“How violently?”
“You don’t want to know.” She pulled the key away, leaving a tingling sensation between Ava’s brows. “Stay close to me. Don’t speak to anyone unless I tell you to. Don’t accept gifts. Don’t make promises. Don’t agree to anything without thinking very carefully about the wording.”
“Understood.”
“And Ava?” Cassandra’s hand paused on the wall. “The bond won’t work there. Victor won’t be able to feel you, and you won’t be able to feel him. Don’t panic when it goes silent.”
Before Ava could respond, Cassandra pressed the key against the chalk doorway.
The lines flared blue-white, bright enough to make her shield her eyes.
The wall dissolved.
-—
The ground felt solid beneath Ava’s feet but looked transparent, glowing faintly like frosted glass lit from within. The sky above them wasn’t sky at all; it hung like a dome of crystal filled with colors she had no names for, shades that existed between the ones she knew, hues her mind refused to parse.
And the bond was gone.
She hadn’t realized how constant Victor’s presence had become until it vanished. The place where he lived in her consciousness was suddenly, terrifyingly empty. Like losing a limb. Like going deaf in one ear. The absence was so profound that she stumbled, and Cassandra caught her arm.
“Breathe. It’s temporary. He’s still there, just beyond reach.”
Ava nodded. Forced her feet to move. Kept walking.
The In-Between stretched before them in impossible geometry. Buildings floated at strange angles: Victorian mansions suspended upside-down, their chimneys pointing toward the ground. Brutalist concrete towers that folded into themselves like origami. Classical temples built from shimmering crystal that sang faintly when the wind touched them.
Between the structures, bridges made of shadow and light connected impossible distances. Some of them seemed to exist in multiple places at once, their paths forking and rejoining in ways that hurt to follow.
The air smelled like nothing. Like the absence of smell. Like the moment between breaths.
“Try not to stare,” Cassandra murmured.
They walked through streets that changed texture with every turn. Cobblestones that felt ancient beneath her heels. Then glass, perfectly smooth. Then packed dirt that shouldn’t have been able to support the weight of the crystal towers above.
Other beings moved through the In-Between, giving them a wide berth. Some looked almost human, save for limbs too long, or ears ending in points, or eyes that had no whites. Others were entirely alien: shapes that couldn’t decide what they wanted to be, shifting and reforming with every step.
None of them looked directly at Ava. But she felt them watching.
Finally, Cassandra stopped before a building fashioned from sandstone and brown brick, somehow homier than anything else in this impossible place. It looked like a university library from another century, the kind of building that housed knowledge and didn’t apologize for it. “This is his domain.”
The door opened before they could knock.
Samael stood in the threshold.
Ava understood immediately why both Heaven and Hell feared him. He was enormous, nearly ten feet tall, with the kind of beauty that made her want to look away. Perfect bone structure that held no warmth. Skin like burnished bronze. Dark eyes that held millennia of watching, waiting, collecting.
His presence filled the doorway like gravity, pulling at something in her center.
Not threatening. Just… immense. Like standing at the edge of an ocean and understanding, truly understanding, how small you were.
“Cassandra.” His voice was warm. Rich. Completely normal: a professor’s voice, a mentor’s voice, a friend’s voice. Somehow that was worse than if he’d thundered. “It’s been sixty years. You look radiant as ever.”
“Samael.” Cassandra’s tone was respectful but unafraid. “I’ve brought a petitioner.”
His gaze shifted to Ava. She felt him looking through her, not at her surface, but at the architecture beneath. Sifting throughthe layers of her mortal soul like someone browsing files in a cabinet.
“Ava Feng. Soul-bonded to the Morningstar. Marked by ancient debt. Desperate.” He smiled, and there was genuine warmth in it, which made it worse. “You must be in considerable trouble to treat with me.”
