Dante needed a miracle.

  Instead, he got Lena.

  The bar she chose was a graveyard of bad decisions. The kind of place where the floor stuck to your boots, the drinks tasted like remorse with a splash of turpentine, and the neon sign outside flickered between "BAR" and "B R" like it was having an existential crisis. The kind of place where desperate men found salvation in the bottom of a bottle—and more often than not, found damnation instead.

  Lena occupied a corner booth, sprawled out like she owned the joint, boots on the table, a dagger lazily flipping between her fingers. She had the look of someone who had pissed off the right people, the wrong people, and some people who technically shouldn’t exist—and lived to tell the tale. A tattered jacket, a smirk that never quite reached her eyes, and a series of broken contract seals tattooed up her left arm, each one a shattered promise, a debt unpaid.

  A rogue Pactmaker. A contract breaker.

  Exactly what Dante needed.

  When he slid into the seat across from her, she didn’t waste time with pleasantries. Didn’t even bother looking up. She just took a sip of something that smelled flammable and said, “You look like someone who made a deal they shouldn’t have.”

  Dante exhaled slowly. “Yeah, well. That makes two of us.”

  Lena tilted her head, studying him like a card sharp sizing up a desperate gambler. Whatever she saw—the exhaustion, the quiet panic buried under forced nonchalance, the scent of a man running out of time—it didn’t surprise her. She’d seen plenty like him before. Poor bastards who thought they could outsmart the game, only to realize too late that the house always wins. Most of them crawled into holes and waited for the inevitable. The smarter ones came looking for her.

  She flicked her dagger upright, letting the tip rest against the scarred tabletop. “Let me guess,” she mused, tapping the blade in time with her words. “You thought you were clever. Thought you found a loophole. And now you’re realizing the only thing worse than a bad deal is thinking you got a good one.” Her smirk sharpened. “That about right?”

  Dante huffed a humorless laugh, rubbing a hand down his face. She wasn’t wrong. He had walked into his deal thinking he’d played it smart, thought he’d found a way to get what he wanted without paying the price. But contracts had a way of showing their true cost only after the ink was dry. And now the bill was coming due.

  At that, she finally glanced up, eyes sharp with amusement.

  “Difference is, I break mine.”

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  Lena explained her trade over a bottle of something that probably doubled as industrial solvent.

  Most Pactmakers signed on the dotted line and paid the price. They followed the rules, played the game, let themselves be chewed up and spat out by the fine print.

  Not Lena.

  Lena didn’t play the game. She rewrote the rulebook.

  "Every contract has a crack in it," she said, tapping her temple with one gloved finger. "You just have to be clever enough—or reckless enough—to find it."

  She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table, eyes gleaming like a magician about to reveal the trick. “See, contracts aren’t written to be fair. They’re written to be won. Every word is a weapon, every clause a trap, every bit of fine print another link in the chain.” She spun her dagger once, letting it clatter to a stop. “But the thing about chains?” She smirked. “They only work if you let them.”

  Most people, she explained, signed their names and surrendered. They let the weight of their oaths crush them, let the wording twist them into obedient little puppets, dancing to their masters’ tune. But words were malleable. Language was a living thing, full of contradictions and double meanings, and if you knew where to push—where to break, where to bend—you could turn iron bars into open doors. It wasn’t about strength. It was about seeing the cracks no one else noticed.

  She had spent years doing exactly that—not breaking the rules, but forcing them to obey her instead. It was part art, part war, and part pure, unfiltered audacity. The architects of these contracts thought they were invincible. Lena made a living proving them wrong.

  She had spent years tearing through deals, unthreading the bindings, twisting the wording until unbreakable bonds snapped like cheap twine. Where others saw iron-clad bargains, she saw loopholes, contradictions, escape routes. And she took them. Every time.

  And now?

  She was offering him a way out.

  For a price.

  Dante leaned back, arms crossed. “Let me guess. You don’t do charity work.”

  Lena snorted. “Not in this economy, sweetheart.”

  She reached into her jacket and tossed something onto the table.

  A contract. But not a Pact.

  A deal.

  "You help me with a little problem I’m having, and I’ll crack open your contract. Get you some breathing room before your debt collectors drag you to hell.”

  Dante looked at the contract. Then at her.

  A rogue Pactmaker, a dangerous job, and the chance to break free.

  Dante turned the contract over in his hands, feeling the weight of it—not just the paper, but the implications. Deals like this never came clean. There was always a hidden cost, always a twist waiting in the dark. And yet, for the first time in a long while, he saw something that looked like hope. Crooked, reckless, and dangling over a pit, sure—but hope nonetheless.

  His options were thin. Thinner than thin. If he walked away, his contract would keep tightening like a noose, every loophole slamming shut behind him, every escape route vanishing until there was nothing left but the inevitable. The collectors would come, the price would be paid, and he would disappear like all the others. At least this way, he had a fighting chance—even if it meant throwing in with someone who treated the laws of magic like a puzzle to be taken apart for fun.

  He glanced at Lena. She didn’t look worried. If anything, she looked entertained. Like she already knew what he would choose. Like she’d seen this exact moment play out a dozen times before and every poor bastard sitting across from her had done the same thing. Maybe that should have made him hesitate. Instead, it just made his decision feel inevitable.

  It was insane.

  It was exactly the kind of gamble he had to take.

  He picked up the contract, rolling the pen between his fingers. “Tell me what I’m signing up for.”

  Lena grinned, all teeth and trouble.

  “Oh, you’re gonna love this.”