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“Ready,” he says, resolved.

He pulls me into his arms, a bridal carry like the one he used to bring me here on the night of the Tithe. I settle comfortably into the iron-steady embrace and nuzzle my face into the warm space between his neck and shoulder.

The faintest hint of a purr rumbles in answer.

A moment later, we’re in the Veil's ether. It’s as topsy-turvy as it was last time. What’s up or down, what’s solid earth or dizzying nothingness, there’s no way to tell. It only last a few seconds, but each one of those seconds feels like its own eternity before we step through the other side and back into the human realm.

I’m clinging to Eren when we exit, eyes squeezed tightly shut, but I can still mark the exact moment we step out.

The magick here is different.

Not just because none of the bitter, cloying power of the failed bargain lingers in the air, but because it only takes a moment to realize I no longer have access to the magick that’s come so easily for me over the past couple of days. No tingling along my skin, no restless power fighting to be set free. If I raised my palms to summon a sphere of witchlight, I already know I’d come up empty.

The realization hits me like a punch to the gut.

I don’t know why I thought it would be different. I don’t know why I thoughtIwould be different now that I’m here, but knowing that I’m still as powerless as ever in this realm sets me immediately off balance.

Eren puts me down, and my boots sink into the soft grass. The surrounding clearing is empty, the dais removed, no sign of the coven’s presence here other than the slight magick hum of the wards they must have all around this place to keep mundane folk away.

“Are you alright?” he asks me, keeping a hand at my waist and looking me up and down.

“Yes. It’s just… different here. I don’t think I can access my magick like I can in your realm.”

He looks troubled at that. “Do you think you’ll need to access it? If you’re going to be walking around unprotected and—”

I cut him off with a soft squeeze to his bicep. “I’ll be alright. I lasted twenty-six years in this realm without it; I think I’ll be okay for another few hours.”

Eren nods, but still seems unsettled. He rolls his shoulders and flares his wings, breathes deep and closes his eyes like he’s testing the air, the magick.

“It’s going to feel different, opening and moving through portals in this realm.”

“Why?”

Eren thinks for a moment. “Back in the demon realm the portal magick comes easier. Probably something about our natures and being intrinsically linked to the magick of that realm.”

“What will it be like?” I ask, glancing back behind us to the gently pulsing light of the veil.

“Nothing that bad,” he assures me. “But not as seamless as portaling you back in the demon realm.”

“Tell me how it works.”

He spends the next couple of minutes explaining ley lines and centers of power.

Back in the days before the first witch’s bargain, demons would travel along ley lines to crossroads, where people and power flow over and around each other. They were most powerful near settlements, along popular thoroughfares, and in places like these woods, where the Veil is near. Over time, those spots became known to humans. Legends and cautionary tales sprang up around them, but there were always a few souls brave or desperate enough to try their luck with a bargain.

“The only other variety of demon magick beyond portaling,” Eren explains, “is in our abilities to make bargains. For a fair exchange, we can conjure wealth or good fortune or even love of a sort, and a soul can buy a great number of things when it’s bargained.”

“And what happened to the souls? After the bargain expired?”

“They were reaped,” he says, with a shudder. “Instead of going wherever the Goddess intends for them to go after death, the nature of the bargains transferred their soul magick through the Veil to the demon realm, to feed it and keep it stable.”

Terrible, costly magick. Even mundane folk have a small measure of magick inside of them. Soul magick, it’s called, the spark of life we all possess, the thing that makes us who we are. And to trade it for what? Temporary, mortal glory? I close my eyes and try not to imagine the horror of it.

“The demons who made the bargains were affected as well,” Eren continues. “There’s a price to pay for reaping a soul, one I would not wish on anyone. Magick like that is… caustic. It wears a soul thin, takes away some sense of decency and light that can’t ever be replaced.”

I hear the words he doesn’t say.

If we fail, demons may have to return to that. They may have to reap human souls at the price of their own, for their very survival, despite the cost.