Chapter 22 #2
“Same thing. Different word.” Andromalius drained his glass, set it down with a click. “Give me one reason. One actual reason why I should stick my neck out for a demon who abandoned his own kind.”
Neither of them spoke. Ava felt the chains pulse faster, responding to her rising anxiety.
“Because you showed me how to leave,” Victor said finally. “Six thousand years ago. When everyone else called me a fool, you showed me how to pass in the mortal world. How to survive up there. You gave me that when no one else would.”
“And you think that earns you a favor now?”
“I think it means you understood. Why I needed to go. What I was looking for.” Victor met his eyes. “I think some part of you wanted the same thing.”
Andromalius was quiet. His gold eyes gave nothing away.
“You have something,” Ava said.
Both demons turned to look at her.
“You wouldn’t have agreed to meet us if you didn’t.” She kept her voice steady, though the chains were burning now, pulling harder with every passing minute. “You have something that can get us an audience. The question is what you want for it.”
Andromalius studied her. His gold eyes assessed her, not with hostility, but with something closer to respect.
“Smart.” He reached into his jacket and produced a small object. “You’re right. I do have something.”
He set it on the table between them.
A golden idol, small enough to fit in a palm. Solid gold, carved with exquisite detail: a figure seated on a throne made of wheat sheaves and coins, crowned and regal. Marchosias as he’d been once. As he remembered himself.
“I recovered this from a collapsed temple in what used to be Mesopotamia,” Andromalius said.
“It’s the last one. All the others were destroyed millennia ago.
” He paused. “This is proof that Marchosias was worshipped. Proof he was divine before he fell. He’s been searching for it for three thousand years. ”
Victor’s attention locked on the idol. “That would get us an immediate audience.”
“It would get you the Duke’s undivided attention.” Andromalius picked up the idol, turned it in his fingers. The gold caught the dim light. “He’d clear the court to see this. Postpone every other petition. You’d have his ear for as long as you needed it.”
“What do you want?” Ava asked.
Andromalius set down the idol. Picked up his glass. Set it down again with deliberate precision.
“A century of service,” he said. “From Victor. After your natural death.”
The words landed like stones.
“One hundred years,” Andromalius continued. “He serves me personally. Does what I ask, when I ask it. No questions. No negotiations.” His gold eyes met Victor’s. “That’s my price.”
“No.” The word cut sharp. “That’s not—you can’t ask—”
“I can ask whatever I want. This is Hell.” Andromalius shrugged. “A century of a Morningstar’s service is valuable. This idol is valuable. The math works out.”
“The math…” She turned to Victor. “Tell him no. There has to be another way.”
Victor wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at the idol. At the golden figure that represented their only chance to reach Marchosias before midnight.
“Victor.”
“It’s just time. A century. After you’re gone.”
“After I’m…” The words caught in her throat. “You’d be a slave for a hundred years. Because of me. Because I…”
“Because you saved your family.” He finally looked at her. “You made your choice. Now I’m making mine.”
“This isn’t your choice to make. This is my soul, my…”
“And that’s my existence.” He took her hand. The chains flared at the contact, gold wrestling with silver. “A century is nothing compared to never having tried. Nothing compared to watching you belong to Marchosias forever because I wasn’t willing to pay the price.”
Andromalius watched them with an expression Ava couldn’t read.
“I need a moment,” she said. “To think.”
“You have maybe three hours until the formal acceptance.” Andromalius checked his watch, an actual pocket watch, gold like everything else. “Think fast.”
Victor held her hand. His certainty pressed into her like a hand against her spine. His willingness to pay whatever price was asked. His absolute refusal to let her face Marchosias without every possible advantage.
And underneath it—fear. Not of the century to come. Fear of losing her. Fear of watching her become property of a Duke of Hell while he stood helpless.
She thought about what he was offering. A hundred years of servitude. A hundred years of doing whatever Andromalius asked, whenever he asked it. A hundred years of being owned, the very thing he’d fled Hell to escape six millennia ago.
For her. Because she’d bound herself to save her family, and he refused to let that sacrifice be the end of her story.
The chains burned beneath her skin. Marchosias’s claim, pulling her toward a future where she belonged to a Duke forever. But there was another way. There had to be.
“I’ll do it,” she said.
Victor turned sharply. “What?”
“The century of service.” She looked at Andromalius. “I’ll do it. Not Victor. Me.”
Andromalius raised an eyebrow. “You’re human. You’d be dead long before the century ended.”
“So extend my life. You’re demons. You have ways.” She pulled her hand free of Victor’s grip. “I’m the one who bound myself to Hell. I’m the one whose soul is on the line. If someone’s paying for my chance to argue, it should be me.”
“Ava…”
“No.” She didn’t look at Victor. Kept her eyes on Andromalius. “Those are my terms. A century of my service, life extended as necessary. In exchange for the idol.”
Andromalius was quiet. Then he smiled, and for the first time, it looked almost genuine.
“Counter-offer,” he said. “Fifty years. Split between you. Twenty-five each, served concurrently after your natural death.” He looked between them. “You clearly can’t stand the thought of the other one sacrificing alone. This way, you both pay. You both serve. And you get to do it together.”
Victor’s hand found hers again.
“Deal,” they said together.
Andromalius produced a contract from thin air. Parchment that hadn’t existed a moment ago, words writing themselves in fire across the surface. Two signature lines at the bottom.
Victor signed first. Silver blood from his fingertip, leaving a mark that glowed and faded.
Ava signed second. Her blood was red, ordinary, human, but where it touched the parchment, it turned gold. The chains’ influence, marking even this.
The contract flared once and vanished.
Andromalius slid the idol across the table.
“The Eternal Bazaar,” he said. “Marchosias holds court in the Grand Hall at midnight. Show this to the guards at the entrance. They’ll take you straight to him.”
Victor pocketed the idol. “Why did you really help us?”
Andromalius was quiet. For a moment, Ava thought he wouldn’t answer.
“Because I’m curious,” he said finally. “A human who bound herself to Hell to save her family. A Morningstar who came back after six thousand years for a woman he’s known less than a month.
” He shook his head. “Either you’re both fools, or you know something the rest of us don’t. I want to see which one it is.”
“That’s it? Curiosity?”
“In Hell, curiosity is currency.” Andromalius raised his refilled glass. “Now go. You have a Duke to argue with.”
They left the booth, descended the stairs, pushed back onto the street where neon signs buzzed and flickered against the red-black sky.
The chains pulled harder with every step, dragging Ava toward the Eternal Bazaar. Toward Marchosias. Toward the argument that would determine whether she spent eternity in service to a Duke of Hell.
Victor walked beside her, the golden idol heavy in his pocket, her hand tight in his.
“Twenty-five years,” she said as they walked. “You and me.”
“Every step of the way.” He squeezed her hand. “Though I’m fairly certain Andromalius got the better end of that deal.”
“Probably. But at least we’ll be bored together.”
“There are worse fates.”
The Eternal Bazaar rose ahead of them, a structure that seemed to grow out of the bedrock itself, towers of black stone and red glass reaching toward the burning sky.
Banners flew from every spire, crimson and gold, announcing the celebration in scripts that hurt to read.
Crowds thronged the approaches, demons of every shape and size pressing toward the great gates.
Marchosias’s court. Five hundred years in the making.
And somewhere inside, a Duke waited to claim her soul.
The chains pulled harder as they approached, the golden light beneath her skin blazing bright enough to draw stares from passing demons.
She was close now. So close that she could almost feel Marchosias’s attention turning toward her, a vast and ancient awareness registering her presence like a spider sensing vibration on its web.
“Ready?” Victor asked.
Ava looked at the chains glowing beneath her skin.
Felt the pull behind her sternum, stronger now than ever.
Thought about her parents, free now because of what she’d done.
About Victor, walking into Hell for her.
About the twenty-five years they’d both promised to a demon they barely knew, just for the chance to argue.
“I’m ready to fight,” she said. “Whatever happens after that, we’ll deal with it together.”
Victor squeezed her hand once. Then they joined the crowd moving toward the Bazaar’s great gates, two small figures in a river of demons, carrying a golden idol and twenty-five years of debt and the desperate hope that sometimes, even in Hell, the right argument could change everything.