up as a bloody pulp on the floor. I needed the witch to cooperate. “My sigil is all I need. And you’ll never be bothered with me again.”
She frowned, and her hand went protectively to her pocket again. Her expression hardened as she said, “I’m willing to give you your sigil, Leon. But you need to promise me something.”
“Demons don’t make promises.” Not technically true, but I wasn’t about to jump into making promises to a witch. “Unless you’re trying to make a deal?”
Callum growled at my suggestion, an angry dog worried over his bone. It was a silly thing to suggest anyway: Everly had clearly already given him her soul. Souls weren’t able to be offered in parcels, it was all or nothing.
Everly wrapped her hand around his arm, and his growling stopped. The softness of her touch made me remember Rae sitting on my lap, and how gentle her hands were while she cleaned my wounds, and something bizarrely warm seemed to leak through my stomach.
Was she safe? Had I been gone too long? What if she —
“I need you to keep Raelynn alive,” the witch said. The demand was so unexpected, my confusion must have shown on my face because she said quickly, “Time is running out. The Deep One is restless, and my father knows it. If he gets Raelynn, then I…” She took a deep breath. “I might not be able to kill the God.”
I barked out a laugh. “You — what? You’re trying to kill the God?” Surely, she was joking. It was a terrible joke, but still. “You can’t be —”
“She means it,” Callum said roughly. “I’ve been alive long enough to see gods die, hellion. They’re not above death.”
“I’m going to put an end to all this.” Everly reached into her pocket, and at last, she drew out the damned little book. “The Deep One never should have been awoken, and It never should be freed.” She flipped through the pages, her fingers moving rapidly as if she already knew exactly where to turn. She tore out my page, my sigil emblazoned across it, and held it up. “You say you think you love her, but it’s clear that you do. It was clear the moment Kent told you to take her.”
Love. What an awful, beautiful, terrifying word.
There were only a few beings I’d ever dared grant it to. The one human I’d dared utter it to, before Raelynn, well — I’d regretted it. I’d learned just how much it hurt to lose a loved thing. I’d promised myself I’d never experience that again. I wouldn’t bother. It wasn’t worth it.
Yet here I was, so goddamn certain that in every way, she was worth it.
“I’ll do what I can,” I said, when what I wanted to say was that I’d kill anything that tried to hurt her, and if keeping her safe meant stalking her every damn day to make sure she didn’t fall into trouble, then I’d do it. “But I’m not a guard dog.”
I expected Everly to insist, but instead it was Callum who smirked and said, “You don’t hide your feelings for the human woman very well.” He turned and wrapped his arms around Everly so that she was tucked up under his chin, and muttered, “He’ll protect her. Send him off. I want to continue our game.”
Her cheeks flushed red, and as she extended her hand to give me the sigil. I noticed for the first time the imprint of braided rope around her wrists.
Fuck. I’d want to hurry back to that game too.
Taking that sigil into my hands felt surreal. I almost expected it to crumble into ash the moment my fingers touched it. The last record of my name on earth, my last tie to this place. My freedom.
I could leave. I could never look back. There was nothing to keep me here anymore. Nothing.
Except…
I folded the paper up and tucked it into my pocket, and turned for the door without a word. It was no concern of mine if the witch killed the God, or if all of Abelaum burned, or if humanity itself was wiped out under the heel of a sadistic God.
But Raelynn? She was mine. I wasn’t about to give up what was mine.
“Damn, is this a house or a modern art museum?”
Inaya chuckled at me, my nose pressed to her car window as she drove up the winding driveway to the Hadleigh’s house — estate, mansion, literal museum perhaps. The place