Page 31 of Chaos Carnival

“Yeah, I think I noticed,” she mumbled.

My legs threatened to give out as another surge of poison hit. I braced against a nearby crypt, leaving traces of frost creeping across the stone. Time was running out faster than I'd hoped.

The crypts loomed around us, their faces a blur of carved angels and death masks. My vision swam, the poison making it hard to focus on any one thing for too long. I recognized some names through the haze, legends, artists, revolutionaries. All of them rotting beneath our feet while their influence lingered on.

“It's mesmerizing,” Tess breathed beside me, her grip tightening on my hand. We passed under the deepening gloom of a monument that seemed to devour what little light remained. The poison crawled beneath my skin, trying to peel it from my bones.

“Home to some infamous residents.” I kept my voice low, though the dead didn't much care for whispers. “Morrison, Chopin, Piaf... plus practitioners whose names have been eaten by time.”

The silence that followed pressed down heavier than the stone around us. Every few steps, Tess's pulse would spike. Her hand felt impossibly small in mine, like holding onto a bird's wing in a storm.

The space between us filled with everything we hadn't said, every dark impulse, every desperate need, every corrupted promise.

The moment balanced on a knife's edge. I wanted to push her, to see how far she'd go, but something held me back. Not yet. Not like this.

“Come on.” I growled the words, tugging her toward a shadowed corner where the oldest graves lay. “Grave dirt holds strength. The older the death, the stronger the influence.”

Tess knelt in the dirt, spreading the book's pages with trembling fingers. The ancient leather cover seemed to drink in what little moonlight filtered through the branches above. Shepulled out the rings—ancient metal bands that hummed with dark alchemy.

My legs barely held me up as she faced me. The poison had spread past my chest, tendrils of ice creeping up my neck. Our eyes met and locked, the gravity of what we were about to do pressed down on us both.

“Animas nostras conectimus, vinculum aeternum.” The first words of the ritual fell from her lips like drops of mercury, heavy and liquid.We connect our souls, an eternal bond.

She took my hand, sliding the cold metal onto my finger.

Power surged through the connection, raw and primal.

The ring burned, then settled into my skin like it had always been there.

My turn.

I fought to keep my hands steady as I placed the second ring on her finger. “Per annulum hunc, sanguinem et spiritum coniungo.”Through this ring, I join blood and spirit.Her voice never wavered as she spoke the words, though the dread was clear in her eyes. Each syllable bound us tighter, weaving our souls together strand by strand.

The final incantation hit like a physical force. “Duae animae, unum cor, una vita.”Two souls, one heart, one life.

The magic settled into place with an almost audible gasp, and suddenly I could feel her—not just next to me, but inside me. Part of me. Like she'd always been there, just waiting to be acknowledged.

First the curse, then the mate bond when I claimed her, and now this.

Three times bound, three times sealed.

Forever.

I should have felt guilty. Should have hated myself for the chains I'd wrapped around her soul. But looking at her in that moment, the echo of her heartbeat alongside mine, I couldn'tsummon an ounce of remorse. Only bone-deep gratitude that threatened to bring me to my knees.

My obsession with her from the moment I first saw her wasn't anchored in the curse or satisfying desire. It went deeper than that, ran through my blood like a fever I couldn't shake. Even before all these bonds, and despite the curse, something in me was drawn to her sharp wit and fierce spirit, to the way she challenged me at every turn.

And what flowed between us now ran deeper than magic, deeper than blood, deeper than any curse or bond could reach. It felt like coming home to a place I'd never known I was missing, like finding the missing piece of myself I hadn't realized was gone until she filled that void. Every shared breath, every moment spent in her orbit only confirmed what I'd suspected since the beginning—that Tess wasn't just another witch who'd crossed my path. She was my anchor in the storm I'd been weathering for centuries.

The air crackled. Something had changed. Arrived.

I felt the demon's presence first, an ancient darkness that made even my seraph power recoil. The grave dirt writhed as he materialized.

“Little runaway.” The demon's voice slithered through my skull. “Still carrying my mark, I see.”

My jaw clenched as the old bargain's price charred beneath my skin. I kept Tess behind me, though the protective gesture felt hollow against Baphomet's control.

“Not here for a social call.” The crystalline poison made my movements jerky, uncoordinated.

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