Dimitri unfolds from the couch with the languid ease of something that has nowhere to be and all the time in the world to get there. "After you, angel."
"Don't call me that."
Dimitri's grin doesn't waver. Knox opens the door.
They walk south toward the east side, and Knox can already feel himself flagging and it’s not even ten in the morning.
It starts a few blocks from the apartment. His stride shortens, just slightly, a half-step less than the night before. The mace at his hip feels heavier. There's a tremor in his left hand that comes and goes, barely perceptible. The angelic rejection is a constant low-grade hum beneath his skin now, a grinding friction that saps his stamina and thins his reflexes, and he knows it's going to get worse. He's known since last night, lying in his bed and feeling his blood war against the bond, that this is not a static condition. It is a progression. And if they don't break the bond soon, he doesn't know where it ends.
By the time they're halfway there, he's winded. Not gasping, not doubled over, but breathing harder than the pace warrants, a slight hitch at the top of each inhale that he can't smooth out no matter how carefully he controls his breath. The distance is nothing. He's walked ten times this far on a routine patrol without noticing. But the rejection is eating his reserves from the inside, and his body is spending so much energy fighting the bond that there's less and less left for everything else, and he can feel the deficit widening with every block.
Dimitri glances at him. Those red eyes track the slight unevenness of Knox's breathing, the thinning of his stride, the way he has to focus on keeping his posture straight. Knox waits for the comment. The barb. The scathing observation about the angel who can't walk ten blocks without needing a rest.
Dimitri says nothing. He slows his pace, just slightly, just enough that Knox doesn't have to stretch to match his longer legs, and looks away.
Knox doesn't mention it. There's nothing to be done about it except break the bond, and that's what they're on their way to do.
The apothecary is open. The wards are dormant, the door unlocked, and a hand-lettered sign in the window has been flipped to OPEN. Dimitri pushes through without hesitating, a bell chiming overhead, and Knox follows.
The shop is quaint. Comfortable. Wooden shelves crammed with jars and bottles and bundles of dried herbs line the walls. The air smells of lavender and old paper and something faintly metallic underneath. A large tabby cat is asleep on the counter. Crystals hang in the window, casting fractured rainbows across the floorboards. It looks as though someone's grandmother runs it, and Knox finds the normalcy of it reassuring in a way he recognizes as probably naive.
The witch emerges from a back room. She's older, sixty maybe, with brown hair pulled into a loose bun and sharp brown eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. She wears a long cardigan over a simple dress, her hands stained with ink and chalk dust. She looks as though she could be shelving books at a library.
"Good morning," she says pleasantly. "What can I help you with?"
"We need a soulbind undone," Dimitri says.
Something shifts behind the witch's eyes, quick and calculating, there and gone. Knox catches it. He files it away butdoesn't act on it, because he doesn't know what it means yet and he has spent a long career learning not to draw weapons on a feeling.
"A soulbind," she repeats carefully. "That's not a simple request."
"I'm aware."
"Soulbinds are meant to be undone by the original caster. The witch who wove it would have the clearest path to—"
"We don't know where our witch is," Dimitri interrupts. "And regardless, he was barely capable the first time. He was a novice who didn't know what he was casting. If we wait for him to undo it, we'll be waiting until one of us is dead."
The witch looks from Dimitri to Knox. Her gaze lingers on Knox, on the coat, the rings, the mace, and something in her expression softens. It's a warm look, almost maternal, the kind of look someone gives a person they want to help, and Knox lets himself believe it because he is tired and hurting and he wants this to be over.
"I see," she says quietly. She's silent for a long moment, then she nods. "I can try. Follow me."
She leads them through a curtained doorway into the back room. It's larger than the shop front and considerably less charming: bare concrete floor, whitewashed walls, shelves of materials that belong in a workshop rather than a home. A workbench cluttered with tools and texts. A single bare bulb overhead.
The witch pulls a stick of chalk from her cardigan pocket and kneels on the concrete. She draws quickly and precisely. A circle first, six feet in diameter, and then a series of runes around its perimeter. Knox doesn't recognize them. They're not demonic, which is reassuring, but they’re also not of any tradition he's encountered in decades of study. They look old. Older than the city. The unease from before surfaces again, pressing against theinside of his ribs, but the thought still doesn't form, not fully, because the witch straightens up and smiles at them and says:
"The demon will need to stand inside the circle. For the spell to take hold."
Knox shifts beside Dimitri. "Why not both of us?"
The witch turns to him. "I only know how to unbind a demon from a soulbond," she says gently. "The demonic tether is the active element. If I remove the hook from him, your soul should be released as well. The circle is designed specifically for this, to expunge a demon from an unwilling soul. It won't harm you. You'll be protected."
Knox looks at the circle. He looks at the runes. He doesn't recognize them, and that bothers him, because he has studied every major runic tradition in the Cathedral's archives and these belong to none of them.
But Dimitri is already moving, and the bond is aching in Knox's chest, and the angelic rejection is grinding through his blood, and he wants this to be over.
Dimitri steps into the circle.
The chalk lines flare to life, a low steady glow seeping up from the runes. The witch raises her hands and begins to chant, her voice low and rhythmic, the words unfamiliar, and the air inside the circle starts to hum.
