“He didn’t want anyone like me. Always so fond of you cattle.” Her voice turned bitter, old wounds bleeding fresh. “Four centuries of working beside him. Four centuries of perfectprofessional distance, waiting for him to notice I was right there. That I understood him in ways no human ever could.”
She turned to face Ava, and something raw showed in her expression. Grief, ancient and terrible.
“And then you. You, with your student loans and your jade pendant and your mortal soul. Within three weeks, he’s soft. Vulnerable. Looking at you like you’ve given him something he forgot he wanted.”
“You’re jealous.”
“I’m in love with him.” Lilith’s voice cracked—just for a moment—before hardening again. “I’ve been in love with him for an eternity. I waited. Positioned myself. Made myself invaluable to him, indispensable to the firm. Turned down offers from other practices, other realms, because I knew, Iknew, that eventually he’d see me. Really see me. That one day he’d understand we belong together.”
“You told me you weren’t.” Ava met Lilith’s eyes, her voice level. “On the sixty-sixth floor. You said you wanted alliance, position, legitimacy. ‘Not love,’ you said. ‘I’m not fool enough to want that.’”
Lilith went still. For a moment, her beautiful mask flickered, something raw and wounded showing through before she could slam it back into place.
“I lied.” The admission cost her something visible. “To you. To myself. For centuries, I told myself it was ambition. That I wanted his power, his connections, his standing. That love was a weakness I was too smart to fall into.”
Her laugh was bitter, broken.
“But you can’t spend four hundred years orbiting someone without falling. You can’t watch them from across every boardroom, every ballroom, every battlefield, and not eventually realize that what you feel isn’t strategy. It’s need.” She turned away, unable to meet Ava’s eyes. “So yes, I lied. I’ve been lying toeveryone, including myself, because admitting the truth would mean admitting I’ve wasted centuries on someone who was never going to love me back.”
Ava said nothing. There was nothing to say.
“And then you walked in.” Lilith’s shoulders drew up, her whole body going rigid. “A human. A first-year associate with no power, no standing, nothing that could possibly matter to someone like him. And within three weeks, he’s claimed you. Soul-bonded you. Given you what I’ve been waiting centuries for.”
“Do you want to know what the soothsayers told me?” Her expression hardened again, grief buried under ice. “Fifteen years ago, they said a human child in Queens would bind to Victor. That it was inevitable. Fated. That if you ever crossed paths, the bond would form whether I liked it or not.”
Ava’s stomach churned. “So you trapped my parents to stop me from meeting him.”
“No. You don’t understand prophecy.” Lilith’s smile was poisonous. “I couldn’t stop it. Fate doesn’t work that way. The universe bends to make prophecies come true. If I’d kept you away from him, you’d have met by chance: a coffee shop, a subway platform, a random collision on a crowded street. Fate would have found a way.”
Her eyes glittered in the light from two rivers.
“But what I could control waswhenandhowyou met. And what would be waiting when you did.”
“The scholarship to Columbia? I made sure you’d study law, not something useless. Career counseling toward supernatural practices? I ensured you’d end up in our world. Your professor who recommended you to the firm? I’d been cultivating that relationship for three years. Victor reviewing your application personally? Me, suggesting he might find someone ‘interesting’ in the pile.”
“You manipulated my entire career.”
“I brought you to him poisoned.” Lilith’s voice turned cold and precise. “With a trap already choking your family. With fifteen years of inescapable debt. With contracts I’d made bulletproof while you were still in high school.”
She paused, letting the words sink in.
“I couldn’t prevent the bond, but I could make sure that when it formed, it would tear you both apart. Either he saves you and loses everything he’s built here, or he maintains his position and watches you break. Either way, you’ll be destroyed. Either way, he’ll learn that human love isn’t worth the cost.”
Her smile widened, ancient and terrible.
“Either way, I get him back.”
“You miscalculated.”
“Did I?” Lilith pulled out her phone and showed Ava a countdown timer, the numbers ticking down in crimson. “Fifteen days until your parents’ souls are forfeit. How’s your research going, by the way?”
She gestured toward the door with one elegant hand.
“Run along.”
-—
Ava left Lilith’s office clutching the folder like a lifeline.
