Page 116 of The Devil's Canvas

The scroll burns hotter in my grip, the blood ink blistering the air around it.

“I refuse the contract!” I shout to Hell itself.

“What are you doing?” Ophelia’s voice cuts through the haze, panicked, rising. She grabs my arm, eyes wide. “What’s happening?”

I can’t answer. The ground splits, heat surges beneath our feet, but it’s not fire—it’s pressure. Old magic. A summons that no one made, but someone answered.

From the scorched line in the earth, shadows begin to rise. The Infernal Council has come. And the world holds its breath.

Ophelia’s eyes are wide, terrified as she repeats herself. “What are you doing? What’s happening?”

I don’t answer yet. Not until the Council speaks, voices fused into one that echoes in the marrow of my bones. “You reject the contract?”

I stare at the scroll in my hand—Bella’s name carved into it like it was always meant to be there. My fist tightens around it until the paper begins to burn.

“I know the rules,” I say, lifting my head.But I can take her place.”

“No,” Ophelia breathes. “No, don’t do this. Don’t you dare—”

“I have to.” I look at her like it’s the last time I’ll ever get to. I need to memorize her while I still have the chance.

“Julian, please,” she chokes, stumbling forward. “Don’t go. We can find another way. There has to be something—”

“There isn’t.” My voice is raw now, but I keep it steady. “Deals have no loopholes. You know that.”

The Council speaks, voices like stone grinding against fate. “Are you certain?”

I don’t look away from her. Not even for them. “I am.”

Cassius staggers back like he’s seen death itself. Melanie doesn’t move. Her expression is unreadable.

I glance at them only once. “You lose.”

The air splits with a thundercrack as infernal arms—burning, skeletal, merciless—erupt from the earth. They wrap around me, binding tight, dragging me backward.

Ophelia screams. “Julian!”

She runs forward, reaching for me. But she can’t touch me—her hands pass through ash and flame. I’m already being pulled under.

“Don’t take him,” she sobs. “Take me. Please—take me instead—”

I shake my head. “No. You survived for too long to be taken now.”

“I love you,” she cries.

“Across lifetimes. Through every version of you. In every form of me,” I say, and I let it be the last thing she hears.

The heat swallows the light. The sky fractures above me, and the last thing I hear isn’t the Council, or the tearing earth. It’s her voice—shaking, shattering, screaming my name into the dark.

But I’m gone.

And this time, I don’t get to come back.

Chapter Twenty

Ophelia

Idon’tevenrealizeI’mshaking until I round on Rhys again.

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