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“Inside. Now,” I command, ushering her into the sweltering car with a hand to her lower back.
It’s packed. A tin of sardines, if the sardines were lower-level laborers and imps with yellowed, cataract-filmed eyes and skin the texture of boiled leather. They press in from all sides in a sea of grey and mottled brown. Their gazes skitter over straight to the woman beside me. To these bottom-feeders, she doesn't just look out of place; she smells like a bakery in the middle of a famine.
Eden is vibrating, her breath coming in those short, pathetic hitches that usually precede a total biological meltdown. Her wide eyes are fixed on a particularly disheveled scavenger in the corner who’s sharpening a yellowed fang with a rusted metal file.
“Rhaziel,” I hiss, white-knuckling the iron pole for support as the carriage lurches forward. “Shield her. Their nostrils are twitching.”
He makes a face like he’s about to swallow a cup of bile but steps in nonetheless, his height creating a barrier between Eden and the rest of the scum. He unfurls his wings, arching them until they press against the walls, sealing us into a claustrophobic little sanctuary of old feathers and Eden’s sweet terror.
The tips of his tattered feathers brush her sleeve, and a low, involuntary growl catches in my throat. I tell myself it's logistics—guarding the mortal—but my fingers itch to pluck him bald every time the carriage jolts her against his chest.
“Don’t look at them, Eden,” I murmur, grabbing her by the chin and turning her face into my chest. “Breathe through your mouth. And for the love of all things sinful, stop smelling so fucking delicious.”
“I can't help it!” She whispers, though she quickly obeys, fingers catching the fabric of my shirt near my waist. They stay there for the entire ride, and I find myself adjusting my stance, bracing my legs against the lurching car to ensure she isn't crushed by the sweating, grey mass of shadows.
The tram screams as it banks hard into the Silken District, and the atmosphere shifts instantly, the heavy smog of the Hub thins, replaced by a scent of expensive ozone and something cloyingly sweet—the olfactory equivalent of rotting lilies dipped in saccharine.
Here, the architecture stops being utilitarian and starts being arrogant. The buildings are bone-white structures draped in shimmering, iridescent webs that pulse with a faint, nauseating pink light. It’s still crowded, still inherently vile, but it’s a more refined, expensive brand of depravity.
Torture with a hint of decorum—the kind of place where you’ll get your soul flayed, but they offer you a sparkling water first.
Rhaziel guides us toward a towering office block that looks like a stack of bleached vertebrae. We bypass the lift and the biometric scanners that would have turned Eden into a pile of ash—and take the stairs. Eight flights that smell of lemon oil and ancient, binding contracts. By the time we reach the top, Eden’s wheezing, sweat dripping down the side of her temple, tracking a clean line through the soot.
Serena’s office is a monument to a nervous breakdown. Filing cabinets have vomited open, their contents spilling out in a fat tide of parchment that carpets the floor. Serena herself is a frazzled silhouette amidst the mess—a high-strung, multi-tasking disaster who’s once-sleek hair is now a wild knotted nest. And there’s a bundle in her arms—a small, squirming thing with parchment-thin skin and predatory pink eyes.
Saints below. Did she… breed?
Who in the various levels of Hell would be suicidal enough to willingly procreate with Serena?
“Rhaziel,” I mutter under my breath, eyes fixed on the writhing, pink-eyed parasite. “Tell me that is a very small, very ugly security demon.”
“Watch your mouth, or I’ll bind your tongue to your soft palate for a decade.” Serena growls, and before I can offer a greeting—or a well-deserved insult—she’s across the room in a blur, shoving the squirming, grotesque bundle into my arms.
“For that comment, you can hold him,” she snaps, her bloodshot eyes darting toward a stack of ledgers. “He’s teething and he just bit the head off his rattle. If he starts crying again, I’m going to throw myself into the Abyss. I mean it. I’ve already scouted a particularly deep crevice. Now what the fuck do you want?”
I stand there, frozen, holding the lukewarm bag of jelly with teeth, then I look at Serena’s manic expression, then to Rhaziel—who’s standing in the doorway with the practiced, awkward distance of a man who’s witnessed many such breakdowns.
Finally, I look down to where my little summoner’s still clutching my waist, staring at the infant like it might blow up at any moment.
“Well, I didn't come here to be a nanny, Serena,” I drawl, trying to maintain some semblance of decorum while the small creature begins to gnaw experimentally on my thumb. “We have a problem. A soul-tethered, blood-bound, 'I-was-summoned-by-a-discount-kit' kind of problem.”
“I wasn’t summoning you,” Eden reminds me under her breath as I lift my arm, bringing her into Serena's line of sight.
Serena pauses, her quill hovering mid-stroke over a scroll, a single drop of ink trembling on the tip before splashing onto a ledger. Her head turns slowly, the gold dagger-pins in her hair catching the iridescent, sickly-pink light of the District through the window. Her gaze finally lands on Eden, dragging slowly over the Victorian lace, the soot-stained skin, and the general aura of a completely unplanned catastrophe.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” she whispers, a slow, terrifying grin spreading across her face as she snaps her fingers. “Rhaziel, shut the door. Lock it. If a single clerk tries to enter with a requisition form, kill them. I’ll sign the paperwork for their execution later.”
Rhaziel slams the door shut, the locks clicking into place.
Bone and ink pots clatter against the grimy tile as she empties the two chairs opposite her desk of all their clutter and gestures for us both to sit. As we do, her ink-stained fingers move through the air above her desk, tracing invisible lines that seem to pull at the very fabric of the room.
A humming pressure builds behind my eyes, pulsing like a drum against the inside of my skull. Then, there’s a loud bang, the stink of burnt wiring crackling in my nose. Between Eden and myself, the air shimmers and curdles, turning thick as honey. Strands of light, previously hidden in the folds of our reality, weep into view, weaving themselves into a terrifying tapestry before our eyes.
A thread emerges from Eden’s chest—a sickly, deep red cord, pulsing with ugly, textured grey bumps like a diseased vein. Then a darker one erupts from mine: an obsidian cable, knotted like a hangman’s rope and slick with black oil. Both meet in the middle, touching tentatively for a moment before seizing with a spark of crimson light and twisting around one another in a brutal, intricate braid.
“Yep. Definitely a blood-bind,” Serena says, the glare illuminating her face as she leans over the desk. She peers into the knot, clacking a long, sharp nail against the wood. “How did you manage such a thing?”
Hesitantly, Eden relays every agonizing step of the ritual—from the cheap salt and the yellowed parchment to the sheer, desperate stupidity of her grief.
