“Shall we begin?” the high priest asks as he joins Verrick behind the table.
“Get it done,” Zorakkov says.
Ignoring the stench of my groom, ignoring the way my skin crawls at the raspy sound of his voice, I hold my chin high and say with as much force as I can muster, “The sooner we begin, the sooner we willend.”
The Codex glitters with indigo sparks. My skin heats, nerves prickling. I sense a ripple in the magical barrier that’s got me locked on this altar.
My magic is waking up again.
The priest gestures for Zorakkov and me to face each other, and I wait for him to bring out the ritual grimoire and recite the old marriage rituals, just like the other priest did last time. But this one merely nods at Zorakkov, and the demon prince retrieves the athame from his robes.
The same athame I stabbed him with.
My fingers itch to wrap around that jeweled handle. To shove the blade in deep. To feel his blood coating my skin…
“Dismiss those vile thoughts from your vile mind,” Zorakkov hisses. “This will be over soon enough.”
With that, he grabs my hand and slices a deep gash, then makes a similar cut on his own, mashing our palms together. Our blood mingles, and just like before, the pain is an unbearable torment. His vile demon blood burns a path up my arm and across my chest, exploding through my heart like shrapnel.
The priest doesn’t ask me to speak the vows this time, to offer myself in servitude to this ghastly creature as if I ever had a choice.
Those words were already spoken.
All that’s left now is the final proclamation—the part left incomplete last time when I stabbed my groom and fled.
I try to wrench out of his hold now, but his grip is unrelenting, his voice in my head a dark warning.
You are mine, witch. You belong to me, magic and soul and blood. Together, we shall usher in a terror greater than any mankind has ever witnessed…
“By the bonds of blood and magic,” the priest says over the sound of my panicked breaths, my blood boiling hotter with every word, “with the blessing of the old gods and the new, so shall this oath be sealed. Zorakkov, demon lord of the underworld, and Westlyn Avery, witch and fae of Wintermoon, you are hereby forever bound.”
“Forever bound,” the mages in the pews call back, rising to their feet as hundreds of black candles flicker to life in their hands, their faces twisting with eerie shadows beneath their hoods.
With a final explosion of blinding agony in my chest, the intensity of that demonic fire inside me finally relents. It no longer burns, but I can still feel it—pure evil running through my veins, my own magic melding with it, forming some new, unholy alliance.
The ceremony is complete.
Zorakkov and I are forever bound.
But apparently he’s not done with me yet.
“Hold still, witch,” he growls, grabbing my other hand and jerking my arm close. The athame glints in the candlelight, and with a quickness I don’t see coming, he drags it down my arm. A gash opens up from elbow to wrist, blood spilling over my skin.
The high priest rushes forward with a small metal bowl, shoving it under my arm to collect every drop. I’m lightheaded and dizzy, barely able to stay upright as he hands the bowl to Zorakkov.
The demon kneels on the altar, dipping two fingers into the bowl. Then, using my blood as paint and the altar as his canvas, he draws a summoning symbol.
It glows red when it’s complete, and the demon prince tosses aside the bowl and presses his wounded palm to the symbol.
The mages’ candles snuff out at once, filling the cathedral with smoke as some horrifying new agony rips me apart inside, dropping me to my knees.
I thought the pain of the binding ceremony was unbearable, but this? Goddess, I’m not going to survive.
I lean forward, dry-heaving, the room spinning before my eyes.
“Just breathe, little moon. It will pass.” Verrick is suddenly crouched at my side, stroking my hair and back as a real father might. “You can feel it, can’t you? The power. The great rising. Soon, this will all be ours…” His comforting tone shifts into something greedy and hungry, his words trailing off as I try to find the source of this devastating pain inside me.
This power.
