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His body stills. “Say it again.”

“I love you. My mate. My demon.”

“As I love you.”

Eren’s knot swells in me, locking us together, and I can’t help the scream of pleasure that rips from my throat. I’m filled, utterly claimed by him, and it’s as natural as our two hearts beating in time with one another.

The echoing, ragged gasp of our breathing fill the surrounding ether with the sound of our pleasure, and Eren draws another scream from me when his fangs find my throat and sink deep. I’m consumed by rolling, devastating waves of bliss, and it’s not long until my climax builds to a breaking point.

I come in a wash of pure, wrenching sensation that explodes from me into the ether. Eren tips over a moment later, sweat-slicked and wild beneath the pressure of my hands. With each pulse of combined release, I feel the bond between us grow stronger. It crests and expands, fills the entire universe with sparkling power.

It’s magick. Beautiful, soul-claiming magick.

When it breaks, I’m not afraid. I don’t doubt for a single moment that we’ll make it through.

Of course we will. We were always meant to.

Eren holds me close through every last moment of release. There—suspended somewhere out of space and time—the spell becomes as clear as day. Spreading around us in the ether, I can read its winding threads and knotted ends with as much ease as I can read my own name or the strange symbols in Ariana’s grimoire.

Closing my eyes, I whisper to the ether, to the Goddess.

“Please.”

Another world expands in front of me, within me. Magick I’ve never dared to imagine, power so immense it should terrify me.

It doesn’t, and it’s as natural as breathing to reach a mental hand out and touch those strands.

Each one falls into place guided by my magick. That power is laced faintly with notes of wood-smoke and spice, crisp parchment and the crackle of summer lightning. With it, I stitch together what’s been broken, and see so clearly how Ariana made herself and her successors conduits for the streams of magick to flow freely between realms. Like anything vast and ancient, the spots of decay need to be repaired, the webs woven tighter, the dust cleared away.

I’ll never do magick like this again.

Even as I continue to work at the spell, I’m well aware of that fact. In the long moments I exist here—lost somewhere in the ether of the Veil and the heart of the Goddess Herself—I savor the moments of pure, unimaginable beauty that can only be experienced once.

When the full picture has nearly knitted itself together, smoothing into an even weave once more, I pull myself back to survey my work.

The spell isn’t quite the same as it was before.

At the very end, the signature of it changes. The lines of magick unravel, the threads laying themselves out in front of me like they’re inviting me to weave my own ending. It’s as easy as reaching my hand forward as I throw my power out to meet them, instinctively tying them over and under and through until the last gasp of that power has found its new home.

I smile at my work, satisfied.

When the spell is complete, the ether recedes. The Veil shines with blinding silver light as Eren and I step out, back into the demon realm.

We’re strangely re-clothed, and I get the distinct, off-kilter feeling like no time at all has passed since we went in. It’s as if wherever we were existed in some time and space out of any kind of continuum we know. Behind us now, I don’t think I’d ever voluntarily go back to that place, and a settling certainty in me tells me we’ll never need to.

On shaky legs, we take our first steps into whatever waits beyond.

Chapter 44

Eren

For a few long moments, the Veil is entirely transparent.

Esme and her coven stand on one side, Allie and I and our demon court on the other.

Even without access to the same magick Allie has, the shift of power in the air is apparent. Peaceful, rather than unstable. Whole, rather than fractured. The Veil pulses with that power, indifferent to the machinations of mortals as ever, but with a sense of chaos tamed.

Beside me, Allie is glowing even more brightly than she did on the night of the Tithe. The color in her cheeks is still high from what just passed between us, the bite mark on her neck is crimson and distinct, and she’s never looked more glorious. All I want to do is throw her over my shoulder and carry her somewhere private.