Everly Sterling's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Everly Sterling had been tracking Arden Grimm for six blocks when he turned up the drive of a manor she had spent three years pretending did not exist. Black obsidian. Red glass. A gate that hummed when she stepped near it. She had come to this city to close a rift that widened every night, and she needed a demon's favor to do it, and eventually she needed Lucifer's favor to reach the library below Hell where a spell waited that could name the family she had never been told about. Arden was not supposed to be part of any of that. Arden was supposed to be her competition. "You're going to dinner," she said, catching his sleeve at the top step. "With him." "I am attending an intimate gathering with a Duke of Hell," Arden said. He did not slow. "Please do not ruin my posture. I have been practicing." He looked her over once and his mouth pulled tight. "Go home, Sterling." She went in with him instead. The dining room smelled like iron and orange peel. Azraxis sat at the head of a table long enough to seat twenty, alone, eating something that was still moving. He looked up at Everly and smiled without surprise. "Two demonologists. Better." He set down his fork. "I want a crown. Ivory. Twisted. It belonged to an angel who fell and kept his taste. Bring it to me and I sign whatever you like." A shadow cat with three yellow eyes slid off the sideboard and landed at his heel. "She goes with you," he told Arden. "I want to see how you work together." Outside, Arden rounded on her under a streetlight. "You should not have been able to walk through that gate. It reads intent. It reads power. You read as something I did not expect." His purple coat caught the wind. His eyes were furious. "What are you, Sterling." "Late for dinner," she said. "Same as you." She started walking. The cat padded after them, dissolving into smoke and reforming a pace ahead. She kept her hands in her pockets so he would not see them shake. Arden hated being surprised. Arden was surprised. That would cost her later. She thought about the claw marks on the wall on Sixteenth, eight feet up, and kept walking. They found the trail before dawn, in a records room Arden bribed his way into. The crown had a keeper. The keeper had a name. Arden read it aloud twice, because the first time he did not believe it. A fallen angel called Zereth held the Ash Crown, and had held it for longer than the city had existed. Arden closed the ledger. "Well," he said. "I have never robbed an angel before." He smiled at her like a man who had already decided to enjoy it. Everly did not smile back. She had a name now. She had a partner she did not want. And she had until Azraxis got bored.