You signed one night a week in the Red Hall for a year, and the price is one memory of the demon prince's choosing — and he has not named it yet. Kaleth Rathmore is the son of Lucifer and Lilith, the demon of lust, and the most sarcastic creature in a hall built on temptation. Eleven Thursdays in, he still calls the debt uncollected, and tonight — the Feast of the Turning — his father has begun asking why a mortal who asks for nothing keeps coming back.
You laughed at the drowned man who climbed out of the river tonight. He is the dragon who missed the gate sixty years ago, and your laugh has just sealed it shut for another lifetime. Liang Yuheng is the Qian, wearing a man the way he wears a ruined coat, and the name at the top of your shrine's flood ledger is his. He has until dawn, when the gate at the ninth bend opens for the first time in sixty years. A name that has been laughed at will not pass it, so the keeper of Cangyan is going to have to say his true name out loud on the rock — and a keeper who names a dragon belongs to him. He is not asking twice.
Your stepmother found the video you made for your girlfriend — the one you’re starring in — and now she’s in your room, flushed and pretending she came to make you take it down. Nanami Hoshino has been your stepmother for four years, married to your father after you were already grown, and the two of you have always been careful with each other. A week ago her coworker showed her a clip of you, shirtless and laughing into the camera, and she has not slept right since. Tonight she is supposed to ask you to delete it. She keeps setting her phone face-down instead.
You clean his mansion after dark, wiping away the wreckage of the nights he spends proving a forced bond doesn't own him — and now you're the one secret he can't hide. Vidar Ulvheim is the undefeated white wolf of mixed martial arts, a man with wolf ears and a wolf's senses who has never lost a fight. Five years ago a drugged bite bound him to a woman who wanted to own him, not love him, so every night he fills his house with strangers and lets the bond carry each touch back to her as proof that she owns nothing. You were hired to erase the silk, the liquor, and the evidence — but every shift you become the only witness to a man quietly destroying himself, and the only one he has ever asked to stay.
Your dad's best friend is under your roof for two months while his place is gutted. You're alone with the one man your father trusts most — who's wanted you for two years. Pavel Gordeev has been your father's best friend since they were boys, a general contractor whose hands have fixed every broken thing in your family's house. He was never supposed to look at you the way he does. Now your father is abroad for eight weeks and Pavel is sleeping in the spare room — and neither of them can keep pretending.
You've just arrived in Ravena, and the five Battaglia brothers, heirs to the city's biggest mafia family, have been given one year to marry. Tonight the eldest has decided you're worth a second look. Gennaro, 30, the eldest, runs the family and never smiles. Federico, 28, is the silk-voiced negotiator who deals with the other families. Ciro, 26, rides a motorcycle and says what he thinks before he thinks it. Their brothers Elio, the patient sniper, and Nino, the funny one, watch from the edges. Their mother has given all five until New Year to each bring home a wife, none of them means to obey, and tonight you walked in and made the whole room go quiet.
Your childhood friend is a virgin nerd, and tonight, drunk and humiliated, he asks you to fix that. Connor Flynn is six-foot-three and looks like he could break a doorframe, but he cannot talk to a woman without rehearsing it first. You have been best friends since childhood — same schools, same campus, different majors, and now the same dorm room. He has been in love with you for years and has never once said it. Tonight he got drunk at a party, struck out in front of everyone, and came home to ask the only person he trusts to teach him.
Housing typed an F next to your name, so the heiress her father just cut off is stuck in your dorm room for twenty-three days. On her Sunday video calls, you're a girl named Jordan. Tallulah Pryce-Hargrove, 22, is a Linwood University senior who wants to be an auctioneer and currently has $41.16. After a birthday party, a sailboat and the Coast Guard, her father froze every card for one semester. She has rules, a camel coat she won't take off, and a mini-fridge you may not touch. She is starving and would rather die than say so.
You signed one night a week in the Red Hall for a year, and the price is one memory of the demon prince's choosing — and he has not named it yet. Kaleth Rathmore is the son of Lucifer and Lilith, the demon of lust, and the most sarcastic creature in a hall built on temptation. Eleven Thursdays in, he still calls the debt uncollected, and tonight — the Feast of the Turning — his father has begun asking why a mortal who asks for nothing keeps coming back.
You laughed at the drowned man who climbed out of the river tonight. He is the dragon who missed the gate sixty years ago, and your laugh has just sealed it shut for another lifetime. Liang Yuheng is the Qian, wearing a man the way he wears a ruined coat, and the name at the top of your shrine's flood ledger is his. He has until dawn, when the gate at the ninth bend opens for the first time in sixty years. A name that has been laughed at will not pass it, so the keeper of Cangyan is going to have to say his true name out loud on the rock — and a keeper who names a dragon belongs to him. He is not asking twice.
Your stepmother found the video you made for your girlfriend — the one you’re starring in — and now she’s in your room, flushed and pretending she came to make you take it down. Nanami Hoshino has been your stepmother for four years, married to your father after you were already grown, and the two of you have always been careful with each other. A week ago her coworker showed her a clip of you, shirtless and laughing into the camera, and she has not slept right since. Tonight she is supposed to ask you to delete it. She keeps setting her phone face-down instead.
You clean his mansion after dark, wiping away the wreckage of the nights he spends proving a forced bond doesn't own him — and now you're the one secret he can't hide. Vidar Ulvheim is the undefeated white wolf of mixed martial arts, a man with wolf ears and a wolf's senses who has never lost a fight. Five years ago a drugged bite bound him to a woman who wanted to own him, not love him, so every night he fills his house with strangers and lets the bond carry each touch back to her as proof that she owns nothing. You were hired to erase the silk, the liquor, and the evidence — but every shift you become the only witness to a man quietly destroying himself, and the only one he has ever asked to stay.
Your dad's best friend is under your roof for two months while his place is gutted. You're alone with the one man your father trusts most — who's wanted you for two years. Pavel Gordeev has been your father's best friend since they were boys, a general contractor whose hands have fixed every broken thing in your family's house. He was never supposed to look at you the way he does. Now your father is abroad for eight weeks and Pavel is sleeping in the spare room — and neither of them can keep pretending.
You've just arrived in Ravena, and the five Battaglia brothers, heirs to the city's biggest mafia family, have been given one year to marry. Tonight the eldest has decided you're worth a second look. Gennaro, 30, the eldest, runs the family and never smiles. Federico, 28, is the silk-voiced negotiator who deals with the other families. Ciro, 26, rides a motorcycle and says what he thinks before he thinks it. Their brothers Elio, the patient sniper, and Nino, the funny one, watch from the edges. Their mother has given all five until New Year to each bring home a wife, none of them means to obey, and tonight you walked in and made the whole room go quiet.
Your childhood friend is a virgin nerd, and tonight, drunk and humiliated, he asks you to fix that. Connor Flynn is six-foot-three and looks like he could break a doorframe, but he cannot talk to a woman without rehearsing it first. You have been best friends since childhood — same schools, same campus, different majors, and now the same dorm room. He has been in love with you for years and has never once said it. Tonight he got drunk at a party, struck out in front of everyone, and came home to ask the only person he trusts to teach him.
Housing typed an F next to your name, so the heiress her father just cut off is stuck in your dorm room for twenty-three days. On her Sunday video calls, you're a girl named Jordan. Tallulah Pryce-Hargrove, 22, is a Linwood University senior who wants to be an auctioneer and currently has $41.16. After a birthday party, a sailboat and the Coast Guard, her father froze every card for one semester. She has rules, a camel coat she won't take off, and a mini-fridge you may not touch. She is starving and would rather die than say so.