3. Chapter 3
Zavian (Milo)
I’ve been inside my father’s office twelve times in my life. Every single time, I walked out feeling worse than when I entered.
This is lucky number thirteen.
The worst part isn’t the heat, or the suffocating quiet, or even the stone desk that makes you feel like you’re awaiting sentencing. It’s the walls.
Framed contracts cover every surface, mounted behind protective glass.
Legendary bargains. A politician who surrendered his soul for a presidency that reshaped a nation.
An artist who traded eternity for one flawless masterpiece that still hangs in museums. A scientist who gave up everything for a discovery that rewrote humanity’s understanding of existence.
All of them signed in blood.
I’ve studied these contracts endlessly, trying to decode what my father accomplished that keeps eluding me. The answer is to be competent, but I keep hoping it’s more complex.
It isn’t.
A processing cart sits near the door, loaded with three new vessels waiting to be transferred to Hell’s main holding facility. Fresh acquisitions from this week alone. My father’s most recent work.
He sits behind his massive stone desk doing absolutely nothing, which is scientifically the worst possible sign.
The enchanted ledger in front of him glows with distant contracts he isn’t reading.
The light pulses, tracking bargains across the mortal realm as they’re made, and he doesn’t even glance at it.
When my father has minor complaints, he lectures me while doing three other things. Multitasking is a point of pride for him. But when he stops everything and clears his entire schedule for one conversation, I know I’ve screwed up so catastrophically that it requires his undivided disappointment.
Varkhael looks the way a demon is supposed to look.
Powerful. Ancient. Terrifying. His horns sweep back from his temples in perfect arcs, polished, sharp, and longer than any I’ve seen outside the higher circles.
His skin is deep red, almost burgundy, scarred by successful deals, brutal negotiations, and centuries of survival—proof he’s been doing the job since before most demons were born.
His robes are black, heavy, and cut with panels of deep crimson that drink in the torchlight.
The fabric is thick and faintly ridged in a way that makes me not want to guess what it came from.
A high collar brackets his jaw, severe enough to be uncomfortable for anyone who still values neck movement.
Dark embroidery runs down the front in rows of contract sigils.
Old victories. Major souls secured. One mark for every mortal who signed away eternity and made him richer for it.
Across his chest, there’s barely any black fabric left between the sigils.
Everything about him is sharp, severe, and designed to intimidate. Everything about me is awkward, too friendly, and designed for nothing useful.
I stand inside the doorway and don’t move closer because some part of me thinks if I stay here, near the exit, this conversation might not happen. The heat from the torches presses against my back, or perhaps that’s just my body trying to incinerate itself before he can do it for me.
He doesn’t say anything, only watches me with burning crimson eyes and waits for me to walk to the chair.
I really, really don’t want to walk to the chair.
“Sit,” he says.
I do, dropping onto the rock seat.
It’s too small and low. Designed specifically to put anyone sitting in it at eye level with the desk’s edge, forced to crane their neck toward whoever’s on the other side.
He has visitors’ chairs in storage that are normal-sized.
I’ve seen them. They come out for colleagues and senior brokers.
Demons whose respect he wants to maintain.
This one stays permanently in front of the desk for two categories of demon: subordinates being disciplined. And me.
He studies me without giving anything away, and the quiet drags on until I have to fight the urge to fidget, or explain myself, or do anything to make him speak.
“You’ve been doing clerical work for a considerable time now.”
“Yes.” I press my thumbnail into my palm, focusing on the sting.
“Do you know why?”
I know exactly why. I’ve known why for years. Doesn’t make saying it out loud any easier.
“Because I failed all my assignments.” I force myself to meet his eyes, even though every instinct tells me to look away. “I sympathized with the mortals instead of exploiting them.”
Maybe if I hear it from myself first, it’ll hurt less.
It doesn’t.
“You embarrassed this department.” His voice drops lower. “You embarrassed me.”
Each word lands exactly where he intends. I’ve spent enough years disappointing him to know the target.
“I know.” I sound like the six-year-old who got summoned to this office for the first time and didn’t understand why his father looked so disappointed.
I used to study the way he spoke to other demons. The tone shifts. The micro-adjustments. He has four distinct registers that I can identify. One for subordinates, one for equals, one for superiors, and one for me.
The first three share a common thread. Engagement.
Interest. The recognition that the person across from him existed as someone worth calculating around.
The fourth is . . . management. Damage control wrapped in parental obligation.
I spent years convincing myself I was imagining the difference.
Then I spent a few more accepting that I wasn’t.
“Do you understand what it took for me to keep you here?” His voice grows sharper. “What I had to do to convince the board that you deserved another chance, instead of being sent directly to the Furnace, where failed demons belong?”
I nod, because I don’t trust my voice anymore.
“I put my reputation on the line for you, Zavian.” He leans forward, anger held tight through his shoulders even though his hands stay perfectly folded on the desk.
“I vouched for you when every other council member said you were a lost cause. Argued that you simply needed more time, more training, and more discipline. Promised them you would succeed if given one last opportunity.”
“Thank you.” It sounds pitifully small against everything he just listed. “I know what you risked. I’m grateful, and I won’t—”
“I don’t need your gratitude.” He cuts me off. “I need you to do your job.”
I close my mouth and nod.
There’s a response I should give here, one that proves I’m capable, that I understand the stakes, that this assignment will be different.
But my mind is blank. The harder I search for the right words, the further away they get.
It happens every time I sit in this chair.
Decades of conversations, and I’ve never once found the sentence that makes him look at me with the approval he gives a completed contract. Satisfied and proud.
“I will,” I finally manage. “I’ll do better.”
“This is your final opportunity.” He glares at me, and I suppress the impulse to shrink in the chair. “You will be reinstated into active summoning eligibility. You will secure a contract with a mortal. You will return to Hell with a soul. No excuses or second-guessing. You will do your job.”
I nod again, more firmly this time.
“If you fail . . .” He stops there on purpose, and my imagination does the rest. “There will be no more chances. No reassignment to grunt work while we debate your future. Your sentence will be transfer to the Soul Furnace. Do you understand what that means?”
“Yes. But I won’t fail. I can do this. If you just give me this chance, I swear I’ll—”
“I have given you chances.” He cuts through my spiral. “This is your last one.”
The Furnace is where Hell sends demons who couldn’t cut it in contract work. It’s where you spend eternity maintaining torture systems for damned souls. Inflicting suffering, watching people break, and participating in cruelty you can’t prevent, stop, or escape.
For a demon like me, who couldn’t even trick mortals properly because I felt too much sympathy, it would be worse than death.
“I understand,” I say again, quieter this time.
He lets that sit before reaching across his desk for a sealed envelope. He slides it over the polished stone toward me.
“Take this to HR. They’ll process your reinstatement and register you for summoning assignments.”
I reach for it carefully. The envelope wobbles between my fingers anyway.
“Don’t waste this, Zavian.” His voice loses its edge, and that hurts more. “This is the last time I will help you.”
“Thank you.”
The words are inadequate for what he’s done for me.
He goes back to the ledger, his version of dismissal.
I stand and walk toward the door.
“Zavian.”
I turn back, and stupid hope rises. Maybe he’s going to say something else. Maybe there’s more.
“Close the door on your way out.”
The hope dies.
“Yes, sir.”
I pull it shut behind me and stay there with my hand on the handle, listening as the scratch of his pen resumes. My brain, unhelpfully, points out that this might be the last conversation I ever have with my father.
When I was young, I used to linger here, pressing my ear to the wood and hoping to catch him saying something to himself. Some private proof he was softer when no one watched. I never heard it. Eventually, I stopped listening, which should have been growth, but felt more like giving up.
“You have his door memorized by now, I assume.”
I jolt sideways and nearly drop the envelope.
My mother stands at the bend of the corridor, arms folded, looking unimpressed but unsurprised, which is her default setting for most interactions with me.
Azhyra is striking. Her black hair falls past her shoulders, perfectly straight, not a single strand entertaining the concept of disorder.
Delicate plum horns curve from her temples, smaller than my father’s but infinitely more refined, polished to a sheen that matches the ebony gemstones around her neck.
Her eyes carry a violet glow that I inherited in a paler version.
On her, the color communicates power. On me, it communicates this boy might be slightly unwell.
Her robes are layered silk, with structured panels in shades of midnight and deep amethyst, threaded with fine silver embroidery so precise it could only have been done by someone who was terrified of making a mistake.
The envelope is the first thing she notices. Not that hiding things from my mother has ever been a viable strategy.
“Active duty,” she says.
“Looks that way.”
“Your father arranged this.”
“He did.”
“Final chance terms?”
“Are there any other kind with him?”
She walks toward me, her robes moving soundlessly over stone. “And you’re loitering outside his office, looking like that because you’re thrilled about the opportunity?”
“Overjoyed. Can’t you tell?”
“Ecstatic, clearly.” She stops in front of me. Her composure slips so briefly most people would miss it. I don’t. When your mother communicates exclusively in variations of composure, decades of practice make you good at spotting the cracks. “This matters, Zavian. You know that.”
“I do.”
“If this works,” she says, “and you return with a contract, your father will push for full reinstatement. Permanent field rotation. Regular quota assignments.”
“That’s the plan.”
“And beyond that?”
“I keep collecting. Build a record. Prove I belong in the department.”
“Mmm.” She lets the sound hang there, noncommittal. “So you secure a portfolio. Establish yourself. Your father leverages your success into political currency. The Council takes notice. Families begin circling.”
“Families?”
“For arrangements. You’re his only heir, Zavian. Once you have a functional career, the bonding inquiries will be immediate. I’ve already deflected two this quarter from houses hoping to lock terms early in case you manage to rehabilitate yourself.”
I would like to unlearn this information.
“You’ve been fielding bonding inquiries?”
“Preliminary ones. Morzara’s household sent a formal interest ledger a month ago. Quite aggressive, actually. Their daughter reportedly collected nine high-value souls last quarter, and enjoys recreational torment as a hobby.”
“Her hobby is recreational torment?”
“She also breeds hellhounds.”
“Oh, well. That changes everything.”
“Syndareth’s family reached out as well. Their terms were more conservative, but the political alignment would be—”
“Mother, I am genuinely begging you to stop talking.”
I’ve seen demon bonding ceremonies. I know what’s on the table.
Two families drafting a merger agreement over shared acquisition territories and projected offspring output.
The vows are contractual clauses. The reception is a networking event.
At one ceremony, the most romantic thing I’ve ever witnessed was a bonded pair agreeing to grant each other veto power over major household decisions, and the guests wept. Wept. From joy.
The thought of spending eternity in that kind of arrangement makes my skin crawl.
“None of this matters if I can’t complete the assignment,” I say. “One step at a time.”
“Of course. My point is that success doesn’t stop at a single contract. It opens a door to a very specific life. The same life your father built. The same structure. Same expectations. Same trajectory from now until the end of time. Is that what you want?”
The question should be easy. My mother is asking whether I want the life being handed to me. It’s straightforward. Logical. But the way she says want makes the word sound foreign.
“It’s what I am.” I grip the envelope tighter until the parchment bends under my fingers. “This is all I’ve ever been trained for. Everything I know fits inside these walls. There’s no version of me that exists anywhere else.”
The answer sounds practiced and flat. I’ve said it so many times it should feel true by now. It doesn’t.
She doesn’t respond. As usual, I get the uncomfortable sense she sees more than I’d ever willingly show her. She reaches for my collar and straightens it, giving me a nod.
“Good luck, Zavian.”
Then she turns and walks away, her footsteps fading into the corridor’s ambient suffering without a single backward glance.
I don’t know what just happened.