I belong in the fight.
Trying to cage me will only force me into danger on my own terms.
“There’s a way,” Hades says quietly from across the room. The necromancer’s voice cuts through the tension. “A binding that would tether her control to yours, Crave. A Blood Oath.”
Crave’s eyes never leave mine. “The Heart Bind isn’t enough?”
“The Heart Bind shares emotion and sensation.” Hades moves closer, and I see the seriousness in his expression. “A Blood Oath shares will itself. If Sloane begins to lose control, you could pull her back through the bond. Anchor her. But…” He pauses, and the weight of his next words is palpable. “It goes both ways. If one of you dies, the other will feel every fading heartbeat and every ounce of pain until the bond releases. And the Oath cannot be broken.Ever. You’d be bound for as long as you both exist.”
“I’ll do it,” I say immediately.
“Sloane…” Crave starts.
“I’ll do it,” I repeat, stronger this time. “Whatever it takes. I’m not sitting on the sidelines, Crave. I’m fighting. The only question is whether you trust me enough to fight beside me.”
The silence stretches. Emotions flicker across his face—fear, resolve, calculation—each one brushing against the connection between us, sharp and undeniable. His instinct to shield me clashes hard with the trust anchoring us together, the part of him that knows I’m not something to be protected from the fight but someone who can stand in it.
Finally, he nods.
A slow, decisive, irrevocable movement, the acceptance of a war he knows will claim him, whether in body or soul.
“We do this together. No more arguments. No more trying to protect each other by standing in the way. We’re stronger united…tell meyou don’t feel that?”
He cups my face, thumb brushing the blood beneath my nose, tender where everything else about him is sharp. “I feel it… I just—”
“Stop trying to protect me, Crave, and recognize that weonlyget through this if we unite.”
He grumbles under his breath, his eyes fierce on mine. “We survive together… or we burn together.”
“But it istogether,”I whisper, and the word doesn’t sound spoken so much as claimed. A vow that vibrates in the air, in the floor, in the very marrow of my bones.
Crave gives a single nod, and Hades moves forward from the shadows as though he was waiting for this moment, this exact moment, since the day the universe split into light and dark. He retrieves an ancient ceremonial bowl forged from obsidian so black it seems to absorb the world around it. Runes coil along its surface, pulsing in a rhythm that stings my eyes, too old and powerful to be viewed by something mortal… or newly made.
The club gathers around us, forming a loose circle. No one speaks, no one dares. The silence becomes sacred and heavy, a temple built out of breath and anticipation.
“Your blood,” Hades intones, offering a ceremonial blade etched with symbols that twitch at the corner of my vision, as though alive.
I take it without hesitation. The metal is colder than ice, older than grief. I drag it across my wrist in one smooth motion. Blood wells fast, glowing with the power thrumming through me, bright enough to cast moving shadows across the floor. It drips into the bowl, not with a splash, but with a resonant boom, far-off thunder that shakes the air.
Crave takes the blade next. His cut is precise, deliberate. His blood flows dark and viscous, carrying the depth of centuries, the weight of a thousand sins, and a thousand more regrets. When it hits the bowl, it doesn’t simply mix with mine. It recognizes mine, and then fuses with it. The two bloods swirl together in unnatural patterns, spirals, constellations, andsigils, forming geometry that looks like language spoken before language existed.
Light erupts upward in soft pulses, growing brighter with every beat of our hearts.
“Speak the words,” Hades instructs, holding out a parchment that looks carved from the skin of some ancient beast.
Our eyes lock.
Our wrists press together, sealing the shared wound, his blood sliding into me, mine into him. The Heart Bind reacts instantly, preparing for the shift that’s about to reshape us from the inside out.
We speak the oath in perfect unison, our voices merging into one harmonic note that vibrates the walls.
“Blood to blood, will to will, life to life eternal.
What I am becomes yours.
What you are becomes mine.
In death, we share the darkness.
