He lifted her tight-held fist and pressed her knuckles to his throat so she could feel the vibration of his words, feel the longing pulse that sought to match itself to hers. “I love you, Alyce. I said it before, and I’ll keep saying it. I’ll say it in dead languages and I’ll sign it in blood and ichor, and I’ll keep this damn demon, so even if it takes forever until you believe me, I will still be saying I love you.”
In the shifting darkness around them, the moment stretched out, until even the eternity in which they were trapped seemed about to sob out its indrawn breath.
“I do believe you,” she whispered. “I do.”
He rummaged in his pocket and withdrew the rivet. She smiled and unfurled her clenched hand to brush her thumb across his lips. She kept her gaze fixed on his as he slid the ring over her heart finger.
He leaned down to kiss her, slowly and gently, never mind the swirling shadows of a hungry hell and the furious djinn-man.
She tilted her face up to meet his kiss, and the shadows stilled, all the powers of darkness unable to rise between them.
But in the stillness, the delusions thrown by the unstable portals cleared. Thorne burst into view, sword high.
Alyce cried out, and Sid wheeled toward the djinn-man, yanking free two of the boning knives from behind her back.
Thorne’s eyes widened, then narrowed, and he roared out a challenge. Sid never made a sound as he raised the knives in a cross to catch the falling sword.
Face-to-face with the djinn-man, he stared into the yellow-ringed eyes. There was no place for the Bookkeeper philosophy of dispassionate observation here. He would never again back away from the bonds between him and the league, between him and Alyce, who was the pale unwavering light in his world.
Thorne strained against him, but this close to hell, the eternal darkness was a torrent of unfettered etheric energy that overwhelmed both their demons, so they fought only muscle to muscle, fury to fury.
The djinn-man did have the bigger sword, though, and he bore down with an incisor-clenched grin. “I’ve killed humans and angels and djinn. I’ve never killed a talya or a Bookkeeper. Your head will be a fine oddity for my collection.”
“Who’s the curiosity here? You’re a djinn-man bearing an abrasax, an angel’s blessed weapon. There’s never been a record of such a contradiction.” Sid locked the two slender knives around the heavier blade and refused to yield to sword or words. “Alyce is mine, but have you considered that maybe you are meant for something else as well?”
For the barest instant, the weight of the sword eased; then Thorne’s face twisted. “Once I kill you, I bet she forgets you before the next night falls. But maybe I’ll spare your league one prayer when I wield this cursed weapon over the ahaˉzum.”
“Bet me then. Double or nothing.”
The shifting realities of the verge never quite settled, but Sid focused all his fear for the chances he’d almost lost. And still that fear was nothing compared to the love that had found him. With a furious upward shove of both slender knives against the sword, he sent the djinn-man stumbling back.
Alyce strode into the fray. Flickers of djinni yellow and blue-white angel fire played along the shine of her black leather. She had two more knives in her hands, and Sid caught his breath in dread—and in delight that she was his. Before he could shout a warning, she brought the knives slicing down.
Though the blades passed nowhere near the djinn-man, the darkness behind him gaped wide in a view too muddled for Sid to decipher.
Whatever Thorne saw made him twist from the half-open portal. But in the force of ether swirling away from Alyce, he lost his balance.
The portal swallowed, and Thorne was gone.
Sid whirled. “Where—?”
Alyce sheathed the two knives with a doubled hiss of steel. “Gone.”
As if that was enough. Sid supposed, it was, for now. “Dare we hope the tenebraeternum will tear him to bits, and the sword too?”
“That I wouldn’t bet on.”
He sighed. “Fane will be pissed the sword is gone.”
She bit her lip. “But not you?” Her tone wavered between the ghostly girl she’d been and the warrior woman standing before him.
They had time to learn each others’ secret pasts and make sense of their shared future. He gathered her close to slide the knives back along her spine. “We’ll have troubles, no doubt, but I have you. And you have me. Can you get us out of here?”
She held out her empty hand to display the ring. “With you at my side, yes.”
“I’ll be here, always.” He took her hand.
After a moment, her little smile appeared. “Maybe someday I won’t keep making you say it.”
He grinned in reply. “But I like to.” He dipped his head again to kiss the red crescents her teeth had left on her lower lip. “Mine to love, and be loved in return. Two halves of the perfect equation. That’s the symballein bond. Not a mystery to be unraveled, but a promise.”
When he kissed her again, the verge peeled back and spat them into the atrium in a wash of etheric winds.
They stumbled across the glass-strewn floor. Archer stood atop a concrete planter, one hand braced on the palm tree, the other on his hip. He scowled at them. “About time.”
Sid lifted one eyebrow. “Not too late, I hope.”
Archer jumped down from the planter. “They ran, most of them. The rats. We killed a couple. Which leaves us with some awkward bones and drifts of grave dust to explain if we don’t vanish right now. And we can’t all pull that trick you did.” He peered at Alyce. “Nice trick, by the way.”
She nodded, distracted. “There was a blue child. …”
“Sera cleared the atrium and found one hidden Cookie Monster. Everyone’s out. The talyan are hiding in plain sight, mixed with the crowd and draining malice to calm everyone. There’s so much confusion, I think we can pull this off. And you two?”
“Not confused at all,” Alyce said.
Sid pulled her, unresisting, into his arms and kissed her. He couldn’t stop himself. He’d never get enough of the innocence, of the temptation, of Alyce.
When they paused to catch their breath, Archer was heading out through the giant hole blown in the side of the atrium. Police cruisers, the still-spinning Ferris wheel, and a lone string of lights dangling from the ruined ceiling provided the only illumination.
“I was confused,” Sid admitted to her. “I thought I wasn’t allowed to want; that I could only watch from the outside. But if a demon can love …”
He brushed a lock of her dark hair from her eyes. He stared down into the clear depths … and saw his love reflected back at him.
He cleared his throat. “Can I say it again?”
She touched his cheek—the ring glinting in the corner of his vision before her fingers slipped down to rest against the quickening pulse in his throat—and smiled. “Forever.”
EPILOGUE
Nim brushed tears from the corners of her eyes, smearing her mascara. “You’re so beautiful in white.”
“Brides are always beautiful,” Jilly said reasonably.
Sera added a happy sniff of her own. “The first symballein wedding.”
Alyce turned slowly in front of the mirror. The neckline, wavy with lace, lay low across her collarbone. Her reven, quiescent, was decoration enough—except for the ring, of course. She held out her hand to admire the rivet. A thread of amethyst light, like embedded filigree, chased through the steel and matched the purple ribbons in her braided hair.