Nulla eases back in his chair, even though his fingers itch to keep their hold on the delicate pendant.

Poe’s eyes are on the iridescent string of silver laid out on his. His gaze which had been wary and impatient is glued to it, his pupils blown so wide that there is no hint of irises remain. His hands grip the sides of his chair tight enough blackened veins pop on the back of his hands.

‘Poe,’ Nulla calls Poe’s attention back to him.

Poe peels his eyes off it and looks at him. He unclenches his hands and stretches his fingers, each digit rigid, a fine tremor running through them before he shakes it off. He scoots his chair closer to the desk and rests his arms on it. He leans closer to the pendant.

‘This isn’t from here,’ Poe says. ‘I haven’t traced a soul in a long time. Who does it belong to?’

‘An old friend of mine.’

‘A Celestial?’

Nulla shakes his head. ‘No. She was a Seer, born of the Veil.’

‘Was?’

Nulla doesn’t answer. ‘Are you able to do it?’

Poe is a first-generation mediator. His mother was, and still is, a demon that deals in soul contracts. Demons like her offer a person something in exchange for their essence or entire soul as well as other things that hold power over a human. Like the name of their first born, or access to their body. The deals were endless, but price is always costly.

Though Poe doesn’t have the same ability as his mother, his inherited power is firmly linked to souls. He has the unique ability to trace them.

Poe glances back at the pendant. ‘The item is strong enough, so yeah. As long as she’s alive, I can trace it.’

‘Then, I’d appreciate your help in this.’ Nulla holds his gaze. ‘And your discretion.’

After a moment Poe nods.

He reaches for the pendant but stops short of touching it. He closes his eyes.

The sound of the busy market continues all around them muted only slightly by the stall’s walls and occasionally someone brushes right up against the stall’s panel.

Above the pendant, Poe’s fingers twitch and go still. He sucks in a deep breath through his nose. Then he stops breathing.

Nulla tunes out the noise around them and homes in on Poe. He picks up the acceleration of Poe’s heartbeat. Behind his close eye lids, his eyes roll. He is entirely still apart from his fingers.

Slowly, as they hover over the pendant, they move. One fingertip and then the other, like someone tentatively finding the right keys of a piano to a song they’re unfamiliar with.

Then he brushes his index finger over it.

Poe’s eyes fly open and he gasps in a lungful of air. He jerks up so fast he knocks his chair to the floor.

Nulla grabs his arm before he tumbles over it, steadying him and peers into his pale face. ‘Poe?’

Poe pinches the bridge of his nose, forehead wrinkling. When he gets his bearings back, the look he gives Nulla is cautious. ‘Its soul is in the Fade.’

For a moment Nulla feels everything around him white out, aware only of the pulse of the blood in his veins.

She’s alive.

Nulla steps back from Poe.

She’s alive.

Evangelos had been telling the truth. She’s alive and she’s in the Fade.

And then it sinks in.

Why would she be in the Fade?

‘Nulla,’ Poe says, ‘you said it’s of the Veil? You said she was a friend? Are you sure this pendant belongs to the soul you’re looking for?’ His eyes drift back to the pendant and there’s a subtle shift in his body language. As if he doesn’t want to get any closer to it.

‘Why?’

‘Because its twisted. It doesn’t feel like something from the Veil. It’s dark.’

He remembers Darsha’s smile, a wide thing full of mischief, and eyes that shone with the power of her sight.

‘Like a demon?’ Nulla asks.

Poe shakes his head. ‘No. Not like a demon. This is something else.’ He seems to hesitate then. ‘It’s dying soon.’

Nulla picks up the pendant with the same care he’d used when laying it on the table and slips it back into his pouch. Slow and methodical, he tucks it back beneath his hoodie.

‘I need to reach her before she does,’ he says. It’s calm and matter of fact.

‘It’s in the Fade,’ Poe reminds him, ‘you might be Fallen but you haven’t descended yet. Going there is a stupid. Whatever this person was when you knew her, that isn’t what she is now.’

He’s not wrong. For Nulla, who has been sleeping on and off throughout the centuries, staving off descent—shutting up those whispers that even now feel as if they’re just behind his ear, enticing—stepping foot inside the Fade is a risk that could undo all his hard work in one fell swoop.

But he can feel the need pressing in on him. To find her. To see her. To protect her.

The way he couldn’t before.

‘Thank you, Poe,’ he says, ‘but I need to see for myself.’ The pouch feels warm against his skin. Or maybe he’s just hyperaware of the life it’s linked to once again and it’s making him imagine things. ‘She died on the day I was cast out, you see. I couldn’t help her.’

How can he explain how different things were back then? How, unlike the new Celestials, the Prīmus shared a different connection. Like they’d all been carved from the same piece from beyond the Veil, how one of them getting hurt echoed across planes. How Darsha, a being completely different to them but no less powerful, had brought a levity to their existence. Had been a confidante, a trusted person, a sister. Though they hadn’t been connected in the same way as he is connected to the Prīmus, her loss had felt like being robbed of life.

The pain of losing her before his very eyes, unable to lift a finger to stop it, had been as excruciating as having his core torn from him.

‘I’ll need help tracking it,’ he says, ‘the Fade is too big and by the sounds of it, I don’t think I have very long.’

Poe holds his gaze for a moment, then he sighs. ‘I can’t help you there but… well. Guess you’re in luck today. I have something. I was saving it for the dawn auction.’ He turns around and pulls on one of the wires connected to the light inside the stall. He yanks on it, and the light switches off. ‘Come on. Let’s do this quick.’

Nulla nods and follows Poe out of the stall. They weave their way to the very back where a set of stairs is tucked away so well most people miss it.

Unlike the rest of the place there are no lights here and as they make their way down, they don’t speak. Ahead of him, he can easily see Poe in the darkness. There’s a stiffness to his movements, a tension in him that has been there since Nulla laid the pendant out on his table.

It’s set Poe on edge and Nulla thinks about how bad whatever is attached to that soul must be to unsettle a demon’s descendent to this extent.

In all the years he’s been frequenting the Night Market, he’s never explored this section of the warehouse, though he has a fair idea of where it will lead.

As they descend beyond the ground floor, the sound of water becomes louder, blanketing the sounds from the Night Market and the busy area. It echoes, the same way it might echo in a cave and the air around them becomes colder.

When they step off the staircase, they come face to face with a metal barred door. Beyond it Nulla sees what seems to be compartments resembling jail cells.

Poe takes a set of keys out and quickly unlocks it.

‘I haven’t been here before,’ Nulla says, looking around as they step through and Poe locks the door behind them again.

The ceiling is quite high and curved, as if it were an old archway. The first two cells closest to the door are empty.

‘You wouldn’t. Not unless you’ve been involved in auctions,’ Poe says, ‘this is where they keep the auction items.’

A low growl sounds in the pitch-black space. It comes from the very end.

‘Only regular auction suppliers have access,’ Poe says as he leads them forward.

As they pass, some cells contain huge crates, others hold things hidden behind tarp. In one there’s a caged bird that stares with fixed black eyes as they walk by.

‘All of this is from the Boundary?’

Poe tilts his head in acknowledgement but doesn’t say anything else.

Strictly speaking, it’s prohibited to take things from the different realms and bring them over, that includes the Boundary. But at the Night Market anything goes.

Besides, it hasn’t been Nulla’s responsibility to enforce those things for a very long time. That is what the New Celestials are here to do.

They stop outside the last cell on the right and when Nulla peers he’s a little surprised.

‘This is from the Fade,’ he says and turns to look at Poe.

Poe twirls the ring of keys around his fingertips. ‘One of my foragers got it out. It was hurt. Fixed it up and thought it’d make a good auction item. Even if no one uses it for hunting there’ll be plenty who’ll want it for their spells and curses.’

Inside the cell, snout pressed between the bars and teeth bared, is a Hellhound.

Hellounds are born from the shadows of the Fade, and they can tear a person limb from limb. They have a reputation for not letting go once they latch on, and they consume that person entirely. Their soul included.

This one has its red eyes locked on them. It easily comes up to Nulla’s waist and it’s body is tall and sturdy, long legs built for speed and a chest that holds the majority of its strength. Its ears are thin and stick straight up and entirely covered in short white fair that has a satiny sheen to it.

It’s a beautiful animal. It’s also an unmatched tracker.

He can only imagine the money Poe would have made tonight on this Hellhound alone.

Poe looks at him. ‘Let it smell the pendant, and it’ll lead you straight to the soul.’

Nulla nods. ‘Thank you.’

* 

Séraphin shivers at the feeling of the demon’s neck snapping in his hand. Its long body hangs loose from his grip, life gone.

He flicks his wrist and turns his back on it before it lands.

The progress he’d made from the fortress toward the gate into the Boundary has slowed. His energy is flagging and there’s nothing drinkable until he’s made it out of this realm.

So much of it has been spent on the littered bodies he’s left in his wake. He can feel their tainted blood smeared around his mouth where he’d torn their throats out with his teeth. It’s soaked into his banyan and some of it is starting to dry. It’s under his nails too. He tsks as he tries to flick some out from beneath them.

He continues on, just slower. His eyes track everything around him. 

The air here is still and acrid. Not so much as a ripple unless something is moving toward him. It’s the kind of silence that plugs the ears.

He skirts around a rusted, dented red car. The path is littered with it.

The fortress he’s left behind is like everything else he’s seen in the Fade, like it’s been dropped here out of nowhere. Cars, giant wrecked ships, even dead horses. They take up the centre of a valley that narrows to a point in the direction of the gate. The valley is formed by something that initially resembles mountains under blanket of darkness, but when he’d looked closely, he’d realised its surface was that of black barren rock resembling cooled volcanic lava. They almost blend in with the surrounding night.

A night that is closer to its end than he’d like. There aren’t places to go to ground. The valley opens up into an unending sprawl of land beyond the fortress and all of it looks like more of this. The fortress itself had been full of holes so no point in going back to shelter from the daylight.

It won’t be long now.

His skin is getting tighter and tighter, his muscles shrinking further as his body cannibalises every last bit of energy from him.

He’s going to gorge himself when he returns.

There’s a loud caw. A warning call.

He glances up to see his crow gliding high above his head.

Séraphin sucks in an irritated breath through his nose and reaches for it through their bond.

He closes his eyes and when he opens then again, he sees the narrow cone of the alley spread out beneath him. From up high the shadowed valley looks like an impossible maze made up of all sorts of structures.

There. Multiple spots that look like deeper pockets of shadow are moving in his direction. 

Unlike the ones he’s left behind him, these are faster and moving with purpose. Toward him.

Ah.

These must be the ones with an actual vested interest in keeping him here.

He counts at least twelve.

‘Keep an eye on them, mon cherie,’ he says and grits his teeth.

The prickling of the oncoming sunrise intensifies.

No light has touched the sky yet.

He clenches his teeth, fangs grinding into his lower teeth as his bloodlust intensifies. His strength is waning, and the sun is coming.

He’s going to make sure he’s not here to see it.

Author's Note:
1. Translation: my sweet