“I know.” Zara’s voice was thick with emotion. “I want that, too. So much it hurts. But we can’t keep the binding just to keep me here. You know that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you deserve to have your magic work. You deserve to be free of this curse.” Zara’s hand traced patterns on her back. “And I deserve to choose you freely. Without a binding forcing proximity. Not because magic compelled me.”
“I don’t want to wait for that,” Ramona said stubbornly.
“Neither do I.” Zara spun her one more time. Caught her. Held her.
The music began to fade. The neighbor closing their window, probably. Retreating back into their own life, their own story.
Ramona and Zara stood there on the fire escape, holding each other, swaying slightly even though the music was gone.
“I love you,” Ramona said. “And I’m going to hate every second you’re gone.”
“I love you, too.” Zara kissed her forehead. “And I’m going to spend every second in Hell finding a way back to you.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.” Zara’s arms tightened around her. “This isn’t goodbye forever.”
They stood there a while longer. The city quiet around them. The new moon rising invisible above.
Tomorrow night — tonight, if really was as late as Ramona thought it was — everything would change.
They’d cleanse the convergence point and break the curse and sever the binding.
Zara would go back to Hell.
And Ramona would have to figure out how to keep breathing without her.
“We should try to sleep,” Zara said finally. “We need to be sharp.”
“I don’t want to sleep.” Ramona’s grip tightened. “I don’t want to waste what time we have left.”
“Then we won’t sleep.” Zara kissed her. Soft, sweet, full of promise and grief. “We’ll stay right here until morning if that’s what you need.”
“I need you not to leave.”
“I know.” Zara’s voice broke. “I know. I’m so sorry.”
They stayed on the fire escape. Holding each other. Not talking. Not crying. Just being together for whatever time they had left.
The ritual would change everything.
But right now, for a few more quiet moments, they were still together.
Still bound.
Still whole.
And in those quiet moments, Ramona let herself pretend that maybe, somehow, there was a way to keep this. Even though she knew there wasn’t.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Even with theirflashlights cutting white beams through the darkness, even with the darkness of the new moon leaving the sky velvet black, the corruption of the convergence point was undeniable. The ground wasn’t just dark — it waswrong. It was black like oil slicks, like rot, like something that had never been meant to exist in the natural world. The grass was dead in spreading circles, crispy and brown, crumbling to ash when Ramona stepped on it. The air smelled like sulfur and copper and, underneath, something that made her instincts screamdangerandrunandthis is a place where things die.
Was this what Hell was like? Was Zara used to this?
