The grove had gone strangely quiet.
I was barefoot, wrapped in a black silk shroud that I hoped looked reverent and not just slutty in a dramatic way. It clung in all the wrong places and smelled faintly of my perfume chest. I knelt in front of the oldest, most crooked pear tree we could find—the one with moss on its spine and roots like clutching hands—and tried not to look like a blasphemous idiot.
Hands clasped tight around a string of mismatched beads I'd stolen off a nun once. Or maybe a merchant's wife. Honestly couldn't remember. I closed my eyes and bowed my head.
"Um," I murmured. "Supreme Deity of the Third Heaven… or, y'know, whoever's on shift up there."
The breeze didn't answer.
"I think you lost one," I said, whispering just loud enough for the bark to hear. "He fell. Literally. Wings and all. He's down here. With us."
I took a deep breath and squinted one eye toward the sky. "So if there's, like, a scroll or a pamphlet or even a divine 'What To Do When You Misplace A Celestial' guidebook… that'd be helpful."
Still nothing.
I sighed. "Look, I don't usually pray unless there's rope involved. But this one seems serious. He's got that look. Like a kicked puppy with guilt complex. Just tell us what to do."
A moment passed.
Then—crack. Thunder split the sky somewhere over the next hill, sudden and sharp like a divine backhand across the clouds.
I blinked. "Oh."
Behind me, the Dragon didn't even flinch. "Here we go."
I glanced over my shoulder. "You think that was a response?"
"I think," he said flatly, "the deities of the Third Heaven are notoriously vengeful. And very dramatic."
"Right," I muttered. "Well… fuck."
Another thunderclap, closer this time. Less crack, more wrath.
The Dragon turned his massive head slightly toward me. "Mind your language."
I sank lower to the roots and whispered, "We're already in trouble."
He nodded. "Then do try not to add heresy to the docket."
Saya let out a long, dramatic sigh and slumped back onto her heels. "Okay. Fine. We need Gregory."
The Dragon groaned softly. "Oh dear."
"But," I added, standing and brushing the dirt from my knees, "he won't just pop up like a horny meerkat. It has to be a proper summoning. Ritual. Theatricality. You know, his thing."
The Dragon made a strangled noise in his throat. "You mean your thing."
"Semantics."
I grabbed a stick and knelt again, dragging it carefully through the soft soil. "Pentagram. Circle. Intent." I squinted. "Pointy bits."
"You just drew five and a half sides," the Dragon noted, peering down like a disapproving schoolteacher. "That's not a pentagram. That's a poorly planned hexagon with commitment issues."
I waved him off. "I started a sixth. I noticed the mistake. I fixed it."
"It still has a tail."
"So do you. Don't be a hypocrite."
He grumbled, but fell silent as I stepped to the center, undid the knot of my silk shroud, and let it slip to the grass.
The angel, sitting nearby on a flat rock and trying to commune with a beetle, gasped.
The Dragon immediately swept one vast wing sideways like a curtain. "Nope. Eyes away, glowing boy. That's not for your category."
I raised my arms and stretched out luxuriously in the center of the pentagram, laying back in what I assumed was a suitably slutty ritual position. "Alright. I'm in position. You do the incantation."
"What."
"You heard me."
"You want me," the Dragon said, voice rising, "to perform a demonic summoning ritual while you lie there naked, glowing like an invitation to sin, in a malformed symbol of power that looks like it was drawn by a drunk goat?"
"Exactly."
He closed his eyes. "You are a plague."
"Improvise," I said sweetly. "Just make sure it's Gregory. Not some random horned pervert. I don't have the energy to wrestle a chaos imp tonight."
The Dragon inhaled. Slowly. Then, with all the weary grace of a beast who had once terrified empires, he lowered his snout toward the dirt.
Then he started mumbling—low and guttural—in that old High Draconic of his. Real ancient stuff. The kind of syllables that sound like they're chewing through the air. Everything in the grove went still. The temperature spiked. My skin prickled.
I furrowed my brow from my very spiritual nude position in the dirt. "Hey. I heard that word."
He didn't even pause. Just kept chanting and grumbling between lines like he was ordering doom with extra spice. I caught the swear again.
"Don't call me a backside-blistering womb-thief," I snapped. "That one I know."
"It fits," he muttered through clenched teeth.
"Sulphur. Ash. All that foreplay," I grumbled to myself. "Never just pop and done."
Behind me, I heard poor Caelion gasp like he'd seen a tit fall off heaven.
And then it happened. A seam tore open in the middle of the grove, like the world had a corset and someone was pulling the laces loose from the inside. Light oozed out—thick, velvet red. Not holy. Not even close. This was bordello light. Dripping with suggestion.
The first thing through was a leg. Long, red, smooth as sin. Then hips. Tail. Horns. The slow strut of someone who knew they were being watched and liked it that way.
Not Gregory.
Oh no.
Definitely not Gregory.
It was her. Her. The Succubus.
The moment I saw her, I groaned and slapped my hand over my face. "Oh gods. I knew it."
She stood there naked, red as heatstroke and twice as smug. Skin like wine-stained pearls, curls piled up like she'd just stepped out of some orgy and couldn't be bothered to wipe the glitter off. Her eyes locked onto me, all amused and exasperated.
"Peach," she said, voice like candle wax over velvet. "What in the sticky pits of lowborn hell are you doing?"
I just waved vaguely at the situation. "Botched summoning," I said. "He did it." I didn't even need to look to know the Dragon was sulking nearby.
The Succubus sauntered over, hips swaying like a metronome set to debauchery. "This isn't one of your usual summoning poses," she said, giving me a once-over. "You look like a sacrificial tart."
"Thanks," I muttered. "Exactly the aesthetic."
"And who's the fainting choirboy?" she asked, spotting Caelion halfway behind a tree and shaking like a leaf in a brothel breeze.
"Long story."
She crouched beside me, grinning like a goddess of bad ideas. "You've clearly been unsupervised."
Then she booped me on the nose—booped me—and said, "Let Auntie Sin help."
**
The Succubus didn't wait for permission. She leaned in, all heat and hunger, and kissed me.
Gods, she kissed me.
I squealed. A little. Okay, a lot. And moaned too, because my body's a traitor and her mouth should be illegal. Warm and wicked and tasting like cinnamon, honey, and regret.
"Not now!" I gasped, pushing at her bare shoulders. "Please. I have a problem to solve!"
She pulled back with that maddening smirk. "I am the solution, darling."
"No, really—look." I pointed across the grove, still panting, lips tingling. "Him."
The Succubus followed my finger to where Caelion was frozen behind the tree, one glowing hand over his eyes, the other trembling like he'd just seen two kittens fighting in oil.
"He just fell," I said. "Like—actually fell. From wherever they fall from. He's in the middle of a full-blown existential crisis, and you… you do existential crises like nobody else."
Her gaze lifted slowly, eyes narrowing in intrigue. "Oh," she said, voice silkier than sin itself. "A challenge."
Caelion made a soft hiccuping noise. "I… I don't think—"
"Oh, sweetheart," the Succubus cooed, rising to her full glorious, unholy height. "Don't think. Just… feel."
The Dragon muttered behind his wing, "Oh dear gods, this is going to get educational."
***
The Succubus didn't wait for consent.
She sauntered over to Caelion, hips doing that slow, hypnotic sway like gravity bent differently around her. He backed up a step—just one—before she caught his hand. Delicate. Gentle.
Then she pulled.
Not hard. Just enough to reel him in like a stunned fish. His wings twitched. His breath caught.
And then he was pressed against her—bare skin to bare divinity—his golden glow bleeding into her scarlet like candlelight drowned in wine. She curled one leg around his like it was a dance and looked down at him with a smile that could unmake kingdoms.
The air shifted.
Not exploded. Not cracked. Just… tingled. Like the whole grove had been plucked like a harp string tied to the spine of the world.
And then, blink, they were gone.
A soft pop of displaced air. A curl of sulphur that smelled faintly of roses and scorched modesty.
I blinked. Slowly.
"Did… did we just witness a fallen angel being dragged down to the depths of hell?"
The Dragon nodded without looking up. "It's far less dramatic than people imagine. Also far more common."
I stared at the empty space where they'd stood. "Oh."
Then I picked up my shroud and muttered, "Well. That's one problem solved."
The Dragon let out a long, weary sigh. One of those ancient, full-body exhales that sounded like it had passed through several centuries before reaching me.
"Honestly," he muttered, folding his wings back with a rustle, "the cherub's probably better off this way than with Gregory."
I snorted. "You think?"
"I know. Gregory would've had him in nipple clamps and existential denial within the hour."
I winced. "Yeah… fair."
He shook his head. "At least she'll start with emotional dismantling before she gets to the complicated bits."
"She's got bedside manners," I agreed. "Sultry. Manipulative. Demon-y. But… gentle-ish."
We stood there in silence, watching a faint scorch mark on the grass where reality had hiccupped.
"…He's definitely going to scream a lot, right?" I asked.
"Oh yes," the Dragon said. "But in several different ways."