Chapter 35

Iyla

FIRST CAME DENIAL. THIS WAS Zagan. He was a demon . Nothing could fucking hold him down. Any minute, he’d reappear with a chuckle, explaining that he had a plan to escape all along. It wasn’t like Babette could get what she wanted out of him. He could only have sex with me, and the second she realized that, she’d return him to me.

After an hour passed, the grief swept in. He’d done this, traded himself in as a sort of prisoner, all to save Gemma. He’d given himself up for me . All the time we’d spent together, all the memories we’d made, all the experiences we’d given each other. They flashed in my mind, and I cried as I revisited each one, wishing I’d been brave enough to tell him how I felt back then. I pressed my forehead to the cold marble floor of the ballroom and broke for the love I’d just realized and lost. I’d never get to see his mischievous smile, hear his enchanting voice, feel his body against mine as we danced or fooled around.

He was gone.

Another hour passed, and that was when all the agony inside me engulfed in raging flames. From those ashes rose fury. I beat my hand against the marble and screamed out my acrimony. It wasn’t fucking fair. He’d made this choice to sacrifice himself without telling me or giving me the choice to bargain with Babette. And why? To protect me?

Then he played that song for me, knowing he was about to be taken away.

Coward .

He should’ve said the words to my face, but we’d both been too afraid. I refused to let it end this way.

Zagan was my bond.

Zagan was my demon.

And I wasn’t going to lose him.

Getting to my feet, I stormed out of the ballroom. “Coldin! Coldin, are you here? Please, Coldin. If you’re here, come out.”

“He’s not.”

I gasped. I’d just started up the stairs, but I turned now at the sound of Dante’s voice.

Dante stood in front of me with his muscular arms crossed and a scowl firmly in place. The red ball cap he wore nearly hid the expression, but there was no missing that amount of disdain. “I already took him back to my place since Zagan decided to be a fucking idiot and turn into a servant to that woman. All for you .” He spat the last word like he’d never said something so foul.

I ignored the hate he so clearly directed my way. He wasn’t the demon I necessarily wanted help from, but he’d have to do. “We need to bring Zagan back.”

He scoffed. “No. The dumbass knew what bargaining with Babette would mean. He made his bed. Now he has to lie in it.”

“Please!” I begged, grabbing onto his arm. I squeezed it tightly and refused to back down, even when he bared his teeth at me. “Please, Dante. I-I have to save him. Help me.”

His dark gaze searched mine, and for awhile, we had this intense staredown where neither of us budged. I refused to be moved or swayed. I refused to give up on Zagan.

Finally, Dante’s eyes narrowed. “You want him back so badly? Fine. You go get him.”

Hope soared to life inside me like a kite catching wind. “Okay! Yes. I’ll go. Just tell me how I get to him and how I break his contract with Babette.”

He shook my hand off, and since I wanted to stay on his good side right now, I let go. He straightened his black hoodie and shifted nonchalantly on his feet. “Babette loves to play games, so it’s simple. Challenge her to a game, one you know you can win. Winner gets Zagan.”

He was right. That did sound simple—too simple. But it didn’t matter that alarm bells were ringing in my head. Risks be damned. I couldn’t let Zagan do this. I couldn’t let him become her little toy or servant or whatever the hell she had in mind for him. I couldn’t lose him.

“How do I get to her?” I asked.

“Easy. You summon her.”

I DUSTED THE CHALK FROM my hands and stood back up to survey the summoning circle I’d just drawn in the center of Zagan’s foyer. The large circle surrounded a smaller one, which contained a pentagram. Between the two circles were “words,” though it couldn’t look further from words to me. Each point on the star also had an ancient symbol, one I could never hope to understand.

I looked at Dante where he leaned against the wall to oversee the drawing of my summoning circle. “Is this good?”

He pushed off the wall and walked around the circle. His eyes studied the white drawing on the floor, and he gave an approving nod as he stopped next to me. “Good enough.”

“What do I do now?”

“Now,” he grabbed my hand and held it in front of my eyes, “you cut your palm and let the blood drop in the center of the pentagram. You’ll say, ‘I summon thee. Bargainer. Babette.’”

I raised a brow. “No fancy words or demonic language?”

He gave a humorless chuckle. “If we made that a rule, idiot humans couldn’t summon us, now could they? The summoning circle is hard enough as is. How else are we going to find prey to trick and steal souls from?”

I inched backward just a hair. At the mention of stealing souls, images of the humans strung up around Hell’s Gate or the ones battered and contorted to make furniture flashed in my mind’s eye. Could that be my fate if I failed?

I quickly shoved the thought and gruesome visuals away. If I dwelled on that, I worried it would make me lose focus on what mattered—getting Zagan back. I squared my shoulders and grabbed a knife from the kitchen. My heart pounded when I returned to my place by the circle, and I held my hand out over the pentagram and gripped the knife handle harder.

“Remember,” Dante said just as I brought the tip of the blade to my palm. I paused and looked at him as he finished, “Summon her, challenge her to a game, and win . If you don’t, Zagan’s sacrifice will have been for fucking nothing.”

I nodded and swallowed hard. “I will.”

With that, the demon vanished into the shadows around us, leaving me alone with a blade pressed into my quivering outstretched hand. I took a deep breath and pictured what mattered.

Zagan’s eyes pinched in a hearty laugh that he shared with Gemma.

Zagan with his brow furrowed and body hunched forward as he focused on writing a song.

Zagan as he looked up through his dark lashes to meet my gaze and shoot me a charming, tender smile.

It was because of him, because of his hold over my heart, that slicing the cold, sharp knife across my palm became easier. I bit my lip and fought against the tears as red hot blood poured from the wound and fell in fat droplets to the design below.

“I summon thee. Bargainer. Babette.”

The blood began to move, slithering along the floor until it found the closest lines of chalk. Like a sponge, the chalk soaked up the blood until suddenly the entire star began to glow red. I held my breath, and for the first time since I’d made the decision to do this, real fear trickled in.

A head of luscious red hair with black curled horns rose up from the glowing star, rising higher to reveal a face, shoulders, a curvy body wearing a black bra and leather pants. Part of me wanted to scream and run out of pure horror. But this wasn’t the first demon I’d faced, and she’d taken mine from me. So I pulled my shoulders back and steeled myself for whatever challenge I was about to face.

The moment her whole body was through the demonic summoning portal, she chuckled and swept her judging gaze over me. “Well, this is interesting. It’s been awhile since I was summoned like this.”

“I want Zagan back,” I declared as calmly as I could.

She threw her head back and laughed. “Sorry. I own him now. He signed the contract. He has to pay the price—eternity with me in my world.”

Nerves fluttered around my gut like moths taking desperate flight from a pursuing hawk. I had to grip the handle of the knife in order to ground myself and not lose my courage as I demanded, “I challenge you to a game, then. Winner gets Zagan, regardless of the contract he signed.”

She raised a brow and tapped a red-lacquered nail to her full lips. Her eyes narrowed in a devious smirk, and with only a few seconds of consideration, she purred, “I accept.”

She snapped her fingers, and I gasped as my whole body seemed to tug into the space of the pentagram. Everything turned into a blur of moving shades of red until I suddenly jolted back to awareness and landed on my feet. I had to hold my arms out to steady myself and regain my balance, and that was when I noticed that we’d transported.

Zagan’s foyer had disappeared, and I now stood in the center of what looked like an office. A dark and elaborate wooden desk and padded chair stood before me. Shelves lined the wall beyond it, which held nothing but bound golden scrolls.

Babette appeared from behind me then, and she crossed the room with a sway in her hips. She perched on the edge of her desk and flipped her hair over her shoulder, smirking at me as if she found me lacking. She saw no threat in me.

“So,” Babette began, “winner gets Zagan?”

I nodded. “The contract that healed my sister remains, but Zagan is free if I win. That’s the only thing that changes.”

There was no missing the laugh under her breath. She thought I and my request was a joke, which only fueled my need to win even more. I was sick and tired of people looking down on me, because I was worth something, just the way I was. Zagan had helped me to see that.

My chest ached.

Zagan.

I had to save him.

“Fine,” she answered with a shrug. “You won’t win so that’s not a problem. You’ll actually be doing me a favor. The moron got himself bound to you, a little detail he’d failed to mention when I forged a contract with him. I can’t even fuck him like I want. Doing this kills two birds with one stone. You’ll die, giving me your soul to add to my collection, and Zagan’s bond will break with your death.” Her smile turned sultry and venomous as she cupped her breasts and moaned, “I can’t wait to finally taste and feel him.”

I gritted my teeth against the rising outrage inside me. I knew she was baiting me, so instead of giving in, I slowly said, “For the game—”

“Ahh!” She held up a finger to stop me. “ You challenged me , and as our rules go in this world, the one who gets challenged gets to pick the game.”

My blood ran cold. Dante hadn’t said anything about that little rule. I briefly wanted to strangle him for keeping that information from me. But even if I’d known that before I’d gotten here, it wouldn’t have changed anything. I couldn’t lose my demon.

I wouldn’t lose him.

“What’s the game?” I asked.

She studied me with her vivid purple eyes. I wasn’t sure what she searched for. Maybe a potential weakness that she could exploit to ensure I lost. Maybe she was judging me some more, wondering how a human like me got Zagan when she clearly couldn’t. All I knew was the longer she watched me, the more my resolve hardened.

This game wasn’t for me or about me. This was to save the man who had become my best friend, my light, my rock, my entire world. I’d fight for him until there was no fight left in me.

“I’m curious,” Babette said. She pushed away from the desk and crossed her arms as she began a slow stride around me. “Why are you even trying? Don’t get me wrong. I’m thrilled this is happening, but why give up your soul for him? For a demon ?”

She faced me now and waited with a puzzled purse of her lips.

I didn’t even need to think about my answer. It had been there in front of me all along, but I’d realized it too late.

“Because I love him,” I answered.

She scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Love doesn’t exist.” She shrugged and turned to saunter back toward her desk. “But if you want to delude yourself into thinking that love can exist between you and a demon, who am I to argue? You’ll be dead soon enough, anyway.”

I ignored her taunt and said with a clenched jaw, “Still waiting on that game.”

“Eager for Hell, I see. Alright.” She snickered and tilted her chin up. “Since I can’t keep Zagan on a leash to service me the way I want right now, he’s downstairs, working in my club. You know. Tending to guests. You have one hour to find him. If you don’t … well, you already know the consequences.”

All I had to do was find Zagan? I’d been to Hell’s Gate multiple times, and it wasn’t so big that I couldn’t search for and find someone. Still, I paused, because that sounded too easy. I waited for her to throw some curveball at me, but no twist came.

She held up a finger and repeated with a smile, “One hour. Find him or you’re both mine.”

She snapped her fingers, and the world spiraled and whirled around me like before. I landed on my feet with a jolt in a sea of gyrating bodies. Pounding electro music, flashing red lights, and strong perfumes overloaded my senses. It took a second of me assessing myself and my surroundings to realize I was in the middle of Hell’s Gate’s dance floor.

I didn’t waste any time once I had my bearings. My heart raced with nervous determination as I scanned the dancing crowd and shoved through packed bodies of demons. I couldn’t seem to take in the faces fast enough, searching for even a glimpse of tousled raven hair or a flash of black-and-red eyes or light reflecting off silver piercings.

I shoved through more bodies, and that was when the first sharp slice of pain slashed across my shoulder blade. I cried out at the blinding cut and fell to my knees, reaching back to feel for what caused it. My fingers fumbled over where I’d been hit, and a fierce sting shot through my body at my careful touch, making me jump. When I pulled my hand back around, blood coated my fingers.

“What the hell?” I whimpered.

I looked around me, and while demons laughed at my distress or shot me puzzled glances, I saw no sign of who or what could’ve sliced open the skin on my shoulder.

With shaking legs, I got back to my feet and shuffled across the rest of the dance floor until I was able to grab onto a standing table. Just as I reached it, another searing cut slit me open near the previous one. I gritted my teeth and held onto the table as tears clouded my vision. I blinked the fat droplets away and looked around the bustling room for a sign of what was happening to me.

My frantic gaze spotted a span of windows near the top of the building that looked like an office overseeing the club below. Babette stood at the window and watched me with a smirk firmly in place. She held up her finger and moved it back and forth, and her mouth moved in the unmistakable words of, ‘tick-tock, tick-tock.’

Ice filled my veins.

The slashes were my timer.

For every minute that passed, a new slice would form on my back as a painful reminder that time was running out. Fifty-eight minutes left now. Fifty-eight minutes until the fate of my future was sealed. Fifty-eight minutes left to determine Zagan’s life.

I cast one final glare at Babette then pushed away from the table to search for my demon.