Chapter 22
Hell had a subway system. Of course it did.
The station yawned open in the middle of a residential street, stairs descending into darkness punctuated by neon signs in Abyssal script.
Demons pushed past them going up and down: workers heading to early shifts, pleasure-seekers stumbling home, teenagers laughing too loud at jokes Ava couldn’t understand.
Some of them stared at the golden chains glowing beneath her skin. Most looked away quickly. A few lingered too long, their gazes calculating.
Victor kept his hand on her lower back as they descended. The chains pulsed warmer at his touch, responding to his presence with something that felt almost like jealousy.
The platform stretched wide beneath vaulted stone ceilings.
Smooth black basalt, worn by countless feet.
Signs advertised destinations in Abyssal script that shifted when she tried to read it directly, but the bond translated automatically, the words settling into meaning a half-second after she saw them.
The Serpent’s Vesper. Three stops. Crimson District.
A demon in a business suit waited near the edge, horns filed down to polished nubs, checking something on a device that looked almost like a phone.
Two succubi chatted by a pillar, their wings folded tight against their backs.
An elderly demon with bark-like skin sat on a bench, reading a newspaper that smoldered gently in her gnarled hands.
Normal. All of it looked so normal.
The chains pulled harder. Ava pressed a hand to her sternum, feeling the hook behind her ribs. Marchosias. Getting closer with every step.
A train arrived with a rush of hot air. Sleek and black, windows tinted so dark they reflected nothing. The doors slid open with a hiss. Victor pulled her aboard.
The interior was clean. Seats upholstered in something that felt too smooth, too warm, to be leather. Advertisements lined the walls in multiple languages, selling products she couldn’t identify and services she didn’t want to imagine.
They found seats near the back. Victor positioned himself between her and the rest of the car. Subtle, but deliberate.
“You’ve been here before. Before you left.”
“I grew up here.” He was watching the other passengers without appearing to watch them. “A long time ago. Before I decided I wanted something different.”
“What made you leave?”
The train lurched into motion. Through the dark windows, she caught glimpses of tunnels carved from living rock, veins of something luminescent threading through the stone like frozen lightning.
“I got tired of being what they expected me to be.” He was watching the tunnel walls slide past, but his focus was somewhere else.
Somewhere older. “Tired of the games. The hierarchies. The endless jockeying for position and power. I spent eight hundred years climbing, fighting, proving myself, and one day I realized I couldn’t remember why any of it mattered. ”
“So you left.”
“I ran.” A ghost of a smile. “Dressed it up as philosophy, called it a search for meaning, but really I just couldn’t stand another century of being what Hell made me.
” He paused. “Andromalius was the only one who understood. He helped me figure out how to pass in the mortal world. How to be something other than what I was born to be.”
“And was it worth it? Leaving everything behind?”
He looked at her. Really looked, the way he did when he was about to say something that cost him.
“I thought so. For a long time, I thought I’d found what I was looking for.” He laced his fingers through hers. “Now I know I was just waiting. For something I didn’t know I needed until I found it.”
The train stopped. Passengers shuffled on and off. A demon whose face was mostly eyes squeezed past them, muttering apologies.
Ava felt the chains flare, a sharp tug that made her gasp. They were getting closer. Marchosias’s territory. His domain.
“How much further?” she managed.
“Two more stops.”
She closed her eyes. Tried to breathe through the pull. It wasn’t pain exactly, more like being caught in a current, her whole body leaning toward something she couldn’t see.
Victor’s hand found hers. The soul bond flared silver at the contact, pushing back against the golden chains. It helped. Not enough, but some.
“I’ve got you,” he said.
The train moved on.
The Crimson District was nothing like the plaza where they’d arrived.
Gone were the festival banners and food vendors. Here, the buildings leaned against each other like drunks, facades crumbling, windows dark or boarded. Graffiti covered every surface: Abyssal script, some of it glowing faintly, some of it seeming to move when she wasn’t looking directly at it.
The crowd was different too. Harder. Visible weapons. Scars worn like jewelry. Eyes that tracked Victor and Ava with open calculation.
The chains made her a target. She understood that now. In Hell, ownership was visible, and she was marked as belonging to a Duke who hadn’t formally claimed her yet. Limbo. Contested territory.
They’d barely made it half a block when someone stepped into their path.
The demon was massive: seven feet of scarred muscle, teeth filed to points, wearing armor that looked like it had been welded together from scrap metal. His eyes fixed on the chains glowing beneath Ava’s skin.
“Marchosias’s mark,” he said. “But walking free. Not processed yet.” His grin turned feral. “Means you’re still—”
Victor moved.
One moment he was beside her. The next, he had the demon by the throat, lifted off his feet, slammed against the nearest wall hard enough to crack the stone.
“She’s under my protection.” Victor’s voice had changed: deeper, colder, carrying harmonics that made Ava’s teeth ache. “Spread the word. Anyone who touches her answers to me.”
He dropped the demon. The massive creature hit the ground, scrambled backward, and vanished into the crowd.
Other demons had stopped to watch. Victor turned to face them, and whatever they saw in his expression made them suddenly very interested in being elsewhere.
The street cleared around them.
“That’s going to draw attention,” Ava said as they walked on.
“Good.” Victor’s hand found her lower back again, guiding her through the thinning crowd. “I want attention. I want every demon in this district to know that touching you means dealing with me.”
“And if Marchosias hears?”
“He already knows we’re here. The chains told him the moment you crossed into Hell.” Victor’s expression was grim. “At this point, we’re not hiding. We’re racing.”
The Serpent’s Vesper occupied a building that had once been grand: carved stone facade, stained glass windows, architectural details that spoke of old money and older power. Time had worn it down, but the bones were still elegant. A faded queen accepting her decline with dignity.
Victor steered her toward a door marked only by a symbol scratched into rusting steel.
“What if he won’t help us?” Ava asked.
“Then we find another way.”
“Is there another way?”
Victor didn’t answer.
The bouncer was ten feet of liquid shadow, voice like gravel in a blender.
“No weapons. No wards. No recording devices.” His attention fixed on Ava’s chains. “And the substitute stays with you. We don’t need Marchosias’s people thinking we’re harboring contested property.”
“Understood.”
Inside, the bar defied physics in ways that made Ava’s head hurt.
Bottles hung suspended in midair, pouring themselves into glasses that floated to waiting hands.
The bartender had four arms and used them all simultaneously, mixing four drinks at once without looking.
In one booth, a demon played cards with himself; literally, five identical versions arguing about who was cheating.
The upper level was elegant: chandeliers made from something that might have been bone, private booths upholstered in velvet so dark it seemed to swallow light.
Below, visible through gaps in the railing, a fighting pit.
Two demons circled each other on blood-stained sand, both wounded, both grinning.
Victor led her toward the back, past booths where demons glanced up, registered who they were looking at, and quickly found somewhere else to direct their attention.
The booth at the very back was different. Larger. More private. Upholstered in something Ava decided not to think about too carefully.
Andromalius looked like he’d stepped out of a prohibition-era photograph. Pinstripe suit, immaculately tailored. Hair slicked back with something that gleamed. Gold rings on every finger, gold watch chain across his vest, gold eyes that matched Victor’s but held none of his warmth.
“Well, well.” He gestured for them to sit, not rising. “Victor Morningstar. I heard rumors you’d come back, but I didn’t believe them.” His gaze slid to Ava, to the chains pulsing beneath her skin. “And this must be her. The substitute. The human who bound herself to Hell to save her family.”
“I need your help.”
“Everyone does. That’s why I can afford this booth.” Andromalius smiled without warmth. “Sit. Drink. Tell me why I should care about your problems after six thousand years of silence.”
They sat. A server appeared, seemingly from nowhere, and placed three glasses on the table. The liquid inside glowed faintly blue.
Ava didn’t touch hers.
“I need an audience with Marchosias,” Victor said. “Tonight. Before the formal acceptance.”
Andromalius laughed. “During his five-hundred-year court celebration? When half of Hell is queuing up to petition him?” He shook his head. “You always did have audacity. I’ll give you that.”
“Can you get us in?”
“I can do many things.” Andromalius picked up his glass, swirled the glowing liquid.
“The question is why I would. You left, Victor. Walked away from everything: position, connections, reputation, to play human in the mortal world. And now you come back, after six millennia of nothing, asking for favors?”
“I’m asking for help.”