Page 126 of Ashen Souls

I nodded. “He didn’t just admit it. He said it like it was justice. Like our world deserved to burn for what it did to him and to Avelia. It wasn’t theatrical. It wasn’t a threat meant to scare me into compliance. It was… conviction.”

Harper leaned forward. “So what did you tell him?”

“I told him he would never hear it from me. I swore that if he touched you, or anyone else in my world, I would stop my own heart just to keep him trapped in that cage forever. Then I pulled the ring off, severed the connection, and returned here.”

Harper traced the rim of her glass.

“Did you actually fall in love with him?”

The words landed dead-center.

I dropped my gaze to my hands, tracing the seam of my jeans.

“Aves?” Harper prompted softly.

I finally looked up. “You know, Harp… for a moment, I really thought I did.” My fingers tightened against my knees. “I know what he is. I know what he intended. I know I was being led. Pressed into it. But it didn’t feel fake to me. It felt like something in my body recognized him before my mind understood what that meant.”

I paused, searching for the right words. “I definitely felt something for him. Desire. Lust. Hunger.” I shook my head. “But not love.”

“And still it hurts,” I continued, the words raw in my throat. “Because it wasn’t just betrayal in theory. It was betrayal in my skin. In my breath. In the places I kept telling myself were mine.”

Harper set her glass down on the coffee table. She crossed the space between us and sat beside me, close enough that her shoulder pressed firmly against mine.

“I hate him,” she said quietly. “Just so we’re clear, I hate him.”

“I hate him too.”

“Do you.” It wasn’t a question.

I didn’t respond.

Harper rested her head briefly against mine. For a second, I wasn't a vessel or a pawn. I was only a girl sitting on a couch with her best friend.

Then she straightened, her eyes narrowing. “So a soulless psychopath is trying to use your feelings to tear open a gate into our world.”

Her mouth pressed into a hard line. “Then we’re not treating this like a breakup. We’re treating this like a war.”

I blinked, caught off guard by the sudden edge in her voice.

She nudged my shoulder with hers. “And you don’t get to fight it alone,” she added, softer now, but with just enough of her usual sarcasm. “Even if you’re determined to be tragically independent and morally complicated.”

I let out a breath.

“Show me the journal.”

The journal from Caldwell. After everything I’d just unloaded on her, its presence in my bag had almost slipped my mind.

I drew the leather-bound book out with care, as if moving too quickly might wake whatever was trapped in the ink. Harper cleared a space on the coffee table, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

“Now open it before I start praying, because I don’t even know which god covers demon marriages.”

I dropped onto the rug beside her. The twine gave way with a dry snap that made me flinch. Beneath the wrapping, the leather was almost black, warped and slick from centuries of handling.

I kept my hands hovering over the cover. The scent of Caldwell’s shop was baked into the binding.

Harper shifted forward. “Aveline.”

I exhaled and opened the cover.