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I’m going to have a heart attack.
“Eden, stop,” he commands.
I can’t. I’m falling into the tunnel. The floor is going to open, the hooks are going to find me, the silence is going to be replaced by a thousand screaming voices—
“Eden.” He snaps his fingers in front of my face. When my eyes don't focus, he leans in, his silver face inches from mine, his voice dropping into a scandalous, casual drawl. “Shall I put my fingers inside you again? That seemed to perk you up last time.”
The oxygen-starved haze vanishes, replaced by a hot, indignant flare of rage that hits me like a slap to the face. I shove his hand away from me—hard—my face heating up until it feels like it’s going to melt off my skull.
“You are fucking disgusting!” I yell, my voice finally finding its volume.
He lets out a genuine bark of laughter. “Anger is much better than hyperventilating. Your color is returning, and you've stopped sounding like a broken bellows. Now, do the ritual.”
The anger sustains me for a second, a thin shield against the dark. But then I look down at the parchment in my hands, the way sweat’s already slicking my palms, turning the stained paper soft and damp at the edges.
“I can't,” I whisper, my momentary resolve crumbling. “If they find us... if they catch me...”
“I will not let them touch you while you are bound to me,” he growls, reaching out to grip my face in both of his hands, framing my jaw. “Because you are mine little summoner. And I do not share what belongs to me—in any way, shape, or form.”
I suck in a shaky, shallow breath. “I am not yours.”
“You are,” he snarls, his grip tightening just enough to let me feel the terrifying strength behind his fingers. “And if anyone so much as tries to steal a piece of that beautiful hair from your pretty little head, I will rip their arms off and make them eat their own dicks. Do you understand me?”
The sheer, absurd violence of the threat should make me laugh, but instead, a cold, silk-like clarity washes over me.
If I stay here, I’m a sitting duck. I’m a logistical complication waiting to be deleted by the next bureaucrat with a skin-suit and a quota. That pointless kit won’t do a damn thing, and I’ll be dead before the tracking number even updates regardless.
There’s no version of this story where I sit on my couch, eat popcorn, and wait for the problem to go away. The problem is in my blood. The problem is standing in my apartment, silver-skinned and swearing to protect me with a level of possessiveness that is both terrifying and the only thing keeping me upright.
My options are a slow death in my living room or a fast gamble in the place of eternal nightmares.
This is the only play left on the board.
Go to Hell, find the disgruntled middle-management demons, get the bind cut, and get the fuck back out. I’ll come back to Earth, find the nearest church, join every religion I can find, and spend the rest of my life praying for enough forgiveness to ensure I never feel the need to summon anything—not even a plumber—ever again.
I am a mortal, and way out of my depth. But I’m the one holding the paper.
Fuck. Okay. This is it.
“If you let them take me,” I whisper, my eyes locking onto his, “I will find a way to haunt you for eternity. I'll be the worst thing that ever happened to you.”
He grins, fangs glinting in the light. “I'm counting on it, little summoner.”
I take the knife from the kit and press the cold, metal edge against my forearm, right next to the now-healing evidence from the first ritual, but I don't hesitate this time.
The blade drags across my flesh, layers of skin parting beneath the sharp edge with a quiet, wet hiss. Hot, dark blood spatters down onto the sigil, soaking into the dry, crusted flakes from last time.
Swallowing against the lump in my throat, I try to find a voice that isn't made of glass as I train my eyes on the words scrawled across the parchment.
Come on, Eden. Don’t choke now. Read.
“By name and blood, I call you home. By ash and breath, by skin and bone. By the silence that screams and the love that remains, I break the locks and cut the chains. Through the shadowed path where the light goes blind, I reach for the soul you left behind. By the flames that burn and the heart that stays, I call you back from the end of days.”
I expect the walls to bleed or the floor to turn into liquid, but the room stays stubbornly, mockingly the same. Even as I teeter on the edge of a breakdown, Malachi’s hands stay steady. He’s already cleaning the fresh cut, wrapping a strip of gauze around my forearm.
“Good mortal,” he murmurs. “Keep going.”
A spark of that earlier rage flickers in my chest, but I keep my eyes glued to the scrawled ink.
