“What happens to a human with a demon soul bond?”
“I don’t know.” His arm tightened around her. “It’s never happened before. You might change. Age differently. See things you couldn’t before.”
“Might?”
“No precedent, remember? We’re making this up as we go.”
She felt it through the bond: concern layered over protectiveness layered over possessiveness, ancient and patient in a way that should have frightened her but didn’t.
“The firm can’t have a soul-bonded human on staff. The liability alone…”
“Will make Malphas break out in hives, yes.”
“Other demons will come after me. Test me. Try to figure out what I am now.”
“Probably.”
“And we can never break up. Even if you leave towels on the floor or I chew too loud or…”
“Are you trying to talk yourself out of this?”
“No.” She shifted closer, pressing her palm flat against his transformed mark. The new symbols spiraled outward from his original sigil, interlocking patterns that seemed to shift when she wasn’t looking directly at them. “Just making sure we’re on the same page about how comprehensively fucked we are.”
“We crossed that line when you caught Lilith’s throw.”
“She hit herself.”
“Technically.”
They lay in silence. The bond hummed between them, not intrusive, but present. A door that would never close again.
“Victor?”
“Mm?”
“If I start growing horns or speaking in tongues…”
“I’ll teach you proper pronunciation.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
His arm tightened around her. “We’ll deal with it as it comes.”
“Together?”
“Well, we don’t have much choice now.”
She laughed, and felt his amusement echo through the bond: warm, genuine, tinged with his own barely-contained terror.
“Good,” she said.
And meant it.
They fell asleep tangled together, and Ava dreamed.
But not her dreams.
She walked streets that hadn’t existed in a thousand years. Rome spread before her, not the Rome of tourist postcards and crumbling ruins, but Rome alive and thriving and brutal. She felt the weight of a toga on shoulders broader than her own. Heard Latin debates echo through marble halls. Smelled smoke and incense and blood from the arena.
