“You wouldn’t.” He released her hand, and his eyes held something that might have been compassion. “The knowledge is yours to keep. The memory is mine to treasure.” He smiled. “I hope it serves you well, Ava Feng. I truly do.”
Cassandra stood, her expression unreadable. “We should go.”
Ava’s hand found the jade at her throat as they left. Smooth and cool beneath her fingers. Her grandmother had given it to her for her eighth birthday. She knew this the way she knew her own name.
But she couldn’t remember what it felt like to receive it.
Cassandra led her back through the shifting streets, past beings that didn’t look and buildings that couldn’t exist, to the chalk doorway.
They stepped through into the firm’s sixty-first floor.
-—
The bond slammed back into her consciousness like a wave breaking: Victor’s presence flooding the empty space, and with it, his terror. He’d felt her vanish. Felt the connection go silent. Had no idea where she’d gone or if she was alive.
“How do you feel?” Cassandra asked.
“Fine. I got what I needed.” Ava checked her phone. 2:47 AM. “There’s a way to…”
“Ava.”
Victor stood twenty feet away, still in yesterday’s suit, looking like he hadn’t slept at all. His face was pale. His hands were shaking.
“Where were you?”
Cassandra stepped forward. “Victor, I can explain…”
“I wasn’t asking you.” His eyes stayed on Ava, burning with fear and fury and something that looked like grief. “The bond went silent. For over an hour, I couldn’t find you. I couldn’t feel you. I thought—” He stopped. “Where were you.”
“Getting answers you couldn’t give me.”
“Where?”
“The In-Between. To see Samael.”
Victor stopped moving. Stopped breathing, it seemed—the kind of pause that came before violence, or tears, or both.
“You went to see an exile.” He moved closer, each step deliberate. “An entity that Heaven and Hell both fear. Without telling me. Without warning me. While I lay there feeling you vanish from existence.”
“He had what I needed.”
“And he took what he was owed.” Victor’s voice cracked. “What did you give him, Ava? What memory?”
“My eighth birthday.” She touched her pendant. “My grandmother giving me this.”
“No.” The word came out broken. “No, that was… you told me about that. The dumplings. The flour in your hair. The way she?—”
“I don’t remember anymore.” Ava’s voice was steady, even as she felt the absence where the memory used to live. “I know the facts. I just don’t remember how it felt.”
Victor closed his eyes. Through the bond, she felt his anguish, grief so sharp it cut through the bond like a blade. Grief for something she’d lost that he could still remember her describing.
“I learned about Marchosias,” she said. “About the binding. There’s something called the Right of Substitution. There’s a way to save my parents…”
“I know about the Right of Substitution.” His voice was flat. Empty. “Someone has to take the binding willingly. Someone whose soul is worth as much as those already bound.”
“I could do it. I could take their place.”
“And damn yourself to a Duke of Hell forever.” He opened his eyes, and they were wet. “You paid a memory you can’t get back to learn that the only way to save your parents is to destroy yourself.”
