CHAPTER 1
Wren Mallory’s apartment smelled like failure with notes of burnt sage.
The candle she’d lit an hour ago had drowned in its own wax, the smoke curling through her living room like a disappointed ghost. She slumped deeper into her secondhand couch, the springs protesting as she tucked her feet under a frayed throw blanket and balanced her third glass of wine on her knee.
“Another successful Friday night in the books,” she muttered, swiping through another dating profile on her phone. ManWitch69. Literal horns in his profile picture—the cheap Halloween store kind—and a bio that read Let me show you my wand.
Wren snorted and closed the app. Romance was dead, and she was its undertaker.
Rain lashed against her windows, the cold seeping through the poorly sealed frame of her apartment above Hex & Brew, the witch-supply café where she spent her days making lattes for novice witches who always seemed to know more spells than she did. The clock on her wall—shaped like a moon and running five minutes slow—told her it was just after midnight. Just her, the rain, a bottle of store-brand merlot, and the crushing weight of being twenty-nine and magically mediocre.
Her gaze drifted to the package that had arrived earlier that day. A spellbook wrapped in brown paper and twine, smelling faintly of mothballs and desperation. She’d ordered it from some Etsy shop with a name like “MysticMommy” or “WitchyWoman”—the kind of seller profile that screamed “I did a lot of drugs at Burning Man and now I sell cursed objects online.”
“This is what I’ve been reduced to,” she whispered, draining her glass and pouring another. “Buying magic from someone who definitely has Live Laugh Love tattooed somewhere unfortunate.”
But what else was she supposed to do? Her own magic was unreliable at best—flickering light bulbs when she was angry, warming her coffee when she was particularly focused. Nothing useful. Nothing that would get her out of serving lattes to college kids who used their allowance to buy “authentic” crystals that had probably been polished in someone’s garage.
Wren set her phone down and reached for the package, tearing at the twine with wine-clumsy fingers. The book that fell into her lap was bound in fake leather that peeled at the corners, its pages yellowed not by time but by what smelled like cheap tea stains. The title, embossed in gold lettering that was already flaking off: Manifest Your Magic: Spells for the Modern Witch.
“Jesus,” she laughed, flipping it open. “I bet this comes with a subscription to Goop.”
She thumbed through the pages, snorting at the chapter titles. Finding Your Flame. Embracing Your Energy. Summoning Your Soulmate. It was the magical equivalent of a self-help book written by someone whose only qualification was having really good hair in their author photo.
Wren paused at the last chapter. Summoning Your Soulmate. There was an illustration of a woman surrounded by candles, her arms raised as a vaguely male-shaped shadow appeared before her.
“Now that’s just sad,” she told her empty apartment, but she didn’t turn the page.
Instead, her eyes scanned the list of required materials. Candles. Wine. Salt. Blood of the innocent.
She checked the last one again.
Blood of the innocuous was what it actually said. Wren squinted at the fine print beneath it. Any non-magical liquid will do. We suggest cranberry juice for color or wine for courage!
“Well, I’ve got wine,” she raised her glass in a mock toast. “And courage is definitely what I need to keep reading this trash.”
Outside, thunder cracked, and her lights flickered. Perfect ambiance for a lonely witch making terrible decisions.
Wren glanced around her apartment. Candles? Check. Half a dozen of them scattered around her living room, most burned down to nubs. Wine? Obviously. Salt? She had the fancy pink Himalayan kind she’d bought when she was going through a health phase that had lasted approximately three days.
“This is stupid,” she said, getting up anyway. “But at least it’s something to do.”
She gathered her materials, arranging them on her coffee table, which was really just a stack of milk crates covered with a tablecloth. The book said to form a circle of salt, place the candles at cardinal points, and pour wine into a vessel at the center. Wren used her WORLD’S OKAYEST WITCH mug, a gift from her former roommate before she’d moved out to live with her very real, very non-magically-summoned boyfriend.
“To new depths of patheticness,” Wren toasted her empty apartment again, then settled cross-legged on the floor.
The spell was simple enough. Light the candles. Drink the wine. Say the words. Visualize your desire. That was it. No complicated symbols, no rare ingredients, nothing that suggested actual magic. Just cosmic wishful thinking packaged as empowerment.
Wren lit the candles one by one, the tiny flames casting long shadows across her walls. Outside, the rain fell harder, drumming against her roof like impatient fingers. She took a deep breath and began to read the incantation.
“By flame and wine, by salt and sign, I call upon the veil divine.” She rolled her eyes at her own voice. “Beyond the mortal, beyond the known, bring forth the one who’ll be my own.”
Nothing happened. Of course nothing happened.
“Specific qualities would help,” Wren muttered, scanning the page. There was a note at the bottom suggesting that the spell worked better if the caster was clear about what they wanted.
“Fine. I want someone who isn’t boring,” she added, warming to the game. Why not? No one was watching her make a fool of herself. “Someone who knows what they’re doing. Someone who won’t ghost me after two awkward coffee dates. Someone who doesn’t live with their mother or collect anime figurines or think magic is just for Instagram aesthetics.”
The candles flickered, all at once, as if disturbed by a breeze—but her windows were closed. Wren hesitated, her fingers tightening around the wine glass.
Then something shifted inside her. The wine, the late hour, the rain beating against her windows—it all crashed down at once, stripping away the sarcasm she’d been hiding behind all night.
“Someone who’ll actually see me.” The words came out softer than she’d intended, more vulnerable. “Someone who’ll stay when things get hard.”
The room grew warmer. The flames stretched taller, casting strange shadows that seemed to move independently of the objects that should have formed them. Wren swallowed hard, a prickle of unease crawling up her spine.
“Um…” she glanced down at the book, suddenly less amused and more concerned. “By my will and by my word, let the barriers fall, let my call be heard.”
The air in her apartment thickened, like wading through invisible syrup. The flames of her candles turned an unnatural blue, stretching toward her ceiling. Wind came from nowhere, swirling around her living room, scattering her unopened mail and rustling the pages of the book in her lap.
“What the fuck,” Wren whispered, scrambling backward, but the wind followed her, whipping her hair around her face. “Stop. STOP!”
The temperature dropped suddenly, frost forming on her windows despite it being late spring. Then, just as quickly, heat blasted through the room like opening an oven door. The candles flared so brightly Wren had to shield her eyes, the blue flames now white-hot and impossibly tall.
And in the center of her salt circle, the air ripped.
There was no other word for it. Reality tore like cheap fabric, edges fraying to reveal…something else. Something that glowed and pulsed with unnatural light. Wren screamed, but the sound was lost in the roar of the vortex that had formed in her living room.
Then something—no, someone—came crashing through.
The tear in reality snapped shut with an audible crack, and the candles went out all at once, plunging the room into darkness. In the moonlight filtering through her curtains, Wren could make out a massive shape sprawled across her coffee table, which had splintered under the impact.
“What the actual fuck,” Wren breathed, fumbling for her phone to turn on the flashlight. “This is what I get for ordering from ‘WitchyMama4U’ with a five-star rating for ‘manifesting abundance.'”
For one hysterical moment, her wine-addled brain wondered if she’d somehow ordered a supernatural stripper gram. The universe’s most terrifying birthday surprise, complete with property damage.
The beam illuminated a man—at least, something man-shaped—half-naked and covered in what looked like blood and ash. He was huge, all muscle and harsh angles, with strange, shifting markings across his skin that seemed to move in the unsteady light. His chest heaved with ragged breaths as he pushed himself up from the wreckage of her table, swearing in a language she didn’t recognize.
Then he looked up, and Wren’s heart stuttered. His eyes were gold—literally gold—with vertical pupils that contracted in the light of her phone. Not human. Definitely not human.
“Who the fuck are you?” they both demanded in unison.
He moved with frightening speed, on his feet in an instant, looming over her. Up close, Wren could see that what she’d mistaken for tattoos were actually glowing symbols etched into his skin, pulsing with inner light. His face was all sharp angles and fury, beautiful in the way predators were beautiful—the kind of beauty that made you want to run.
“Did Malek send you?” he snarled, his voice like gravel. “Because if that festering ballsack thinks he can pull me out of a fight—”
“I don’t know who Malek is,” Wren snapped, backing up until she hit the wall. Her heart hammered in her chest, but she’d be damned if she’d show fear. “And I didn’t send anyone anywhere. You crashed into my living room!”
He stalked toward her, ash falling from his shoulders with each step, eyes blazing like molten gold in the darkness. Something that might have been a weapon materialized in his hand, then vanished just as quickly.
The stranger looked down at the shattered remains of her coffee table, then around at her apartment with obvious disdain. “This,” he gestured at the salt circle, the candles, the spilled wine, “is some amateur-hour horseshit.”
“Excuse me?” Wren’s fear gave way to indignation. “I’m not the one who just fell through a… a whatever-the-hell-that-was and destroyed my furniture!”
“Your furniture was garbage before I landed on it,” he growled, stalking around her living room, examining the salt circle with narrowed eyes. “What kind of half-assed summoning is this? No wards, no bindings, not even a proper circle—”
“It wasn’t supposed to work!” Wren protested. “It was from an Etsy grimoire!”
The stranger turned to her with a look of such profound disgust that Wren actually felt embarrassed. “You tried to open a portal with a spell you bought from Etsy?” He looked her up and down, taking in her fuzzy socks, her oversized sweater with a coffee stain on the sleeve, her wine glass still clutched in one white-knuckled hand. “What are you, some kind of tourist witch?”
“I’m not a—” She caught herself. “Just tell me who you are and how to send you back.”
He laughed, a harsh sound with no humor in it. “Name’s Kairon, witchlet. Prince of the Ninth Veil, Commander of the Infernal Legions, and currently really fucking pissed off because I was in the middle of putting down a rebellion when your bootleg magic yanked me here.”
Wren’s stomach dropped. Prince? Infernal Legions? The markings on his skin, the eyes, the unnatural heat still radiating from him…
“You’re a demon,” she whispered.
“Very good,” Kairon slow-clapped. “Give the witchlet a prize.”
“Stop calling me that! I’m not—”
“A witch?” He stepped closer, towering over her. “Then how the fuck did you pull me across dimensions? Because that takes power, little girl. Power you clearly don’t know how to control.”
Wren bristled at his tone. “My name is Wren. Not ‘witchlet,’ not ‘little girl.’ And I told you, it was an accident. The spell wasn’t supposed to actually do anything!”
Kairon’s eyes narrowed. “What spell, exactly?”
Heat rushed to Wren’s cheeks. There was no way in hell—literally, apparently—that she was telling this arrogant demon prince she’d been trying to magically manifest a boyfriend. “A… summoning spell.”
“For what purpose?” His voice dropped lower, dangerous.
“That’s none of your business,” she said firmly. “What matters is how to undo it. How do I send you back?”
Kairon ran a hand through his dark hair, leaving it even more disheveled. “Just break the circle and release me.”
Wren looked down at the salt circle, which had been scattered when Kairon crashed through it. “It’s already broken.”
He frowned and tried to step over the line of salt. There was a flash of blue light, and he jerked back with a curse, shaking his hand as if burned. “It’s still active.”
“That’s impossible.” Wren knelt to examine the salt. It had been scattered, yes, but somehow the circle still seemed intact, a faint shimmer hanging in the air where the salt had been.
“What else was in that spell?” Kairon demanded.
“Nothing! Just candles and wine and stupid words!”
“Words have power, witchlet.” He crouched on his side of the barrier, his golden eyes intent on her face. “What exactly did you say?”
Wren tried to remember. “Something about flame and wine and salt, calling beyond the veil—”
“Beyond the veil?” Kairon interrupted. “Those exact words?”
“Yes? Is that important?”
“Fuck me sideways,” he muttered. “That’s an ancient binding phrase. What else?”
“I…” Wren swallowed hard, embarrassment flooding her. “I said I wanted someone who wasn’t boring. Someone who knew what they were doing. Someone who wouldn’t ghost me after—”
“After what?” Kairon pressed when she stopped.
“After two awkward coffee dates,” she finished in a small voice.
Kairon stared at her for a long moment, then burst into laughter. It transformed his face, softening the harsh lines, making him look younger, almost approachable. Almost.
“You were trying to summon a date?” he wheezed. “And you got me instead? Oh, that’s rich.”
“It wasn’t supposed to work!” Wren insisted again, her face burning. “It was just something to do because I was bored and…”
“Lonely?” he supplied, his laughter fading, something else replacing it in his gaze—something that looked uncomfortably like understanding.
“I was going to say drunk,” Wren snapped. “Look, just tell me how to send you back so we can both forget this ever happened.”
Kairon stood, rolling his shoulders. The markings on his skin pulsed brighter for a moment, then faded slightly. “I need to try something. Don’t move.”
Before Wren could ask what he meant, he slammed his hand against the invisible barrier. Blue light flared, and Wren gasped as something pulled tight in her chest—like a guitar string plucked too hard. Kairon felt it too; she could see it in the way his eyes widened, the way he staggered back a step.
“What was that?” she demanded, pressing a hand to her sternum where the sensation had centered.
Kairon didn’t answer. Instead, he placed his palm flat against the barrier again, this time without the force. The barrier glowed softer, and the pull in Wren’s chest became a steady pressure, not painful but undeniably present.
“Think of me leaving,” he said, his voice strangely quiet. “Visualize the barrier disappearing, the connection between us severing.”
Wren frowned but did as he asked, imagining the shimmering air solidifying, then dissolving away. The pressure in her chest increased, then abruptly twisted, sending a jolt of something—not pain, exactly, but intense discomfort—through her body.
“Stop,” she gasped. “That hurts.”
Kairon withdrew his hand, his expression grim. “It’s not just a summoning. It’s a binding.”
“A what?”
“A binding. A magical tether.” He gestured between them. “Between you and me. Your spell didn’t just bring me here; it linked us.”
Wren shook her head. “No. That’s not possible. The book didn’t say anything about—”
“Etsy grimoires aren’t exactly known for their comprehensive warning labels,” Kairon cut her off. “But trust me, I’ve been around long enough to recognize a binding when I feel one.”
“So what does that mean?” Wren asked, dread pooling in her stomach.
“It means,” Kairon said, his voice deceptively calm, “that I’m stuck here until we figure out how to break it. And based on what I’m feeling, it’s not a spatial binding. It’s emotional.”
“Emotional?” Wren’s voice cracked on the word.
Kairon closed his eyes, seeming to listen to something only he could hear. “You said you wanted someone who wouldn’t leave when things got hard. Who would see you.” His eyes opened, fixing her with a gaze that seemed to look straight through her. “The binding is responding to that.”
“But I didn’t mean—”
“Intent matters less than emotion in magic,” he said. “And your emotion was strong enough to pull a prince of Hell across dimensions. So congratulations, witchlet. You’ve got yourself a demon.”
The words hung in the air between them, heavy with implication. Wren stared at him, this half-naked, blood-smeared demon standing in her living room, bound to her by magic she hadn’t even known she possessed.
“Get out,” she whispered.
Kairon raised an eyebrow. “Weren’t you listening? I can’t—”
“GET OUT!” Wren shouted, fear and frustration boiling over. “I don’t want this! I don’t want you! Just go back to wherever you came from and leave me alone!”
Something flashed in Kairon’s eyes—surprise, maybe even hurt, gone so quickly Wren thought she might have imagined it. But as she spoke, the shimmering barrier between them pulsed and then shattered like glass, the pieces dissolving into the air.
Kairon looked as shocked as she felt. “You really meant that.”
“Of course I meant it! Why would I want a demon bound to me?”
He nodded slowly, his face unreadable. “Fair enough.” He took a step back, then another. “But the binding isn’t broken, just momentarily satisfied. I’ve been released because you genuinely want me gone. But I’ll be back, witchlet.”
“Wren,” she corrected automatically.
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “Wren,” he repeated, her name sounding strange in his rough voice. “I’ll be back when you need me. Whether you want me or not.”
Before she could respond, he vanished in a plume of smoke and embers, leaving behind nothing but the lingering scent of ash and something else—something that reminded her of thunderstorms and warm metal.
Wren stood frozen, staring at the empty space where a demon prince had stood seconds before. Had that actually worked? Had she just banished an infernal entity with nothing but the power of her panic attack? A startled laugh escaped her, half-hysterical.
“Holy shit,” she whispered to her empty apartment. “I have actual magic.”
The thought had barely formed when heat seared across her wrist. Wren hissed, looking down to see a strange mark appearing on her skin—a small, glowing symbol that matched one of the many that had adorned Kairon’s chest. As she watched, it faded from bright blue to a subtle shimmer, like a tattoo done in ink that caught the light.
“Fuck,” Wren whispered to her empty apartment. Or not so empty, if Kairon was to be believed. He’d be back when she needed him.