THE HOUSE IS STIFLINGLY QUIET.

Hannah paces. She makes coffee. She checks her phone, and there's no message-only the cruel clock, ticking away the late evening and bringing with it an unknown future that scares her.

Rowan isn't much better. She's been worrying her fingers in her chair at the kitchen table for the last hour. She'd tried filling the space with conversation, but Hannah couldn't reciprocate in her state.

Presley's sleeping on the couch in the parlor and she's spent the last hour listening to his soft snoring while deep in thought.

The Raven. She saw it in her vision, laughing. She can't explain how, but she knows the bird won. She's replayed the sound in her mind one hundred times.

Alma Sinclair. The Raven. Laughing jeeringly.

He knows something they don't.

Hannah rises from her chair abruptly. "I have to do something."

She doesn't wait for a reply, rushing out of the kitchen, and Rowan follows close behind her, clearly needing to act just as much. Her anxiousness has morphed into finger-shaking trepidation because she's certain there's no coming back from what she's about to do. The clench in her stomach is telling her so, but she can't sit idle.

"What?" Rowan asks when they're halfway up the stairs.

"I'm going to help them." Hannah pushes the ajar door of Kane's bedroom, and the hinges creak as it slowly opens.

Rowan whispers, "How?"

The black dampener box sits on the crumpled sheets of the bed.

"By doing something really stupid."

The frame of the window shakes from the harsh wind that blows past the thin glass. There's a bird on the sill, squawking a grating tune. Hannah tries to not take that as an omen.

She places the box in front of her on the grey rug and pulls her legs underneath her, her back propped by the edge of her mattress.

She slowly opens the lid.

She tells herself that she has no choice. She reaches out to touch the thin chain.

Her stomach flips as she picks up the stone pendant. She knows with every fibre of her being that something will go terribly wrong if she doesn't turn to the demon who claimed to single-handedly beat fate.

The leaping ache in her heart when the necklace warms is harder to explain.

"I told him you'd get bored."

Her head is dizzy with how much she missed that subtle accent.

Valrus is standing not far away, leaning a hip against her desk, with books strewn across and Reid's letter folded neatly. He looks classically handsome with his wisps of curly black hair that touch the tips of his ears and forehead, beige trousers, and a white button-down tucked into a dark leather belt. He's in color. Because, of course, he is. He's probably ecstatic, thinking she's finally turned back to him.

"I thought you might have been..." Hannah whispers. "The box."

Valrus scoffs. "It wasn't pleasant. Dark. But I am still here." He glares at her. "Don't look so relieved."

Hannah lifts her chin. "I need your help, Val."

The smile that rises on his perfect face and the shiver that ascends her spine in response should have her tossing the necklace back into the box.

She doesn't.

She rises at his slow approach, her expression shuttered, and he is wickedly delighted.

Valrus stops once he's near enough to regard her uncomfortably. "You tossed me into a lake. Now you want my help?"

"You lied to me for four years."

"Why wouldn't I? I didn't trust you."

Hannah tries to hold back her anger, but Valrus is gasoline to her fiery rage. "I would have done anything for you."

She nears, close enough to touch, but she doesn't dare. This time he's the one who lifts his chin to try to appear composed, his silvery gaze hooded with suspicion. "You lied. You manipulated me! I had every right to toss you."

Valrus snorts. "And how terribly sad you were. How long until you were on your back for that mage?"

He didn't expect her slap, obviously. Blinking at her past dark lashes, his silvery gaze unreadable, Valrus's tongue runs along his bottom lip.

The backs of his fingers find her cheek, grazing, soft, and not calloused enough to catch on to her skin.

He rubs his thumb over her parted lips.

"No," Hannah gasps. She backs away despite the clench of heat in her belly and the rapid beat of her heart. She puts space between them, suddenly feeling impossibly suffocated.

She's never turned down Valrus's advances.

He lays a hand on the edge of the footboard at the end of the bed and stares at his fingers, thinking deeply. And Hannah has the inane urge to go to him and kiss the frown that's taken his perfect lips.

"I, uh, need your help." Nearing the desk, Hannah runs her fingertips over Reid's folded letter. "Kane's in trouble." She inhales, her throat constricting. "I had a vision."

"You're a seer?" Valrus is looking at her, clear disgust in the scrunch of his nose.

He didn't know? She never spoke about her visions aloud except with Kane. That means Valrus hadn't been with her, as she'd believed for all those long nights she'd yearned for his touch beyond rationality.

Hannah shrugs. "I think so."

Valrus snorts. "It explains why you're so terrible with magic."

Hannah glares.

Waving his hand dismissively, Valrus drawls, "Tell me this vision."

She does. He listens intently.

Hannah leans heavily against the edge of the desk. "The Raven. That vampire. I don't know. I can't get it out of my head that Alma will win. Somehow. This was a terrible mistake. I know it in my heart."

"If Fate has decided how it will end," Valrus says softly. "Then it's already written."

"That's bullshit. We changed fate."

"No. The outcome will always be the same. A wound sustained will heal, and fate, whatever is deciding all of this, will make sure it gets the ending it wishes, no matter what. Believe me in this, if nothing else."

Hannah does believe him. She wishes she didn't. "There must be a way to fight it."

The slow-rising smile Valrus gives her is pure wickedness, and it shouldn't hasten her heart with excitement. But it does. "You'd have to make the wound deep enough to leave a scar, one that fate cannot heal." He walks towards her languidly. "There will be repercussions. Fate doesn't like to be denied."

He comes to a stop within reach of her twitching fingers. She lifts her chin, steeling her gaze. "How?"

"Resurrection."

Hannah laughs humorlessly. "I'm not an idiot, Val."

Valrus hums, tilting his head. He reaches out, his fingertips grazing her collarbone forwardly. She can't bring herself to stop him. "Haven't you ever heard what happens when you squash a butterfly? Unforeseen consequences. I come back. Fate rewrites. I'll save your mage and the vampire. I've beaten its plans before. It's been trying to end me for centuries."

Hannah's heart is a wild beat. "If... How would it work?"

"You draw the rune and then invoke it with the necklace in the middle. Simple."

"Simple..." Hannah whispers shakily. Her hand slides along the desk, and her fingers graze the soft leather of her father's journal.

Valrus's soft palms cup her cheeks. "I want to be alive." He exhales shakily, and his silvery gaze holds a deep misery that wrenches her heart, leaving an ache. "I'm going mad, Hannah. I'll save whomever you wish. I'm tired of the games. I just want to be free of this torment. Will you trust me this once?"

Hannah loses herself in his stormy gaze. "Okay, I'll trust you."

The rune that Valrus instructs her to draw with chalk on the concrete floor of the basement is the same one she'd dreamt of dripping in blood.

Rowan is with Presley upstairs, both unaware that Hannah is about to do something supremely stupid, only a floor below.

She sits back. "Done."

Valrus crouches beside her. "It'll have to do." He doesn't react to her glare. He could have done it himself, but he'd made her, so he can keep his mouth shut about her lack of artistic skills.

"What's the payment?"

Valrus rises, walking around the edge of the rune with a careful eye, as if to check that every line is perfect. He ignores her question.

Hannah holds the thin chain in her hand tighter. "The payment for invoking, Val." Her heart is a rapid beat against her chest. "What will it be? I don't think dirt and a cinnamon candle is going to be enough."

"There is none," Valrus says coldly.

"There has to be."

"Not with this."

"You're lying."

Valrus snaps, "Do you want to save your mage?"

Hannah's shoulders slump, defeated. "Yes."

"Then, don't worry about later," Valrus says, walking back to her and crouching down. "Worry about now, Hannah. This rune will take all your magic. You will feel as if you cannot, but I'm telling you...you can." He smiles warmly, and her heart leaps. "Trust me."

Hannah takes in a soft breath. "Okay."

She inhales deeply and looks at the rune, placing the chain atop the swirling lines.

"Okay," she says again.

Awakening her magic isn't hard, having done it an hour prior in the parlor. She suspects that Valrus is assisting her somehow because the fatigue she's had since is nonexistent. She feels unstoppable, and it's unsettling.

This time, when the rune lightens with a bright purple, the lights in the basement cut out.

She flinches.

There's a warm breath against her ear, and then Valrus's softly accented voice whispers, "Don't stop. Give it everything you have."

Hannah pours all her novice power into forcing the rune to answer. But it doesn't. Not like the locator. She's climbing a mountain. Her head aches fiercely, her body wavers, and her hands begin to shake.

Fingers curl around her arms, and a body presses flush with her back. Her demon is there, twisting his dark musings against her ear. She'd need to be unconscious to not hang on every word. "Keep going. You're nearly there."

The purple glow is bright enough to cast shadows over the darkened room.

Her eyes widen, and from the rune's edges, red veins that thrum and glow reach out, slithering along the concrete and up the wall. Under the sulfur smell filling the room, there's a spicy and enticing aroma.

"I can't," Hannah strains, her vision speckling black. Her body is nearly limp. She's only kept from falling by Valrus's hold on her arms.

Valrus whispers harshly, "Don't stop."

"I'm not powerful enough!"

"You are," Valrus says, angrier. His tightening hold on her arms hurts nearly worse than her pounding headache. Then, he growls, "Fucking do it, Hannah."

She lets out a choked scream, shoving everything she has left of her magic into the rune.

Her eyes fight to stay open. She gasps in relief. The rune answered. But the power she cradles mentally is consuming. Instead of creating, it claws its way into her soul painfully.

She's never felt so exhausted in her lifetime. There's a sensation of ecstasy that flows through her. That twisted part of herself she keeps down is sated and giddy.

Valrus's chest heaves against her back. "I knew you could do it."

He shifts to settle beside her, cupping her cheek. In the mesmerizing storm of his eyes, she glimpses the warm affection he usually hides.

His fingers graze her cheek. "Finish it, and I will help them. I promise."

Tears spring from her eyes. She thinks he means that, and that genuineness hurts her more than any cruel words ever could. "I'm sorry."

Before he can stop her, his eyes widening in shock, Hannah switches the chain coiled on the glowing rune with the journal she'd hidden underneath her thigh when she'd sat down.

And envisions her father.

Strong hands lifted her as she giggled. His comforting smell, which she's never been able to describe, is only that it's his. And her last memory of him, his laugh, full-belly and lively with whatever fleeting happiness he'd felt before sending her away.

She shoves her desire to have her dad help Kane into the last remnants of the spell.

Then the rune dims.

The basement falls into darkness.

The red veins that have grown over the walls and floor darken.

"I'm so sorry." Hannah's tears fall unbidden. She grasps at Valrus's hair with desperate fingers, keeping him from pulling away.

He chokes on his breath, the hurt of her betrayal clear in his anguished eyes. Then, in a blink, his gaze hardens. He slaps her hard enough to send her to the floor.

She cries out, scraping her elbows and gasping at the blood that erupts in her mouth. She's too exhausted to fight, her body holding a deep weariness.

She doesn't blame Valrus for his rage.

He thought he was going to be free, and he nearly was.

But she'd betray him one thousand times over.

For Kane.

Valrus doesn't hit her again, like she's wincing for. He does worse. He begins to laugh himself breathless.

"I win! I've beaten you!" Hannah's chest heaves. "Why..." she whispers breathlessly, "Why are you laughing?"

Valrus's silvery eyes, which seem vibrant in the clinging shadows, are crazed. "There's always a payment, you dolt."

Hannah's stomach clenches with panic. "You said there wasn't."

Valrus laughs harder. "That was dark magic. Did you truly believe you could bring someone back to life with a mere snap of your fingers? You're not that stupid! It would take countless lives to make that spell come to fruition."

Hannah chokes on her despair. "What have you done!?"

"Not me, you."

"I haven't... killed anyone."

"The first rule of magic..." Valrus slumps against the edge of the table. His gaze softens in empathy when Hannah gasps, rending pain rushing through her like molten lava. "What is given must be taken."

The pain is suddenly blinding.

She can't hold back her screams.