“To a point. But Hell strips away defenses. It finds the cracks in your armor and pries them open. And Ava—” He turned to face her fully. “You’ve already lost something. Samael took a memory that was part of your foundation. Hell will sense that wound. It will use it.”
Ava considered this. The hollow space where her grandmother’s kitchen used to live. The missing piece that Hell would dig its fingers into and tear wider.
“Then I’ll have to be stronger than it expects.”
“That’s not how it works. You can’t fight Hell with willpower. You survive it by accepting what it shows you. By not breaking when it makes you watch yourself at your worst.”
“What does it show you?” she asked quietly. “When you go there?”
Victor was silent for a long moment. Old pain stirred in him—memories he kept locked away, things he’d seen and done across centuries of existence. She felt them shifting like sediment disturbed.
“Everyone I’ve failed,” he said finally. “Everyone I couldn’t save. Everyone who trusted me and paid the price.” His eyes met hers. “If we do this, you’ll see things about me. Things I’ve never told you. Things I hoped you’d never have to know.”
“Will it change how I feel about you?”
“I don’t know. That’s what terrifies me.”
Ava crossed the room to him. Took his face in her hands, a gesture that still felt new, still felt like something she was learning to do.
“I’ve already seen demons. Already lost a memory I can’t get back. Already bound my soul to someone I met three weeks ago.” She smiled, small and fierce. “Whatever Hell shows me, it’s going to have to work harder than that.”
“That’s not how it works,” Derek muttered. “That’s definitely not how it works.”
“What’s the alternative?” Ava released Victor and turned to face them both. “Wait here while the countdown runs out? Watch my parents lose everything: their restaurant, their lives, theirsouls, because I was too scared to try?”
“Twelve days,” Derek said quietly. “That’s what we have left.”
No one spoke for a moment. There wasn’t anything to say.
“We’d need to prepare,” Victor said finally. “Extensively. Protections, offerings, contingency plans. And we’d needsomething to present to Marchosias. Dukes don’t grant audiences for nothing.”
“What kind of offering?”
“Something valuable. Rare. Meaningful to him specifically.” Victor’s expression was troubled. “I know someone who might be able to help. But it would mean making another deal.”
“Everything in the demon world is a deal.” Ava met his eyes. “I’m starting to understand that.”
She felt him searching. Looking for something in her expression, her emotions, the texture of her thoughts. She made herself calm. Made herself present exactly what he expected to find: a woman processing loss, seeking information, trusting her partner.
Not a woman with ancient words burning in her mind. Not a woman already calculating the cost of a sacrifice she hadn’t told him about.
The bond made secrets difficult. But not impossible.
You just had to know what you were hiding. And hide it so deep that even you couldn’t find it unless you went looking.
“We’ll get through it,” Victor said. “Both of us.”
“Both of us,” she agreed.
The word sat heavy on her tongue.
But she smiled anyway. Reached for his hand. Let him feel her gratitude, her exhaustion, her carefully constructed grief.
Beneath it all, locked away where even the bond couldn’t reach, the ritual waited.
Nine generations forward. Nine generations back.
Someone else can take the binding. Willingly.
