“What kind of something?”
“A ritual. Old magic.” She held up the silver knife. “I need a drop of your blood on the doorframe. And I need you to let me speak the words.”
Her mother stared at the knife. At Victor, standing silent in the shadows. At her daughter, who had somehow become someone she didn’t entirely recognize.
“This is real,” she said slowly. “Everything that’s been happening. The contracts. The debt. It’s not just lawyers and money.”
“No. It’s not.”
“And him?”
“He’s…” Ava glanced at Victor, feeling his tension through the bond. His fear that her mother would reject him. Reject this.“He’s the reason I can fight back. He’s the reason we might actually win.”
Her mother was quiet. Then she held out her hand, palm up.
“Tell me what to do.”
The ritual was simple. Almost disappointingly so, for something meant to invoke ancient law.
Ava pricked her mother’s thumb first. A single drop of blood pressed to the doorframe of the back entrance, the same door her grandparents had propped open with milk crates thirty years ago, unloading their first delivery.
“Mei-Xing Feng, daughter of Chen Wei-Lin and Chen Shu-Fen,” she said, then spoke the ancient words Victor had transcribed. The syllables felt strange in her mouth, heavy with meaning she couldn’t quite grasp.
The blood seemed to sink into the wood. Not absorbed, consumed. Like the door was hungry for it.
Her mother’s eyes went wide. “It’s warm. The wood is warm.”
Ava pricked her father’s thumb next. He’d appeared in the doorway during the first invocation, had watched in silence, had simply offered his hand when she reached for him.
“Robert Feng, who tends the hearth with his wife.”
The ancient words again. Another drop of blood vanishing into wood that shouldn’t have been able to accept it.
The warmth was spreading now. Ava could feel it through the bond; not the kitchen’s heat, but something older. Something that had been sleeping in the walls for thirty years, waiting to be woken.
“Your turn,” Victor said softly. He hadn’t crossed the threshold. Was standing in the alley, careful not to touch anything.
Ava pricked her own thumb. The silver knife was warm against her skin, and the drop of blood that welled up seemedbrighter than it should be. The bond sang in her chest: Victor’s presence, his support, his desperate hope that this would work.
“Ava Feng, who guards what they built.”
The final words. Ancient syllables that tasted like fire and home and something she couldn’t name.
The blood touched the doorframe.
The world shifted.
Not visibly; the alley looked the same, the kitchen behind her unchanged. But something fundamental had moved. Like tumblers falling in a lock. Like a circuit finally completing.
“Is it done?” her mother whispered.
Victor reached toward the doorframe, then snatched his hand back with a hiss.
His palm was smoking.
“It’s done.” His voice was tight with pain. “The protection is in place.”
“Victor…” Ava stepped toward him, but he shook his head.
