Chapter 2
Adrian had been expecting a demon.
What stood before him instead looked like moonlight given form a woman whose beauty struck him with almost physical force. She was tall and graceful, with silver-white hair that seemed to move of its own accord, and eyes that shifted between purple and pale blue depending on how the candlelight caught them. Her dress appeared to be woven from shadows and starlight, flowing around her in ways that defied physics.
Not a demon, then. Something far more dangerous.
A succubus.
"You've been waiting for me?" she repeated, tilting her head with predatory curiosity. "How peculiar. Most mortals run screaming when my kind appears. Or fall to their knees in worship. You're doing neither."
Adrian kept his hands visible on the desk, though his right palm rested near the protective ward he'd carved into the wood. Three years of research had led him to this moment the summoning ritual, the careful calculations, the precise timing when Ebonveil's veil grew thin enough for passage.
He hadn't actually expected it to work.
"Running seems counterproductive," he said, proud that his voice remained steady. "And I don't worship anything I don't understand." He gestured to the chair across from his desk. "Would you like to sit? I have questions, if you're willing to answer them."
She laughed a sound like crystal bells with an undertone of darkness. "You invited me to sit? In your own sanctum?" She moved forward with liquid grace, each step making the candles flicker. "You're either very brave or very foolish, mortal."
"Adrian," he corrected. "My name is Adrian Blackwood. And I prefer to think of myself as very desperate."
That stopped her. She paused halfway to the chair, studying him with new intensity. "Desperate? For what? Power? Immortality? Forbidden pleasures?" Her lips curved in a knowing smile. "I can provide all three, you know. For a price."
"Knowledge," Adrian said simply. "I'm desperate for knowledge."
"How... disappointing." But she said it with a hint of amusement. She circled the chair instead of sitting, examining his workspace the books, the instruments, the ritual components still scattered across his secondary table. "You've been studying Ebonveil. The symbols are crude, but accurate. Where did you learn them?"
"My grandmother's journals," Adrian replied, watching her carefully. "She was a collector of forbidden texts. Most scholars dismissed her work as fantasy, but I knew better. The patterns were too consistent. The accounts are too detailed." He paused. "She disappeared fifteen years ago. I believe she crossed into your realm and never returned."
Lirith's fingers traced one of his open books, and he noticed with fascination that she cast no shadow. "Evelyn Blackwood," she murmured. "Yes, I know that name. Or rather, I feel like I should." She pressed her palm to her temple, expression flickering with frustration. "My memories are... fragmented. I woke up in Ebonveil less than an hour ago with no recollection of how I came to be there."
Adrian's scholarly instincts engaged immediately. "Newly manifested? Or newly cursed?"
Her eyes snapped to his, sharp with surprise. "You know of the curses?"
"I know theories," he admitted. "My grandmother believed that succubi and incubi weren't born, but made that some terrible magic transforms souls into essence-consuming entities. She called it the Devourer's Curse." He leaned forward, excitement overriding caution. "Is that what happened to you? Do you remember the transformation?"
Lirith stared at him for a long moment, then did something that surprised them both.
She sat.
Not in the chair he'd offered, but on the edge of his desk, close enough that he could feel the unnatural cold radiating from her form. Close enough to be threatening. But she wasn't looking at him like prey anymore. She was looking at him like he was a puzzle she couldn't quite solve.
"You're not afraid of me," she observed. "Why?"
"I'm terrified," Adrian said honestly. "My heart is racing, my hands are shaking, and every instinct is screaming at me to run. But fear and fascination aren't mutually exclusive." He met her otherworldly gaze. "You're the first proof I've ever had that my grandmother wasn't mad. That everything I've studied, everything I've believed it's real. How could I run from that?"
"Even knowing what I am? What should I do?" Her voice dropped lower. "I consume essence, Adrian Blackwood. I seduce, I feed, I take until there's nothing left. That's my nature. My curse, as you call it." She leaned closer, and he could smell something like midnight flowers and ozone. "I could drain you dry right now, and no one would ever know what happened to you."
His hand moved not toward the protective ward, but toward a different book. He opened it to a marked page and turned it toward her. "The Covenant of Consent," he read aloud. "No entity of Ebonveil can take essence from a mortal who has not willingly offered it. The consumption requires permission, explicit or implicit. It's why your kind seduces rather than attacks. Why do you need your victims to desire you first."
Lirith's eyes widened slightly. "You've done your research."
"It's what I do." Adrian managed a slight smile. "I'm a scholar of magical theory at the University, though I keep my more esoteric interests private. Most of my colleagues think anything beyond elemental magic is superstition." He closed the book carefully. "But I know better. And I know that you can't simply take from me. I have to give."
"And you won't," she said, though it sounded more like a question than a statement.
"I didn't say that."
The air between them shifted, charged with sudden tension. Lirith's form rippled, shadows deepening. "Explain."
Adrian took a breath, committing to the gambit he'd been planning for months. "I'll make you an offer. A bargain, if you will. I need information about Ebonveil its geography, its inhabitants, its rules. I need to know what happened to my grandmother. In exchange, I'll provide you with something you need."
"Essence," she said flatly. "You'll let me feed on you. That's your offer?" She shook her head. "Noble but foolish. Do you have any idea what that entails? The vulnerability? The…"
"Not full consumption," Adrian interrupted. "Measured portions. Controlled feeding. My research suggests that essence regenerates over time, like blood. Small amounts taken periodically wouldn't be fatal." He pulled out another journal his own notes this time. "I've calculated the ratios. With proper recovery periods, I could safely provide enough to sustain you without dying in the process."
Lirith stared at him like he'd sprouted a second head. "You want to be my... what? My renewable food source?"
"I prefer 'research partner,'" Adrian said dryly. "But yes, essentially."
For a long moment, she said nothing. Then she threw back her head and laughed genuine amusement that filled the stone chamber with unexpected warmth. "You are absolutely mad. Your grandmother would be so proud."
"Is that a yes?"
She sobered, studying him with new appreciation. "You realize this could destroy you? Not just physically, but mentally? Feeding creates bonds. Connections. Addictions. You might come to crave it crave me in ways that would consume your entire life."
"I'm aware of the risks." Adrian held her gaze steadily. "But knowledge is worth the price. Finding my grandmother is worth the price. Understanding your world, understanding you it's worth the price."
"Understanding me?" Lirith's expression flickered with something vulnerable. "I don't even understand myself. I woke up in a glowing cavern with nothing but hunger and a name. I was nearly consumed by a wraith who thought I'd be an easy prize. I have no memories, no context, no idea who or what I was before this curse." Her voice cracked slightly. "How can you want to understand something that doesn't even exist yet?"
Adrian felt something shift in his chest not desire, but empathy. "Then we'll figure it out together. You help me understand Ebonveil, and maybe in the process, we'll help you understand yourself."
She was quiet for a long time, shadows swirling around her in agitated patterns. Finally, she asked, "Why do you really want to find your grandmother? The truth."
The question caught him off guard. Adrian looked away, at the journals scattered across his desk fifteen years of obsessive research. "Because she raised me," he said quietly. "My parents died when I was young. Grandmother Evelyn was all I had. She taught me to read, to think, to question. She showed me that the world was bigger and stranger than anyone admitted." He touched one of her journals reverently. "She disappeared on my sixteenth birthday. Left me a note saying she'd found the doorway and had to know what was on the other side. That she'd return when she understood."
"But she never did," Lirith finished softly.
"No." Adrian's jaw tightened. "So I learned everything she knew. Traced every lead. Perfected the ritual. Because I have to know is she dead? Trapped? Transformed into something like you?" He finally met Lirith's eyes again. "I have to know, even if the answer destroys me."
Understanding passed between them two lost souls seeking answers in dangerous places.
"You're right," Lirith said finally. "We are both desperate." She extended her hand, palm up, in a gesture that felt formal. Ancient. "Very well, Adrian Blackwood. I accept your bargain. I'll help you search for your grandmother and teach you what I can of Ebonveil. In exchange, you'll provide me with controlled amounts of essence and help me understand what I've become."
Adrian looked at her offered hand, knowing that taking it would change everything. Then he reached out and clasped it firmly.
The moment their skin touched, power arced between them. Not painful, but profound a connection forging on levels he couldn't quite comprehend. He felt her hunger, her confusion, her desperate loneliness. And somehow, he knew she felt his determination, his grief, his burning need to understand.
The protective wards he'd carved throughout the room flared to life, recognizing the covenant being formed.
Lirith gasped, pulling back. "What, what was that?"
"A binding," Adrian said, equally shaken. "Not magical, exactly. More... metaphysical. My grandmother's journals mentioned it. When a mortal and an entity of Ebonveil form a true pact, witnessed by neither realm's full authority, it creates a unique bond. Neither quite here, nor quite there."
"You didn't think to mention this *before* I agreed?" But she said it without real anger, flexing her hand as if testing the invisible connection between them.
"I wasn't sure it would actually work," he admitted. "Most of my grandmother's theories were unproven."
"Unproven," Lirith repeated incredulously. "We just bound our essences together based on unproven theories." She laughed again, but this time it held an edge of hysteria. "Absolutely mad. Both of us."
Adrian couldn't help but smile. "Probably. But at least we're mad together now."
She shook her head, but he caught the hint of a smile on her lips. "So, scholar. Where do we begin?"
Adrian pulled his chair closer and opened a map he'd been constructing from various sources a rough approximation of Ebonveil's geography. "Tell me everything you remember about where you woke up. Every detail, no matter how small. We'll start mapping your territory and work outward from there."
As Lirith leaned over the map, her hair brushing against his shoulder, Adrian felt the hunger stirring between them—his fascination meeting her need. But there was something else too. Something neither of them had expected.
Hope.
Outside, dawn began to break over the mortal realm, but neither of them noticed. They had a mystery to solve, a grandmother to find, and a curse to understand.
They had time.
Or so they thought.
In Ebonveil, in the shadows of the Veiled Gardens, Kael nursed his wounded pride and plotted revenge. And deeper still, in places where even shadow feared to tread, older entities took notice of the new bond forming between realms.
Lirith and Adrian's bargain had been witnessed after all.
And not everyone was pleased.