Of course it fucking was.
“Why are we here?”
“I told you. This is where we’re moving.”
My mouth falls open. “What the hell is wrong with the home youhave?”
“There’s more of us now. More Devils. More secrets. More enemies. We needed a place that could hold all of it.” He doesn’t look at me when he speaks, just stares straight ahead. “Even if we leave, this is where we’ll return. No matter what.”
I nod slowly, heart sinking with some unspoken understanding. “But how many of you actually come back once you leave?”
His silence says everything.
Then he speaks, and it’s not Wyck the boy, or Wyck the lover. It’s the Devil.
“Our fathers built this secret society on lies. On manipulation. On control. And we’ve been forced to inherit their rot. But we’re rewriting that legacy,our way. We’ve already begun. The trials still stand. The punishments. The blood. But the executions? Those are reserved for traitors. Those who lie, manipulate, betray us from within. Everyone else… earns their scars.”
He steps toward the building, running his hand across the massive golden front door.
My eyes are drawn to it.
The door is old. Heavy. Ancient. It pulses with meaning I don’t understand, its carvings laced with symbols that feel like they’re watching me.
It’s beautiful. But not in a safe way.
It’s the kind of beautiful that gets people killed.
I trail my hand along the carved ridges. “Where did you find this thing?”
“China,” he says without hesitation.
“Who buys a cursed-ass asylum door from China and ships it across the world?”
“You ask too many questions.” His voice is low now, hushed and deliberate as he turns toward me. “The real question is, are you moving in with us?”
The air leaves my lungs.
This, this is what it means to betheirs. To belong. To be folded into the madness that started long before I remembered my name or the monsters that whispered it in the dark.
I look at them, Wyck, Dash, Wells, Karter, Onyx. The Devils.
Pieces of my past. Anchors of my future. I don’t know how or why we’re connected. But I feel it in my bones.
This isn’t over.
It’s just beginning.
And I’m not walking this path alone.
“I’m in.”
I’ve been resisting the truth for days now, fighting the urge to claim what’s already mine.
Fighting the pull of them.
Ofus.
But the war inside me is done. I’ve already lost… or maybe I’ve finally won. Either way, I’m tired of pretending I don’t want to shout it from the fucking rooftops:
