Chapter 1
I had always been good at surviving. Not living. Surviving.
There was a difference. Living was easy when the world was kind enough to give you reasons to wake up in the morning. Surviving was what happened when the world took those reasons away and expected you to keep breathing anyway. I’d been breathing for three years. Some days, I wasn’t entirely sure why. I stood in front of the cracked mirror in my bedroom, staring at the woman looking back at me. Five foot seven. Burgundy hair falling messily past my shoulders. Green eyes that looked far too bright against the exhaustion written all over my face. I wasn’t skinny. I wasn’t fat either. Just somewhere perfectly in between. A body I’d once spent entirely too much time worrying about. I used to care about things like that. Makeup. Clothes. Whether my hair looked good. Whether I’d eaten breakfast. Whether I’d gotten enough sleep.
Normal things. I almost laughed at the thought. Normal had become a word that belonged to someone else’s life. I pushed a strand of burgundy hair behind my ear and stared at my reflection. Three years. Three years since I’d found out my brother died. Three years since the world had decided that his life was worth a few lines on a piece of paper and a sympathetic look from people who would forget his name before they got home. The police had called it an accident. The people responsible had called it unfortunate. Everyone elsehad called it tragic.
I called it bullshit. My brother wasn’t supposed to die. He was twenty-four. He hated mornings, loved terrible coffee, stole my hoodies and denied it even when I caught him wearing them. He was annoying. Loud. Stubborn. Impossible. He was my brother. He was mine. And someone had taken him from me. Not fate. Not some unavoidable accident. Someone.
I spent the first year grieving. The second searching. The third becoming someone I barely recognized. I’d searched for names, places, witnesses, rumors—anything that could lead me to the people responsible. When the ordinary world stopped giving me answers, I started looking somewhere else. Old books. Forbidden texts. Legends people laughed at. Stories that had survived because someone, somewhere, had been desperate enough to believe them. And eventually, I found the ritual. It was buried in a book so old that the leather cover practically crumbled beneath my fingers. There was no author’s name. No date. No explanation for why the final pages had been written in what looked suspiciously like dried blood. Just a warning.
Do not summon what you cannot control.
I’d stared at those words for a long time. Then I’d turned the page. Of course I had. Because grief had a way of making warnings sound like challenges. And I’d never been particularly good at backing down from a challenge.I told myself I wanted revenge. That was the easy part: revenge was clean. Revenge had a name. Grief didn’t. Grief was waking up at three in the morning and reaching for your phone before remembering the person you wanted to call had been dead for years. Grief was hearing someone’s laugh in a grocery store and turning around. Grief was remembering that you no longer had anyone to call family.
SoI called it revenge. Because revenge sounded stronger than I don’t know how to live without him.
The ritual took three nights to prepare. I drew the symbols myself. Burned the herbs myself. Collected every ingredient the book demanded, even the ones I had to travel across town to find. I didn’t tell anyone. There wasn’t anyone left I’d trust with this. At midnight on the third night, I stood alone in the basement of the abandoned house I’d been using as a hideout.
Candles surrounded the circle. The air smelled of smoke, iron, and something bitter I couldn’t identify. My heart was pounding. Not from fear. Not entirely. Hope was far more dangerous. I looked down at the final page. The instructions were simple. Speak the name. Open the gate. Make the bargain. Bring back the dead. I swallowed.
“Okay.” My voice echoed through the empty room. “This is either going to work…” I glanced around. “…or I’m going to look really stupid.”
Nothing happened. I frowned. “Come on.” Still nothing. I looked down at the book.“Seriously?”
I cleared my throat. Then I read the words. The candles went out. Every single one. At once. I froze. The silence that followed was wrong. Not quiet. Wrong. The temperature in the room dropped so quickly that my breath became visible. Something moved behind me. I turned. Nothing. Then— A sound. Not a voice. Not quite. Something between a growl and a whisper, deep enough that I felt it in my bones. The symbols on the floor began to glow. My eyes widened.
“Oh.”
The circle cracked. Black smoke erupted from the ground. I stumbled backward, nearly falling over as the entire room shook. The smoke twisted upward. Higher. Higher. Until it formed the vague outline of something impossibly large.
Then the smoke collapsed inward. The creature standing in the center of the circle seemed enormous. Somehow, that made it worse. Much worse. He was tall. Very tall. Around six foot three, maybe more, with broad shoulders and a body that looked like it had been carved rather than built.
He stood where there had been nothing but empty air seconds ago, as though the darkness itself had taken shape and decided to stand before me. The first thing I noticed was his shirt, or what was left of it. Torn fabric clung loosely to his body, exposingmore skin than it covered, hanging from one shoulder and revealing the hard line of his chest and abdomen. But it was his back that caught my attention when he shifted.
Ink.
Dark, intricate tattoos stretched across his skin, disappearing beneath the remnant of his shirt and curling over his shoulder, down his ribs, vanishing around his torso. They looked less like decoration and more like something that belonged there—ash though they had been carved into him rather than drawn.
My eyes followed the lines before I realized I was staring. He was—terrifying. And somehow, impossibly beautiful. There was something unnerving about the contrast. The violencein his appearance, the scars, the tattoos, the torn clothes—everything about him screamed danger.
Yet I couldn’t look away. My gaze moved back to his face. Black hair fell messily across his forehead, contrasting sharply against skin that looked almost unnaturally pale beneath the dim candlelight. His face wasalmost unfairly beautiful. Sharp jaw. Strong cheekbones. A mouth that looked permanently annoyed. And lips that would have been distracting if every instinct in my body wasn’t screaming at me to run.His eyes were completely black. No green. No brown. No visible iris. Just darkness. Absolute, bottomless darkness. And now he was looking directly at me.
For the first time, I understood that the stories had never been exaggerating. Demons weren’t something hidingin the shadows.At least this one wasn’t. He was standing in front of me—and was staring back.
He looked at me. Then at the circle. Then back at me. For several seconds, neither of us spoke. Finally, he tilted his head.
“You.”
I blinked. “Me.”
His expression darkened. “You summoned me.”
I looked him up and down.Then glanced at the book. Then at him again. “I was expecting something else.”
Silence. His eyebrow lifted. “Something else?”
“Yes.”
“What exactly were you expecting?”
“I don’t know.”
“You summoned a creature from Hell without knowing what you were summoning?”
“When you say it like that, it sounds irresponsible.”
“It is irresponsible.”
I crossed my arms. “Well, you’re here now.”
His eyes narrowed. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”
“Actually, I do.”
“No. You don’t.”
“I brought you here.”
“You opened a gate between worlds.”
“Yes.”
“You called something that has killed men far stronger than you.”
“Okay.”
“You are standing in a room with a creature that could tear your spine from your body before you could scream.”
I stared at him. Then looked down at myself. Then back up. “Are you finished?”
For the first time, something resembling disbelief crossed his face.
“You’re not afraid.”
“Oh, I’m terrified.” He stared at me. I shrugged. “I just have other things to worry about.”
His expression changed. Only slightly. But I noticed. “Why did you summon me?”
My sarcasm disappeared. “My brother.” The room went still. “I want him back.”
The creature studied me for a long moment. Then he laughed. It wasn’t a warm laugh. It wasn’t amused. It was low, dark, and entirely without humor. “You think I can bring back the dead?”
“I think you can.”
“And if I can’t?”
“You’re from Hell.”
“And?”
“You people have rules about death.”
His mouth curved. “You’ve been reading too many books.”
“Probably.”
“You don’t know what you’re dealing with.”
“Neither do you.” That made him stop.
I didn’t know why I’d said it. Maybe because I was exhausted. Maybe because I had nothing left to lose. Or maybe because there was something about the way he looked at me—as if he expected every human being who saw him to immediately fall to their knees—that irritated the hell out of me. He stepped closer. The circle between us burned brighter. I refused to move. He was taller than I’d expected. Closer than I’d expected. And far more dangerous. I could feel it rolling off him. Not aggression. Not anger. Something deeper. Like violence wasn’t something he did. It was something he was. He stopped inches from the edge of the circle. His black eyeslocked ontomine.
“You have no idea what you’re asking for, little witch.”
My jaw tightened. “And you have no idea how badly I want it.”
For a moment, neither of us moved. Then the creature smiled. It was the first genuinely frightening thing he’d done. Because his teeth were just a little too sharp. And behind his human shape, something else flickered. Something enormous. Something ancient. Something with blackened horns curling from its skull and wings stretching wide enough to swallow the room. The candles reignited. Every flame burned black. I stared.
The creature leaned closer. “My name is Kane.”
I swallowed. “Kane.”
His smile widened. “And you, little witch, have just made the worst mistake of your life.”
I looked him directly in the eyes. “Yeah?” I picked up the book. “Get in line.”
Kane stared at me. Then, slowly, he laughed. And I realized two things. First— I had absolutely no idea what I’d just unleashed. And second— Kane was going to be a fucking nightmare.
