Ava had no answer.
“There has to be another way,” she said finally.
“Maybe.” Victor closed the distance between them, pulling her into his arms with desperate strength. His fear cycled into determination, into something that felt like a vow. “But promise me: no more secrets. We do this together or not at all.”
“Side by side,” she echoed.
The words tasted like ash.
Because even as she held him, Ava felt the knowledge burning in her mind. The ritual. The words. The way out that Victor would never let her take.
Not if he knew what she was planning.
-—
In his impossible library, Samael lifted a glass jar from his desk.
Inside it, something shimmered, not light exactly, but the memory of light. A young girl laughing. Flour on her small hands. An old woman’s voice, patient and warm: “Like this, Bao Bei. Pinch it closed so the goodness stays inside.”
Small fingers touching cool jade for the first time. “So you’ll always know you’re loved.”
He smiled, not cruelly, but with the satisfaction of a collector who’d acquired something rare.
“Beautiful,” he murmured.
He placed the jar on a shelf with countless others, each one holding someone’s most precious moment.
Then he returned to his books, and waited for the next petitioner to come seeking what only he could provide.
CHAPTER 16
Ava woke to sunlight and silence.
The penthouse bedroom was warm, golden light streaming through floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over a Manhattan she barely recognized from this height. The sheets were silk. The pillows were too soft. Everything smelled like Victor: cedar and something darker, older, like embers that had been burning for centuries.
She had no memory of getting here.
The last thing she remembered was the firm’s sixty-first floor. Victor’s face, pale and furious. The bond slamming back into her consciousness after the terrible silence of the In-Between. And then… nothing. A gap where the rest of the night should be.
“You’re awake.”
Victor stood in the doorway holding two mugs of coffee, still in yesterday’s suit. He hadn’t slept—she could feel that through the bond now, the ragged edges of his exhaustion, the way he’d spent the night watching her breathe.
“What happened?” The words came out scraped thin, her throat dry. “After we talked. I don’t remember.”
“The In-Between takes a toll on mortals. You collapsed in the elevator.” He crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed, pressing a mug into her hands. The ceramic was warm. Grounding. “I brought you here. You’ve been asleep for almost eight hours.”
Eight hours. Gone.
Ava took a sip of coffee. Perfect, as always. She should feel something about that: comfort, maybe, or gratitude. Instead there was just the taste. Just the warmth.
She reached for her grandmother’s jade without thinking.
The stone was there. Smooth and cool against her fingers, exactly where it had always been. But the gesture felt wrong. Like reaching for a light switch in a room you’ve lived in for years and finding the wall blank. The motion was there. The meaning was gone.
“What was it?” she asked quietly. “The memory I traded. I know you said my eighth birthday, but…”
Victor’s expression fractured, just for a moment. His grief pressed against her—not for himself, but for her. For something she’d lost that she couldn’t even mourn.
