Through the bond, she felt his reaction: surprise, then relief. Gratitude that she hadn’t run screaming.
“We should move.” But his hand found hers again, and he didn’t let go.
They were standing in a plaza.
Not fire and brimstone. Not torture chambers and screaming pits. A functioning city: buildings of black stone and red glass towering until they vanished into roiling clouds that looked ablaze from within. Streetlights burned with green flames. The pavement was smooth basalt, worn down by traffic.
And demons were everywhere.
Banners hung between buildings, crimson and gold, announcing something in Abyssal script that slithered away from comprehension. Vendors lined the streets, not selling souls, but ordinary things. Food sizzling on grills that burned without visible fuel. Trinkets that caught the light wrong. Services advertised in languages she was grateful she couldn’t understand.
It looked like a market. It felt like something wearing a market’s skin.
“Marchosias’s court celebration,” Victor said, following her gaze to the banners. “He hasn’t held formal court in five hundred years. The whole city’s turned out.”
A demon child ran past, chasing something that looked like a cat but moved on legs that blurred when she tried to count them. Its mother called after it in a language that made Ava’s ears ache, her voice carrying notes no human throat could produce.
Everywhere Ava looked, the wrongness accumulated. Shadows that fell in the wrong direction. Smiles that showed more than they should. Laughter that lasted a beat too long. Hell was pretending to be normal, and the pretense was almost worse than open horror would have been.
“It’s so…” She searched for the word. “Almost right. Like a photograph that’s been altered. You can’t quite say what’s wrong, but you know something is.”
“Hell is a place. People live here. Work here. Raise families.” Victor pulled her closer. “But don’t let the normalcy fool you.Everything here runs on hierarchy and ownership. And right now, you’re wearing proof of both.”
She looked at her hands. The golden chains pulsed visibly beneath her skin: veins of light that traced patterns up her arms, around her wrists, across her knuckles.
A passing demon stopped to stare. His eyes widened with something that might have been respect or hunger.
“A willing substitute.” His voice carried awe. “Haven’t seen one of those in centuries.”
“Move along,” Victor said.
The demon scurried away, but others were looking now. Pointing. Whispering. The chains made her visible in a way she hadn’t anticipated: a beacon announcing what she was to every demon in sight.
“They can all see it,” she said.
“Everyone can. In Hell, ownership is visible.” Victor pulled her closer. “You’re marked as Marchosias’s property. Contested property, which makes you valuable. And dangerous to approach.”
“Small comfort.”
“It’s the only kind Hell offers.”
He led her across the plaza. Demons glanced at her with varying expressions: curiosity, contempt, calculation. But none got too close. Victor’s presence helped, but the chains themselves seemed to create a bubble of space. Property of a Duke. Touch at your own risk.
At the plaza’s edge, he raised his hand. A taxi pulled up: black and angular, windows too dark to see through. The driver had curved horns and a face that was almost human, except for the third eye in his forehead.
“The Gilt and Thorn,” Victor said in Abyssal.
The driver’s third eye fixed on the golden chains visible on Ava’s skin. “Substitute. Rare cargo, sir. This’ll cost extra.”
“Name your price.”
The taxi woundthrough streets that shouldn’t have fit together: sharp turns that led to avenues they’d already passed, intersections where five roads met at angles that hurt to calculate. Ava watched through the dark windows as Pandemonium scrolled past.
She saw forges where massive hammers pounded glowing metal, sparks rising like inverse rain. Pleasure quarters with neon signs in scripts she couldn’t read. A park where trees grew upside down, their roots tangled in the burning sky. Two demons arguing on a corner, their gestures sharp and angry, while a third filmed them on something that looked almost like a phone.
Normal life. Abnormal everything else.
The taxi stopped in front of a building dripping with baroque gold decoration. THE GILT & THORN, spelled out in letters that seemed to shift when she wasn’t looking directly at them.
