Chapter 1

1

A fter everything that had happened that day, Ambra doesn’t begrudge herself a little light kidnapping.

Her head still pounds after all the alarms, her eyelids drag with each blink, and both the lingering gut wound and the slash on her face throb. Her mouth still tastes of iron, as it always does when the leash gets tightened, and whatever snap of death magic the necromancer had smashed in her face in the fight still echoes in her lungs.

All that’s recoverable, of course, given some time outside the stasis chambers, and they would have to lobotomize her—again—in order for her to go back there willingly.

Straightening the moment her feet hit the floor, she drops her grip on the kidnappee’s collar, dusting off her hands.

The kidnappee, a young man with floppy hair and thick rimmed glasses who shot one of the Five in the head, staggers back, gasping. He’s still holding the gun in his hand, but thankfully, he doesn’t aim it towards her .

“Where are we?” He chokes out, like the teleportation was less than perfect, which is rude.

She obviously took them to a safe house, so she blinks at him.

Ambra, like most demons she’s come into contact with, instinctively crafts safe places to land. A place where she could run to, a place to think, a place to collect whatever catches her fancy, on the rare occasion something does.

She hasn’t been to this one since the merge—her mind shies away from thinking about it directly in a way that’s distinctively annoying—so a thin layer of dust coats the bench and the bookcase.

“Okay, okay,” the kidnappee says, after her silence, as she obsessively lets her mind check her wards, lets it wander to see if anyone else has been in there. “Uh, why am I here?”

That, at least, is a question her mind doesn’t have to think about.

“Because of the leash,” she answers, and his brows furrow, like the answer isn’t intuitive to him.

The leash, the incorporeal, magical leash tied so crudely around her throat by the College. The key to them controlling her. The key to her freedom and her safety.

He just raises an eyebrow at her, so she turns away.

One of her wards is smudged. Not broken, but someone else had clearly been sniffing around the edges, testing them.

Another demon, if the tang of the power is any indication, had probably noticed the emptiness and wanted to observe if the person who crafted it was dead or not.

She stalks towards the offending rune, and the kidnappee’s eyes widen as she passes him, but despite pulling at the rune, despite squinting at it, she can’t tell who it could be .

Another result of the merge. She just…can’t do everything anymore.

Careful, his motions so careful it immediately sends up red flags in her awareness, her kidnappee sits on the bench, gripping the aged wood like it could help him.

The gun is still clutched in his hands, as if he forgot it.

He doesn’t look too injured, near as she can tell, beyond the scrapes and bruises that come from breaking out of a prison.

He stares at her, his eyes a normal shade of human brown, and in between one moment and the next, she can see his brain kick in and something truly analytical lights up his face.

This, at least, she can talk to.

“You’re a dud, you said,” Ambra starts, and he nods. “Duds aren’t supposed to know about any of human magic, yet you do.”

He nods again, his mouth twisting down.

“You’ve been scarred by some magic, in a huge way,” she continues, and it’s obvious all over him. Like someone had taken a surge and shocked it directly into his system. “You knew how to read the runes, you knew a lot of the pathways, and you could instruct the necromancer and alchemist.”

“Good assessment,” he says, cautious, and his knuckles are white against the bench.

He’s afraid of her, which is a bit nice.

“The necromancer killed Korhonen, and you killed Rastian,” Ambra recites. “There’s still Nalissa, Johnsin, and Boltiex out there.”

“Boltiex is one of them?” the kidnappee says, immediately identifying the dangerous one out of all of them. It’s good he’s probably a bit smart, if he’s catching on. “Why would they let him get access to a demon, he’s almost insane.”

“Once they piece through the wreckage your Half Demon left there, they’re going to try to get me back,” Ambra states, as matter of fact as she can, but a shudder still shakes down her spine at the thought. “Hence, you.”

“Still don’t follow,” the kidnappee murmurs, but his eyebrows are still furrowed. “Can you return me back?”

The unease tightens across her shoulders. “I’m not going back to that prison.”

“No, not the base, obviously, but…to my friends. They’re heading to…a safe spot with backup. The College can’t get to them there, you might be safe.”

She squints at him, like that can give her clarity.

“Alright,” her kidnappee says, clearly unnerved. “Ambra, that’s your name, right?”

It had been a long time since anyone had actually called her that, and a shiver flickers across her body.

He raises an eyebrow, like he caught that. “It was on the nameplate outside your cell.”

“I know that,” she says, and in some odd mannerism left over from the body, hugs herself. “Yes, that’s my name.”

The smudged ward throbs against her awareness, again, the demon testing it. They must’ve set something, to see if someone would come back, and she likes that not one bit.

She hasn’t faced another demon since the merge, and if her less than perfect control is an indication, she’s not sure she would win any fight.

“Okay, Ambra,” he starts again, the body shivers around her. “I need you to explain to me, in easy, human terms, what’s going on.”

She doesn’t stop staring at the rune, and she doesn’t think her protections have weakened enough so that another demon could just teleport in, but the itch to go elsewhere already eats at her gut.

Her gut, with the wound from the first fight at the bar still slowly bleeding. And hurting, far more than such wounds should.

Thankfully, the kidnappee stays silent, as she prods at the physical lines she etched into the wood of the safe room wall.

The safe room is little more than a single structure, deep underground, the air connected through an odd series of tunnels leading up to the surface. A few ages ago, she had teleported in wood plank by wood plank, then wired it when electricity became popular, and had a perfectly good collection of preserved books on the shelves.

It is also blessedly quiet, most of the time, and the presence of a living breathing human in it clashes.

One of the worst things about the merge is the noise.

That’s a lie.

But it’s an easy lie, kinder than thinking about it more.

“As long as the three are out there, they can pull me back,” Ambra says, spinning and facing him with enough speed that he startles. “Needless to say, I don’t want that.”

“I’m not a fan of them being able to control a demon, either,” the kidnappee agrees, which at least shows some common sense. “I don’t know how they succeeded, but it’s not good.”

“I don’t want to be controlled,” she shoots back at him. “But you…” she lets her eyes wash over him, a direct motion that she observed her human handlers do to make people uncomfortable, and he grimaces in response. “I doubt you could.”

He raises his hands, as if showing he’s unarmed, despite the gun he set down on the bench. “I’m not going to try to control you.”

“Good,” Ambra replies, then, some strange quiver in her chest, some leftover response from the body, continues, “So you’ll hold the leash, hold it tight, and they can’t pull me back.”

He listens, actively, and she can see his mind turning over her sentence, picking it apart, like it’s some puzzle to be cracked.

She lets him, returning her attention to the runes, which buzz, and she prods it with the fingertip of the body.

Of course, that does nothing, which is even more annoying. Dead bodies gave her such better control, more fidelity in her actions and perceptions, and this living one is like fitting into a box a bit too small.

The fingertips tremble, just a bit, and she shakes out her hand, as if that could stop it.

“I have questions,” he starts, and there’s a tone in his voice like he’s trying to project authority and failing miserably.

“Obviously,” Ambra murmurs, and a different one of the runes buzz, the same demon now actively prodding at her. “I picked you because you most likely couldn’t put me back in stasis. Your group saved the little wight, so you’re unlikely to try to use this body for anything weird because of human morals. I didn’t choose the necromancer because the Half Demon would kill me, and that alchemist is too powerful for me to want to try.”

He swallows, his throat moving, and it’s something she never noticed humans doing until the merge. “With her help, we might be able to remove the leash,” he starts, and she can recognize someone bullshitting. “And the Half Demon might have some ideas. ”

“And you’re just trying to get back to them,” she replies, then stalks over to the other side of the room, to her little bookcase, scanning the traps she put behind the books.

Still untouched, the whisper thin wire all but invisible to the body’s eyes.

She blinks at it, as if she could will the gaze to focus better, but it doesn’t work.

Because she’s stuck in this body, with its breathing, its pain, its eyelids, its shivers, and all of its unconscious movement that she has to be aware of.

Another buzz, and she twitches, as this other demon presses harder. She’s going to have to go to another safe spot, going to have to abandon these books and the comfort and the silence, if this keeps up.

“Boltiex wanted full control, solo control, but he was overruled,” Ambra continues, and at least if she has to have noise in the room it could be created by her. “He has some ideas about ruling the College using me, I don’t like it, so I know the existence of the other four—two now—were to counterbalance. So there is a way to counterbalance.”

Her captive says nothing, his lips thin.

“Boltiex is the most skilled at it, he’s the one who…” she gestures at the body, and the body responds with a lump in her throat that threatens to momentarily choke her.

He nods, serious, like he understands what she’s trying to communicate, which is nice, so she doesn’t have to actually say it.

“Nalissa is the craftiest, she does experiments with my power,” Ambra continues, twisting her face. “She knows all my limits, all the body’s weird reactions.”

“I thought she was in France,” her kidnappee says, “doing research on the catacombs.”

Another shudder of the body, at the claustrophobic, echoing tunnels lined with bones that immediately pop into mind, but Ambra pushes onwards. “Johnsin is the one who liked pain, and he’s the one that figured out how to tie the body’s nerves into my own. I’d like to avoid him.”

“Understandable,” he says, and he hasn’t relaxed, not really, but there’s less tension in his shoulders and his face has softened into something pondering.

It’s a bit gratifying, to have someone say that, after most of the humans in the College always act as if she’s spouting nonsense.

“I also don’t want another demon to find this,” Ambra says, holding up the leash, but he doesn’t track the motion.

Right. Because he can’t see it.

“If one even for a second thinks I’m weak, thinks they can destroy me, they will. I don’t want to be destroyed, no matter what they say happened to the other Terese project.”

“The demon died, but the human lived,” he says, and she rocks back, to digest it, the jealousy sending a twist to her stomach. “A necromancer killed the demon.”

“And the body survived?” Ambra asks, before she can stop herself. “She didn’t…die off?”

Her kidnappee falls silent, a blond brow raising over the glasses, and she hates that she said something, so she shakes her head.

“My point remains, I don’t want to go back, I don’t want to be controlled, I don’t want to die,” she says, the leash still in her hand. “I need someone useless to hold the leash.”

He scoffs, like that’s what he’s upset about in all of this.

Another pull at the runes, something stronger, and she spins to stare at it, dread starting to drip down her back.

She also needs a place to recover. To sit with the body until she has enough energy to fix the annoying wounds, until she can think straight. To huddle away, find some sort of sustenance, whatever the body needs, and figure out what being at full power in the body would be.

Someplace out of stasis.

“I don’t think that will work,” he says, finally, his face carefully still.

A prod at the runes, and the electricity cording through the room flickers.

She snakes out a hand, grabbing his wrist, and he flinches.

“I don’t care if you think it’ll work,” she says, and the skin around his wrist is warm, blood thudding against his pulse, and it momentarily derails her thoughts, at the warmth in front of her.

Before the electricity flickers again, plunging them into darkness for a split second, and she loops the leash around his warm wrist, knotting it down.

He jerks his hand away, but the knot holds true, and she gets a small corresponding tug around her neck.

“What—” he starts, before the lights slam off again, the room filling with another demon’s power, and Ambra grips the collar of his shirt and flees.