“My family includes you now.” Her eyes burned. “You don’t get to just—to just decide this by yourself. Not anymore.”
Victor’s composure finally broke. She watched it happen: the careful mask crumbling, the ancient control giving way to something rawer underneath.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he said quietly.
“Neither do I.” She took his injured hand, careful to avoid the brand. “But you don’t get to skip to the end. You don’t get to solve the problem by removing yourself from it.”
He stared at her. She felt him searching—for a way out, for a counter-argument, for any reason to keep holding onto his carefully constructed plan of self-destruction.
He didn’t find one.
“I need some air,” Ava said. “I’m going to the roof.”
“Ava…”
“I’m not leaving. I just need to think.” She grabbed her jacket from the couch. “Give me ten minutes. Then come find me.”
She was out the door before he could respond.
The rooftop was cold.
October in Manhattan, the wind cutting through her jacket like it wasn’t there. Ava didn’t care. She sat on the concrete ledge, feet dangling over sixty stories of nothing, and stared at the city lights until they blurred.
Victor’s presence hummed in the apartment below. Not following. Giving her space, like she’d asked. But there. Alwaysthere, now. A warmth at the edge of her consciousness that she’d only had for weeks but couldn’t imagine living without.
Was she being unfair?
He was trying to save her parents. Trying to fix an impossible situation. And she’d thrown it back in his face, called his sacrifice meaningless, accused him of not really wanting to be with her.
But the ease of it. The way he’d offered centuries like spare change. Like time with her was a small thing. Like sixty years of her mortal life barely registered against his six thousand years of existence.
Maybe Lilith was right. Maybe she was just a passing fascination: a human he’d claimed out of instinct, bonded to by accident. Maybe when she was gone, eighty years from now, he’d barely remember her name.
She thought about what Lilith had said at the retreat.He’s had mortal lovers before. They all end the same way.And later, in Victor’s office:She’ll die. Maybe in sixty years. Maybe tomorrow. And when she does, you’ll have lost everything for someone who won’t even remember you in a century.
Was that what she was? A sixty-year distraction in an immortal life?
The bond pulsed with Victor’s presence below. Even now, even angry and hurt, she could feel him. His worry. His regret. The way he kept reaching toward her through their connection and then pulling back, respecting the space she’d asked for.
That didn’t feel like a distraction. That felt like someone who cared.
But caring and staying were different things. Caring and choosing her over his own self-destructive instincts; that was something else entirely.
The city lights blurred. Ava blinked hard, refusing to let the tears fall. She wasn’t going to cry over this. She was going tothink. Figure out what she actually wanted, what she actually needed, and whether Victor was capable of giving it to her.
The problem was, she already knew what she wanted. She wanted him. Not the demon lord, not the senior partner, not the six-thousand-year-old immortal with more power than she could comprehend. She wanted Victor: the man who made terrible jokes and couldn’t operate his own kitchen appliances and looked at her like she’d given him something he’d forgotten he was allowed to want.
She just needed to know he wanted her back. Really wanted her. Not as an obligation or a duty or a problem to be solved.
The door to the roof opened.
Victor stood in the doorway, backlit by the stairwell. He didn’t approach. Just waited.
“I said ten minutes,” she said.
“It’s been fifteen. I counted.” He stepped onto the roof, but stayed near the door. “I wasn’t sure if you still wanted space.”
“I don’t know what I want.” She pulled her jacket tighter. “I know what I don’t want. I don’t want you to throw yourself away. But I also don’t want to be the reason you stay if you don’t really…”
