Westoodattheheart of the world, watched by every living thing in it.
The platform—if you could call a mile-wide altar a platform—was polished to a finish so pure that when I looked down I could see every muscle in my legs tensed through the mercury fabric. I did not want to look down. I wanted to look at the women.
The other brothers—the unbonded—stood in a line, opposite the pillar of the Throne, as though each had been assigned a slot in the myth and was determined not to be late for it. Pride was first: white-bronze, expressionless, face so sharp it looked like it could have cut the air in front of him. He wore a suit that was not a suit, but a single piece of fabric, fitted to the skin, and his hands were folded over his chest as though to keep the world from seeing what they wanted to do.
Lust was next: rose-gold, skin almost glowing, smile so wide it felt like an invitation to disaster. He leaned on the banister of the raised platform, one hip cocked, and when he looked at Vael the expression was so openly curious it made my own skin itch.
Gluttony, in deep purple, was eating something—an apple, a fig, a heart; I could not tell. He chewed with his mouth open, eyes tracking the air in a way that suggested he was catalogingnot just what he wanted, but how soon he could have it. He did not seem to mind that he was the only one eating.
Sloth was last: slate blue, hands at his sides, head bowed, as though he had already started his own funeral. He looked tired, but not sleepy; he looked as though the act of standing there was a punishment, and that the only way to survive it was to finish as quickly as possible.
Vael spoke.
He did not raise his voice. He did not summon magic into the room, or call on the crowd to hush. He simply let the words come out, slow and sure, in a language older than any of us. The vowels were long. The consonants cut. I did not understand any of it, but I understood what it was to stand at a lectern and read a vow to a room that would, if you let it, unmake you.
He paused.
He looked at me.
He said, “Rachel Booker,” and the echo of it in the glass and the sky and the bones of my own body was so total that I felt every cell brace itself to keep from running away.
He said, “Do you accept the bond?”
I could not feel my legs. I could not feel my heart. All I could feel was the bond at my wrist, which had gone steady and cold, like the road outside.
I said, “I do.”
He turned to the Throne.
He repeated the vow in Infernal, and as he did, the seventh pillar—directly opposite the seat—began to light. It did not catch all at once, but in stages: first a sliver, then a slow spread, then a detonation of prismatic silver that shot up from the base and ran a vein of living color up into the black of the dome. It refracted every color at once: red, gold, blue, green, violet, colors I had never seen. The effect was a supernova with the sound turnedoff, but as the color reached the top, a single note—the sound of a held breath, finally exhaled—ran through the room.
I looked at the brothers.
Pride had gone white. His hands, folded, now gripped his arms so tight I could see the indentations.
Lust was not smiling anymore. He had leaned forward, elbows on the banister, mouth slightly open, eyes so wide it looked as though he had seen a ghost.
Gluttony finished his fruit and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, but his eyes—black as tar—never left the pillar.
Sloth had finally looked up. His face was still blank, but the blue had crept into the whites of his eyes.
I looked at Vael.
He was not looking at me. He was looking at the pillar. The shimmer at his cheekbone was prismatic now, alive with a color I could not name. For the first time, I saw what it meant for him to be seen. The whole of him—the self he had always had, the one he had never dared to show—was visible.
I saw him.
And the brothers saw him, too.
At the Throne, the Demon King.
He did not move. But a smile ran across his face—slow, deliberate, all-encompassing. The smile was not for me, not for Vael, but for the world.
Three pillars now lit.
Four remained.
The world was different.
