Finally, he pulled up at my dingy building and cut the engine. I fumbled through my jacket pockets to find my keys and unlocked the barred security doors. He followed me to the third floor and waited as I unlocked my apartment and stepped inside.

“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll make sure we weren’t followed, then come check on you.”

I nodded.

Searching my face, he gave my shoulder another brief squeeze. “You’re okay, Robin.”

“Y-yeah.”

I shut and bolted the door behind him, then stumbled into the living room. Curled up on the sofa, Socks lifted her head to peer at me. Amalia’s door was shut, no light shining under it. She wasn’t home.

I kicked my shoes off and walked unsteadily into my room. My jacket fell to the floor in the doorway as I pushed it off my arms. Stopping a few feet from my bed, I stared blankly. My fingers ached and I realized I was clutching the infernus again.

Zylas?

The pendant vibrated under my hand. With a crimson flare, he appeared in front of me.

My gaze snapped to his face, and his to mine. For a moment, neither of us moved—then he was reaching for me. His hands passed over my cheeks and shoulders, cold sparks of his magic prickling my skin as he probed for unseen damage to my fragile human innards.

My hands were on him, running over his arms, searching for injuries. Other than the scuffs on his armor from being thrown into the pavement too many times, he seemed fine.

Except he wasn’t. He couldn’t be. He’d been bound into a contract with our enemy. Even if the magic had somehow failed, he’d lived one of his nightmares today.

My hands shook and I gripped his arms. The urge to collapse against him was almost too strong, but I pushed back. Stumbling to the bed, I sank onto the edge of the mattress before my legs gave out. My hand crept to the infernus again. I didn’t know when or how Zylas had gotten it out of the summoning circle.

I crushed the disc in my fingers. Claude had said a contract couldn’t be transferred, but what if …

I squeezed my eyes shut. Daimon, hesychaze.

Light flashed and the pendant vibrated. My eyes popped open as Zylas burst back out of the infernus, appearing almost on top of me with his eyes blazing.

“Vayanin!”

“I had to make sure,” I whispered. “What if our contract was broken? What if …”

What if the only thing that connected us had been severed?

His anger faded, but his jaw didn’t loosen. A muscle jumped in his cheek as he stared down at me. Then he dropped to his knees, pushing between my legs. His arms went around my waist, pulling me into him, and he buried his face against my side.

Frozen in place, I sat on the bed with my demon holding me. Hugging me. Arms encircling me, holding tight. Face pressed into the soft spot just above my hip.

My brain fizzed uselessly. Never before had Zylas hugged me. Caught me when I was falling, carried me, picked me up, hauled me around … but not an embrace. He’d touched me gently, fiercely, angrily, protectively, curiously … but never like this.

Never like he needed to be close to me.

My arms clamped around his head and shoulders, and I curled over him, my nose in his hair, my knees squeezing his sides. I hugged him with my whole body as emotion filled my chest to bursting—relief, despair, lingering terror, and a hot, swooping feeling I couldn’t name and didn’t want to think about.

In a way I’d never felt before, his strength surrounded me—his arms banded around my waist, his muscular shoulders under my hands, the hardness of his torso between my legs. But at the same time, I could feel vulnerability in him like I never had before. And that made my arms tighten, made me pull him closer.

We held each other like that, and I had no idea how much time had passed before his grip on my sweater finally relaxed. I untangled my fingers from his hair and lifted my cheek from his head.

“I thought they would kill you.”

I stilled at his husky whisper.

He pushed his face into my side. “I thought they would hurt you and kill you and I would be trapped in the circle. I would not be able to protect you. I would have to watch you die.”

He raised his head. His eyes burned, but I couldn’t begin to decipher the emotion in them.

I brushed a tangled lock of hair off his forehead. “You saved me. You … you slashed Claude open.” Shock rippled through me at the realization. “Is he—do you think he’s dead?”

“It was not a killing wound. I cut deep to make him bleed but not die, so the others would stay to help him.”

“But how did you do it? How could you attack him after he bound you in a contract?”

His gaze flicked between my eyes. His hands, resting on my hips, tightened until his fingers dug in, then relaxed again.

“It did not work,” he said abruptly. “The vīsh did not bind me.”

“But Claude’s infernus worked on you. Doesn’t that mean the contract was a success?”

He said nothing, and a strange shiver danced down my spine. “Zylas? Why didn’t it work?”

He stared at me, an intent observation I now recognized as his attempt to hear more thoughts than what I was sharing.

“I bound myself to you. Only you, vayanin.”

I couldn’t quite breathe. Still kneeling in front of me, he looked away from my confused stare. His hands slid from my hips to my legs, powerful fingers spanning the tops of my thighs.

Swallowing against the tightness in my throat, I slowly pushed off the bed and knelt on the floor with him. My hands went to his shoulders, then I pulled myself against his chest and wrapped my arms around his neck, my face buried against his throat.

I’d fallen into him. Leaned on him. Clung to him. But I’d never hugged him before either.

At first, he didn’t move. Then his arms slid around me and closed tight, powerful muscles pressing into my sides and back, so strong I could never break free. And I pressed even closer because, for maybe the first time, no tiny voice in my head bleated in fear that a scary demon had me trapped.

No part of me, no baser instinct or cowardly gut reaction, was the slightest bit afraid of his strength. Because I knew, deep in the darkest and most doubtful corner of my skeptical soul, that he would never hurt me.

A loud clatter sounded from the front room.

I jumped in fright, and Zylas shot to his feet, hauling me up with him.

“Yeah, right,” a loud voice exclaimed sarcastically. “You just happened to drive Robin home? Suuuure.”