"Haven, what's wrong?" Asa said immediately. "Where's Rose?"

  "You need to come now," Rose's demon said, panting from running so hard. "Rose is in trouble!"

  Asa’s gut clenched with an immediacy of terror that made him want to throw up. Rose was never in trouble. Rose always knew what to do.

  "Is Rose okay?" Sol said, frantic, trying to stand and forgetting that he didn't have the space to do it.

  Every muscle in Asa's body locked in preparation to run after Rose—but Rose would kill him if he didn't take Sol with him. Rose had risked a lot to come here in the first place to find Sol. Asa wracked his brain for a solution. "PQ-9," he said, and PQ-9 made a little beep of inquiry. "Take my demon with you and go to Rose, I'll be right there."

  "But Rose needs you," Haven protested. "Please, if anything happens to him--"

  "I can't leave Sol here," Asa told her.

  Haven nodded, decisive. "I'll stay," she said. "I won't let anything happen to Sol." She examined the ward with experienced eyes. "I can finish breaking the lock. Take this and go."

  Rose's demon then reached into her inter-dimensional space pocket, retrieving a scrap of Rose's pastel pink sweatshirt with her strong jaws. At least, the sweatshirt had been pink when they arrived at the Black Market.

  Now the sweatshirt was soaked with blood.

  The blood drained from Asa’s face, and he snatched the fabric from Haven’s jaws. Rose always tailored his clothes with demonic spell script for situations like this, and Rose’s blood was already—there. "Okay," Asa said, his heart hammering, turning to PQ-9 and his own demon. “Let’s go.”

  With the demon and PQ-9 in his arms, Asa started running as fast as he could toward where Haven had come from. He recited the demonic spell script out loud, activating the tracking spell using Rose’s blood as the anchor.

  Red demonic light poured onto the floor directly from the tracking spell script, guiding Asa to exit the wide and endless room, along thin, dark corridors that spread further like veins. In order to free Asa’s hands, the demon moved to perch on Asa’s shoulders with Rose’s sweatshirt sleeve in his mouth. PQ-9 hung onto the demon's fur for dear life. It became colder, and colder, until Asa saw his own breath as he ran.

  He didn't know how Rose's demon had run all this way to find them. He knew demons had their own ways of travel that humanoids couldn’t follow, and Asa wondered if he was going to be too slow, if he wasn’t going to make it in time. He ran even faster, even though his side ached with pain, and he could hardly breathe in the cold air. They seemed to be traveling further and further down, as if they were burrowing deeply underneath the ground. He could only desperately hope that Rose's demon was able to free Sol and that they escaped.

  Asa didn't know what he would tell Rose about Sol when he saw him. He already knew Rose was going to be angry, that he was going to think that Asa hadn't thought the situation through—that he should have left Rose and made sure Sol was safe instead. Rose always thought he could take care of himself, but sometimes he was wrong—

  When Asa finally burst out of the end of the corridor into a colossally-sized cavern, like a pinball spinning out of its chute, he could hardly believe what he was seeing.

  Namah and Rose fought brutally with their demons on top of a towering narrow bridge that was suspended above one of the most enormous nexuses that Asa had ever seen.

  The nexus roiled with indigo frequencies of light underneath the suspension bridge: amethyst, icy blue, magnesium white. The nexus lit up the enormous cavern with an eerie and oceanic light, as if Asa was at an aquarium. No, it was as if the nexus was an arctic sea on one of those planetside holos at the very north of the planet, large and dangerous and unknowable. There was an atmospheric pressure emanating from the nexus that pressed Asa backward several steps into the stone tunnel where he had entered. But Asa pushed forward anyway, his hair tangling in the thaumaturgical wind of the nexus as he pressed closer and closer to the steps that led to the bridge.

  Nexuses were notoriously difficult to create and were largely the result of organic causes—just like a volcano that formed due to shifting tectonic plates, nexuses were often formed by the pressurizing forces of shifting and changing time-lines. All of the nexuses in the galaxy were allegedly registered with the Eternal Crystal Imperium government. But Asa had a sneaking suspicion that this nexus wasn't registered, that perhaps this nexus was less organic in origin. He wouldn't be surprised if Namah had somehow had a hand in creating this nexus herself—or at least had capitalized on this opportunity by placing her shop over it.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Asa reached the bottom of the rickety stairs, grasping the handrail to pull himself onto the second metal step. “Hold on tight,” he said to the demon, to PQ-9, before he carefully started to climb the steps. He didn't want to fall into the nexus. There was no way of knowing where or when the nexus would take him, and he didn't want to find out.

  Asa felt the demon's claws dig into his shirt, pricking his back, as he levered himself up countless metal steps, which were dangerously rusted in places. They edged closer and closer to the nexus, pushing against the vast miasma of power that surrounded Namah and Rose. Asa saw the nexus growing in his peripheral vision: its roiling depths, like a planet being formed in real-time, a gas giant that swirled with the tumult of a lightning storm, of fog, of oceanic depths.

  "—can't win against me," Namah said, sounding amused. "What do you expect will happen next?"

  Rose didn't reply, but Asa heard a roar from a demon and then the sound of fire being breathed into life. It was a very particular sound that Asa had heard often when Rose was training with his demons.

  "It sounds bad up there," Asa's demon said, in a smaller voice than Asa had already become used to hearing. PQ-9 beeped soothingly, petting the demon’s head.

  "It's okay," Asa said firmly. "We're going to be okay."

  As Asa's head breached the threshold of the bridge, he could finally see the back of Rose's figure, limned by the indigo light of the nexus. He stood in the middle of the bridge, facing Namah on the other side of the bridge. Rose had called two of his demons: Promise, a large scarlet bird that shot light, and Mercy, a small horse-like demon that breathed fire. Rose had always been partial to light and fire demons, which tracked with Rose’s temperament. Asa heaved himself up onto the bridge, clutching the unstable guardrail. Rumors circulated that Namah could call an infinite number of demons, bond to any number of demons that she wanted—but she had only called one demon to battle Rose.

  Namah was a small figure across the bridge, but her demon was gigantic in size and snake-like in body shape. Her demon’s tail over-flowed the floor of the bridge, and the head stretched high above them. Namah didn’t even look like she was breaking a sweat.

  "We don't have to continue this," Namah suggested. "I'm happy to take you into my work as an apprentice. You are wasted in the Red Seal Syndicate. You know that, right? With the strength you have, I could train you to be more powerful than the Red Seal Syndicate ever could." She paused, assessing him. "You're older, which makes it more difficult. But it wouldn't be impossible."

  Rose laughed derisively. "You took Sol," he said. "How could I ever trust you to keep your word?"

  "Trust is an illusion—it doesn't actually exist," Namah said. "Contracts are the only true way to make sure a person keeps their word. Contracts are the only real currency."

  "You lied to me," Rose said, his voice rising.

  "I didn't lie to you," Namah corrected. "I lied to Luna."

  "That’s the same thing to me!" Rose said, his voice breaking at the end. There was a shower of white light from Rose’s bird demon.

  Asa was starting to have a sinking feeling that Rose asking Asa to come wasn't actually about something so simple as an errand—or even as straightforward as retrieving Sol from a stranger that had captured him. Namah and Rose appeared to have a longer history that Asa had had no idea about. As Asa watched Rose drip blood from his arm onto the metal floor of the bridge, he wondered with a rising sense of dread what else Rose was involved with that Asa didn't know about—what else that Rose hadn't told him. Asa heaved himself upright on the bridge, bracing himself against the magical pressure of the nexus, as he made his way to Rose on the bridge until he could place his hands on Rose's shoulders.

  "We need to get out of here," Asa said urgently into Rose's ear, as Namah's snake demon generated a magical shield. Then Namah rapidly started speaking in Kyrtharion, a demonic spell with threads of intent that prickled down Asa’s spine with a dizzying sense of absolute threat.

  "Did you get Sol?" Rose said harshly.

  "Haven has him," Asa reported. "I undid most of the wards, she got the rest."

  Rose nodded. Asa glanced down to see Rose's bare arm still oozing blood from deep cuts. His blood looked almost black in the darkness of the cavern, the unnatural glow of the nexus. Asa couldn't tell if Rose had been hurt anywhere else. He didn’t know what Rose wanted from Namah or what he intended to do. Namah’s spell balanced on a knife’s edge, Asa could feel it. Anything could tip it over.

  "Galatea's son," Namah called suddenly. "The would-be prodigal son." She laughed. "I always thought it was strange Galatea had a son. Tell me: do you want to free her from her contract?"

  Asa hadn't planned on listening to Namah. He shouldn't listen to Namah. All of the stories he had ever heard about Namah from mercenaries and the merchants and the robots always ended in ways that had made Asa never want to meet her. At the same time, Namah was very powerful. Even his own mother had once wistfully commented that she would love to see Namah's library one day.

  But Asa couldn't recall the last thing he had received that hadn't had a price attached to it.

  "Don't listen to her," Rose said shortly. "She lies as she breathes."

  "I'm not listening to her," Asa said, reflexive, shoving down the dumb hope that his mother could be free her contract without the price.

  "I could help you," Namah said calmly.

  "For a price, I’m sure!" Asa said bitterly.

  Namah laughed again. "My dear boy," she said. "There's always a price for anything that you want. It just depends on what you're willing to pay."

  "I think anything that you would offer has a price that would be too steep for me to pay," Asa said.

  Namah shrugged. "So be it," she said, and then she clearly pronounced the last word of the spell.

  Stone exploded from the sides of the walls of the cavern, aiming toward them with brutal force.

  Asa didn't even think about it. He grabbed Rose's wrist and then shoved Rose off the bridge. Asa jumped after him immediately, still gripping Rose's wrist so hard that he was probably going to bruise, as they fell into the glowing lights of the nexus.