I reach into my jacket, pull out one of the seven letters. The first one. Gold ink, coin seal, Croesus’s elegant script. I slide it across the table.
Vera picks it up, and I watch her face as she reads. She goes still. But her hands tighten on the paper, just slightly, and I see the flicker of something in her eyes that might be fear or might be recognition. She reads it twice, then, carefully folds it and slides it back across the table.
“All seven?” she asks quietly.
“All seven. Arrived the same morning, yesterday.”
Vera is silent for a long moment, turning her coffee cup in slow circles on the table. The ceramic makes a skidding sound with each rotation. The fluorescent lights overhead flicker and buzz, casting a sickly yellow light across the booth. Outside, traffic moves past the grimy windows, normal people going to normal places, living normal lives.
Finally, Vera speaks. “Your grandmother’s debt.”
“You knew about it.”
“Everyone knew about it.” She looks up, meets my eyes. “Meredith made deals with all seven houses over the course of twenty years. Served two years, one with Gold, one with Fury, before she died. We all knew the debt would pass to you, eventually.”
The anger rises hot and sharp in my throat. I force it down, keeping my voice level. “And no one thought to warn me?”
“Would you have believed us?” Vera’s tone isn’t unkind. Just honest. “You were busy keeping your head down, staying off their radar, building your life. What were we supposed to say? ‘Hey, by the way, your grandmother sold you to seven angels, and you’ll find out when she dies’?”
She’s right. I would have thought they were paranoid. Would have dismissed it as the horror story sin eaters tell each other to justify their isolation. Would have kept doing exactly what I was doing—breaking contracts, making rent, protecting Luna —right until the moment those letters appeared on my kitchen table.
“Why all seven?” I ask instead. “Why not just one contract? One House?”
Vera is quiet for a long moment. She picks up her coffee, takes another sip, sets it down with hands that shake just a little more than before.
“I don’t know,” she says finally. “Meredith never told me everything. She was...secretive at the end. Paranoid, maybe. Kept her cards close.” Vera’s eyes are dark, troubled. “But I know she didn’t make those deals lightly. Your grandmother always had a reason for everything.”
“Did she say anything? Leave any clues?”
“Not to me.” Vera pauses, then reaches into her coat. I tense instinctively, but she just pulls out a leather-bound journal. Old, worn, the cover cracked with age. She sets it on the table between us with a soft thud. “But she left this with me before shedied. She made me promise to give it to you if the houses ever came calling.”
My hands shake when I reach for it. The journal is heavy, heavier than it should be. The leather is warm under my fingers, almost alive. There’s a faint smell coming from it —old paper, ink, the scent of my grandmother’s kitchen.
“She knew,” I whisper. “She knew they’d come for me.”
“She knew a lot of things.” Vera’s expression is sad, tired. The look of someone who’s seen too much and survived, anyway. “This was important to her. She made me swear I’d get it to you.” She pauses. “I haven’t read it. Wasn’t my place. But whatever’s in there... She wanted you to have it.”
“Vera.” I look up and meet her tired eyes. “What am I walking into?”
She goes quiet again, gathering her thoughts, maybe. “I don’t know. But I know it’s bigger than just serving time in the houses. Bigger than inherited debts or angel contracts.” She pauses. “Meredith made those deals for a reason. She was investigating them from the inside.”
“Do you think...do you think they killed her for it?”
“Maybe.” Vera doesn’t sugarcoat it. “Or maybe they need a sin eater alive and beholden to them for something. Why else send seven letters at once? Why coordinate a simultaneous summons from all seven houses?”
She’s right. The letters are a summons, not a death sentence. They want me alive. They want me in the Houses.
The question is: why?
“One more thing,” Vera says. She’s looking at me with an expression I can’t quite read. Concern, maybe? Or pity. “Be careful who you trust in the houses. The angels play games. They lie. They manipulate. And they’ve had thousands of years to perfect it.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.” Her voice is sharp now. “You know how to break contracts. You know how to survive purges. But you don’t know what it’s like to live with them. To be in their world, under their power, for months at a time. It changes you, Raven. Even the strongest sin eaters come back different. If they come back at all.”
The warning settles cold in my chest.
“I don’t have a choice,” I admit. “If I don’t go, they’ll go after Luna.”
