Zylas pried her off and she switched to murdering his hand, letting out ferocious kitten growls as she gnawed on his thumb. Wincing, I sat up to examine my hand, relieved to find only a few red scratches. We should pick up some clippers and trim her claws. I’d ask Amalia to—

My brain stuttered on the thought and tears stung my sore eyes. I blinked them away, my contacts sticking unpleasantly. I probably shouldn’t have slept in them.

“I think we forgot to feed Socks last night,” I said, swinging my legs off the bed. “I’ll get her some food.”

As I walked into the kitchen, my gaze fell on the bag of takeout on the counter. Throat closing, I dropped it into the garbage. My heart seemed to fall into the bin with the spoiled food.

I curled my hands into fists. That was more than enough of this pity party. If I was on my own, then I’d just have to handle everything myself.

Five days. That’s how long I had to figure out how to stop Xever from opening a proper portal to hell and summoning or contracting a payashē—or whatever his true plan was.

Half an hour later, after feeding Socks, showering, dressing in a light sweater and stretchy jeans, and scarfing down a granola bar for breakfast, I found Zylas in the living room, sitting by the window like usual. He hadn’t redressed since his shower last night, wearing only his shorts, and my cheeks flushed as I recalled the feel of his skin.

He watched as I set up the grimoire, Vh’alyir Amulet, reference texts, torn corner of the map I’d stolen from Xever’s office, and my laptop on the coffee table. Spreading a thick blanket on the floor to use as a cushion, I picked up my pencil, set my notebook in my lap … and stared at the assorted materials with my brain buzzing blankly.

The faintest scuff of a footstep. Zylas sank down to sit cross-legged beside me.

“I’m not sure where to start,” I admitted.

“Know where your enemy will be. Then you can choose to be there or not.”

“Right. The map first.”

I fired up my laptop. While I scrolled around on Google maps, searching for a landmass that matched the map corner, Zylas picked up the amulet and resumed his examination of the spells on the back.

We worked in silence for over an hour before I heaved a frustrated sigh. “There are islands and inlets everywhere along the coast, and I don’t know what the scale of this map is. It could be anywhere.”

Pushing my laptop and the torn map aside, I slid the grimoire closer. Maybe I could figure out something useful from the portal array that would narrow down the possible locations. I opened the grimoire to the bookmarked page and sighed again, already overwhelmed. Anthea, for all her questionable morals, had been a genius. The intricacy of the spell was well beyond me, a challenge compounded by the fact that all the notations and instructions were written in Ancient Greek.

I opened my notebook, and the ache in my chest flared at the sight of Amalia’s handwriting.

Scouring the portal array, I made some quick notes, but my attention kept returning to the missing sections—the portions Anthea had left out, erasing them from her family’s history so the spell could never be replicated.

I glanced at the amulet in Zylas’s hands. “Do you think the missing parts of the portal spell are in there?”

“Maybe,” he murmured distractedly.

The secrets of the hell portal … concealed in an amulet likely created by a Vh’alyir demon. I flipped a few pages backward, hoping Anthea might have left a clue about the missing sections of the portal spell.

Athanas and Vh’alyir. The creator of Demonica and the reviled Twelfth House. A mysterious connection lost to time and violence.

“What is that?”

I snapped out of my reverie to find Zylas frowning at the grimoire. I’d been mindlessly turning pages and had flipped to a completely different section. His attention was on a random string of demonic runes surrounded by Ancient Greek text.

“This is …” I peeked at the preceding page. “This is where Anthea developed the infernus spell, I think.”

Zylas sat forward. “Hnn.”

“What do the runes mean?”

“Those are not runes. It is a message.”

My breath caught. “A message?”

“It says, ‘The place where demon lēvh and human lēvh meet.’”

“Lēvh? What does that mean?”

“I think … spirit? Soul?” He canted his head. “When I go into the infernus, it is called kish lēvh.”

My gaze darted across the demonic words surrounded by human text. “Where demon spirit and human spirit met.” If Zylas’s spirit entered the infernus, did that mean …

“My soul,” I whispered. “Was the infernus connected to my soul too? Is that why … why we could hear each other’s thoughts? And why we could share your magic? Because the infernus connected our souls?”

“The magic tasted like your mind.”

A soul bond. That had to be what an infernus was. That was how it connected contractor and demon. For a fully contracted demon, the connection created a telepathic link through which the contractor could control the demon—and created the soul link that facilitated the banishment clause.

For Zylas and I, the connection had been more than that. The closer we’d become, the stronger the bond between our souls had grown—until we could not only communicate but share each other’s magic.

Tears filmed my eyes.

“Vayanin?”

Ducking my head, I quickly rubbed the moisture away. “Sorry.”

“What is wrong?”

“Nothing.” Except that was a lie and he knew it. “I was just thinking … our souls were connected through the infernus, and that’s … I wish we hadn’t lost that.”

He propped an elbow on the coffee table, watching me. “You liked the infernus because we were … connected?”

I sniffled. “Yes.”

“I liked to know what you were thinking.” His nose scrunched. “You are bad at telling me your thoughts. I ask and you say, ‘Nothing,’ but it is never nothing.”

An embarrassed flush heated my cheeks. I knew I should be more honest with him, but it was so difficult when I never knew how he might react.

“I miss that part,” he added, rather grudgingly.

“But not anything else related to the infernus,” I said with a quiet laugh. A yawn cracked my jaw, and I debated whether I wanted to go back to bed for a few hours.

He rested his chin on his hand, gazing down at the line of demonic. “Maybe we need the infernus.”

I hesitated, trying not to hope. “Would you agree to be bound to one again?”

His tail flicked up, then thumped against the floor. “It is a good place to hide. It is easier. You need it to pretend to be a contractor.”

“But I’ll be able to use the commands on you.”

“I don’t like the command.” His glowing eyes slid across my face. “Because you think you need it.”

I bit my lower lip. Despite the logical and emotional parts of my brain knowing I could trust him, the subconscious part that had evolved for survival and survival alone didn’t care about trust. It saw a predator.

Amalia’s angry voice echoed in the back of my head, her claim that Zylas would end up hurting me one way or another.