“Which words were those?” Avari demanded, and I could tell that he wasn’t yet angry, because he didn’t know what was coming. “She’s screamed and moaned a great many things to me over the years, though few of them have been coherent of late.”

Tod stiffened, livid with indignation on my behalf, and I wanted to cry out and tell him I was okay. Because he didn’t know. He didn’t know what had happened to me, or what state I was in, or whether I would ever again be the girl who’d kissed him in the school hallway, scandalizing everyone around us with what now seemed like such an innocent expression of attraction.

Ira stood in the background with me, practically buzzing with anticipation of the rage destined to glut him.

“My soul is yours,” Tod said, and the words burned through me. I remembered saying them, just like that. Just like I’d practiced. Just like I’d written...

“Yes? And?” Avari was losing patience, and surely soon he’d realize I was no longer suffering. That my pain was no longer feeding him.

“Her soul wasn’t her own to give, which means she had no right to surrender it to you or to anyone else. You had no right to accept it.” He stood straighter, confident and bold in spite of the monsters restlessly milling around him. “You can’t keep her.”

“Nonsense!” Avari roared, and Ira’s hand tightened around mine. He practically swelled, lapping up the anger Avari had started to exude like sweat from hellion pores. “Who else would own her soul?”

“I would.” Tod’s voice was strong. Clear. “Her soul is mine, and I have proof, written in her own hand.” He pulled a folded envelope from his back pocket, and even from a distance I recognized his name, in my handwriting. It was my first letter to him—the one I’d left for him the night Levi had told his lie. Tod opened the envelope and pulled out a piece of paper that had obviously been folded and unfolded so many times it was nearly falling apart. Then he read from it.

“‘I am yours, body, mind, heart, and soul. And I always will be.’” Tod looked up, and Avari’s eyes narrowed until they were slits leaking darkness into the Netherworld night. “See? She is mine, body, mind, heart, and  soul. And if she’s mine, she can’t be yours. Let. Her. Go.”

The demand was a formality. Avari had no choice but to stand by his word. To break it would mean rendering his promise to me a lie, and if I was sure of anything about hellions it was this: they cannot lie.

I knew I was free even before he opened his mouth, but the bellow of rage that he unleashed upon the Netherworld at large was more than confirmation. For a moment, I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything but cover my ears, trying to protect my brain from the sonic assault.

Ira spread hisarms, like a child bathing in sunlight, and began to laugh. The sound of his joy swallowed Avari’s rage like a sponge soaking up water.

Avari’s mouth closed, and his eyes narrowed. Even without pupils, I could tell when his gaze found us. “You!” he thundered, and Ira laughed some more.

“Kaylee!” Tod shouted. He tried to run to me, but monsters poured into the path between us.

“It has been my pleasure to conspire with the young bean sidhe to provoke your wrath, an emotion certain to feed me for centuries to come, as you watch her live on, beyond your grasp.” Joy dripped from Ira’s voice. “Now, return her soul, and let the fun begin!”

Avari roared again, and again I covered my ears. His fists were clenched, and his featureless eyes glowed like black lights, gleaming in fury. He lifted one arm, and for a moment I was afraid his gesture was calling me closer for yet another demon kiss. Instead, he opened his hand and twisted it, curling his fingers in my direction, and something deep within me unfurled. It felt like a snake uncoiling in my stomach, a great, frozen serpent, chilling me from the inside out.

Avari jerked his hand back, and that serpentine coldness—his own breath—was ripped up through my core and out my mouth with a metaphysical brutality that made me gasp. For a single second, my insides were a gaping vacuum, sucking at the world—at eternity—in search of something substantial. Something to support my existence and anchor it to the physical reality of my resurrected body.

Then he held up his other hand, but I couldn’t clearly see what it held. I could no longer clearly see anything. Sight and sound were already fading as I faded, for the lack of a soul. I collapsed to my knees, but didn’t feel the impact.

“Do it!” Tod shouted, and distantly I registered the panic in his voice.

A second later, a blast of something light and warm hit me. It surrounded me like a blanket molded to the shape of my body, then sank into me. Through me.

I didn’t realize how cold I’d been on the inside until the warmth of my own returned soul brought me back to myself for the first time in four interminable years. I gasped, sucking in one great breath, and the Netherworld came into focus around me. Creatures eyeing me like Sabine would eye a hamburger. Avari, simmering with rage eager to bubble up and over him.

And Tod...

Tod pushed his way through the inhuman crowd toward me, trying to see if it was over. If my soul was indeed restored. If I was back.

And I was back.

“Little fury, our business is complete,” Ira said from my left. “I’ve already guaranteed your safe passage to the human world, as part of our agreement, and I suggest you leave now, before you find yourself in trouble you cannot bargain your way out of.”