Page 23 of Unholy Bond
Aziz shot him a glare, then focused on me. “What do you need us to do?”
I stood, letting the sheet drop, and extended my left hand. The air shivered. Where my fingers pointed, black fractures appeared.
The first fracture opened on the barracks: rows of demons in lacquered armor, marching and drilling with mechanical precision. I nodded at Aziz. “That’s yours. Get in, make contact with the old-guard Titans. Turn them, if you can.”
The second showed a vast office, cubicles stretching to infinity, each one staffed by a half-dead soul or a demon in a suit. Ian’s world, naturally. “You work the bureaucracy. Disrupt, subvert, and find out who’s been binding the Void on the back end. Somebody has to be writing the code.”
The third fracture was a bar or a club, crammed with lesser demons and hangers-on. Levi’s natural habitat. “You find the allies. Make them love us, or at least hate Lucifer more than they fear him.”
The men watched the visions, hunger lighting up their eyes. The Void trembled with anticipation, and I realized it had alreadybegun to merge with me, the separation between us a fiction I was barely maintaining for everyone’s comfort.
I turned to face them, all three together. “If we win, we take the throne. All of us. You’re all mine and will sit beside me. If we fail, Lucifer will grind our bones to powder and use us to salt the fields for the next thousand years.”
Aziz bared his teeth. “He’ll have to catch us first.”
I laughed, and the Void surged, delighted. I loved these men. They were the thing that completed me. Without them, I didn’t know if I’d have the strength to do what we needed to, not even with the Void.
And now to set the rules. “Listen to me.”
Three sets of eyes. The storm in me steadied.
“Aziz—no jealousy in the field. You want me? Fine. You still cover the others. If it spikes, you say it. No knives over feelings.”
His jaw ticked; he nodded.
“Levi. In a fight, when your mouth runs hot, you cool it. Fetch water. Coat over whoever’s shaking. No showboating.”
His sharp grin softened. “Aye, Queen.”
“Ian. You do what you do. Count breaths. Check wrists. Tell me when I’m burning too hot. If I say stop, you stop me. Even if I snarl.”
Levi’s voice dropped. “And you?”
“Me? I don’t use jealousy as a weapon. I name it. I don’t feed it. I choose all of you. I keep choosing when it’s hard.”
Aziz’s palm found the back of my neck, steadying. “Aftercare,” he said.
“After we fight or fuck or both, we check in. Bruises counted. Marks treated. One sweet thing each. Aziz puts something in me that isn’t pain—tea, honey, a good story. Levi wraps me and makes me laugh on purpose. Ian makes me breathe and eat. If we can’t talk, we use hands: two squeezes means ‘with you,’ three means ‘need out.’ Safe word is ‘apple.’ Nobody pushes past ‘apple.’”
Silence. Pact settled.
Levi brushed my cheek. Ian slid a warm sigil strip into my palm. Aziz pressed his forehead to mine.
“Deal,” I whispered.
“Deal,” each echoed.
The Void curled thin black tendrils, unfurling them, gliding forward, and for a second each man was touched. Levi arched, groaning in pleasure. Ian gasped, and his eyes rolled back. Aziz shuddered, then seized my wrist and bit down, drawing blood that tasted like burnt caramel and old regret.
The darkness pulsed, then receded, snapping us back into the physical world with a violence that left the walls shivering. Levi let out a curse, half-laugh, half-moan, and Aziz’s hands tightened around my hips, nearly bruising.
“Good gods,” Levi said, shaking his head, “what the hell was that?”
I caught his chin, forced him to meet my eyes. “That’s the new me,” I said. “Get used to it.”
Aziz grinned. “I could get used to worse.” He bent forward, taking my breast in his mouth, sucking hard enough to leave a mark. I gasped, and the Void purred in approval. Levi seized my wrist, licked a stripe up the inside of my forearm, and I watchedhis eyes widen as the faint black veins shimmered under my skin.
Ian moved last, but with surgical precision. He slid behind me, hands cradling my head, lips tracing the line from temple to jaw. “If you’re going to break the world,” he murmured, “might as well start here.”
