands over her mouth, muffling a sound that might have been a sob or a scream.
She was still crying when the elevator opened.
Victor crossed the penthouse in four strides, dropping to his knees beside Ava. His hands found her wrists, turned them over. When he saw the chains glowing beneath her skin, his grip loosened, not releasing her, but forgetting to hold on.
No one spoke. The only sound was Mia’s ragged breathing from the corner where she’d retreated.
“The Right of Substitution.” His voice was barely audible. “You performed the ritual.”
“Yes.”
“Without telling me.”
“Yes.”
He released her wrists. Didn’t pull away, just let go, like he didn’t trust himself to keep holding her. His hands hung at his sides, useless.
“I felt it happen,” he said. “From the office. Like someone had reached into my chest and squeezed.” He was staring at the scorch marks on the floor, at the burned remnants of chalk, at everything except her face. “I knew before I knew. I felt you slip away.”
“The bond is still there.”
“Barely.” He finally looked at her, and his eyes were wet. “It’s like holding smoke. Like trying to grip water. You’re still here but you’re—” He couldn’t finish.
Mia made a choked sound from somewhere behind them. Ava heard her stand, heard her footsteps moving toward the elevator.
“Mia…”
“I can’t.” Her voice was thick with tears. “I can’t be here. I can’t look at you. I can’t…” The elevator doors opened. “Just fix it. Whatever you have to do. Fix it.”
She was gone before Ava could respond.
Victor hadn’t moved. He was still kneeling beside her, still staring at the chains pulsing beneath her skin. His tie was loosened, his jacket gone; he must have abandoned it somewhere between the office and here. She’d never seen him look so undone.
“Why?” The word came out broken.
“Because you would have stopped me. Or traded yourself instead.” Ava met his eyes. “I couldn’t let you sacrifice yourself for my family.”
“So you did it first.”
“I did what was necessary.”
He laughed, a terrible sound, hollow and sharp. “Necessary. You’ve damned yourself for eternity and you call it necessary.”
“My parents are free. Nine generations of my bloodline. The debt is gone.”
“And you belong to a Duke of Hell.” He stood abruptly, turning away from her. His shoulders were shaking. “Everything you are. Everything you could become. His property. Forever.”
“Victor…”
“The substitution isn’t formalized yet.” He cut her off. The mask again, the one he wore when he couldn’t afford to feel. “Marchosias hasn’t accepted it. Hasn’t appeared to claim what you’ve offered. There’s a window.”
“What kind of window?”
“Demon law requires substitutions to be formally accepted at court. The transfer has to be witnessed, acknowledged, sealed.” He still wasn’t looking at her.
“Marchosias holds court once a week. If we can challenge the transfer before he accepts it, argue that the original debt was fraudulent, that Lilith exceeded her authority…”
“There’s a chance.”
“A small one.”
Ava used the couch to pull herself upright. Her legs shook beneath her. The chains pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat, not painful anymore, but present. A weight she’d carry forever if they failed.
“When’s his next court?”
“Tonight. Midnight.”
She looked at the clock on Victor’s wall. Just past eleven in the morning.
“Thirteen hours.”
“To get to Hell, find someone who can get us an audience, and make our case before Marchosias formally accepts your soul.” Victor finally turned to face her. The mask had cracked. Beneath it, she saw exhaustion. Fear. Grief. “Those aren’t good odds.”
“They’re the only odds we have.”
He crossed to her slowly. Stopped just out of arm’s reach, like he was afraid to touch her. Like the chains might burn him too.
“I would have found another way.” His voice had lost its professional edge. “I would have spent centuries looking. I would have burned every contract in—” He stopped. His mouth worked but nothing came out. He pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes and just stood there.
She closed the distance between them, taking his hands in hers. The chains glowed brighter at the contact, or maybe that was her imagination. “That’s why I couldn’t wait.”
He pulled her against his chest. She felt him shaking. Felt the bond between them flickering like a candle in wind, still there, still fighting, but weakened. Strained.
“Not alone,” she said into his shoulder.
His arms tightened around her.
“Together.”
They stood like that, holding each other in the ruined living room, scorch marks still smoking on the floor. She could feel his heartbeat against her cheek, faster than usual, driven by fear rather than exertion.
Then Victor stepped back. His expression had hardened into something she recognized: the look he wore when facing impossible odds. The look that said he’d already calculated every variable and decided to fight anyway.
“The tablet,” he said. “We’ll need it. And we’ll need to find someone in Hell who can get us to Marchosias before midnight.”
“Do you know someone?”
“I know people who know people.” He moved toward his desk, grabbing the tablet, shoving it into a leather bag. “Hell operates on favors and debts. Someone will want something I have. We just have to find them before the clock runs out.”
He paused at the desk, looking at the tablet in his hands. The artifact they’d stolen from the archives. The leverage they’d planned to use against Marchosias.
“This might not be enough anymore,” he said. “We were going to argue your family’s case. Now we’re arguing yours.”
“Is there a difference?”
“Legally? Yes.” He slung the bag over his shoulder. “Your family was bound without informed consent. You bound yourself deliberately. Willingly. The defenses are different.”
“But the underlying fraud is the same. Lilith used Marchosias’s authority without permission.”
“That’s our argument.” He crossed back to her, taking her hand. “Let’s hope it’s enough.”
Ava looked down at their joined hands. Her skin glowed gold where it touched his. The chains pulsed beneath the surface, marking her as claimed, as owned, as something that no longer entirely belonged to herself.
Thirteen hours to save her soul.
She followed Victor toward the elevator, toward the basement, toward the door that led to Hell.
She didn’t look back at the scorch marks on the floor. Didn’t look back at the life she’d just burned away.
There wasn’t time.