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Bordeaux France, 1797
The cobblestones beneath Rio's boots had grown slick with evening mist as she followed the winding path away from the Bordeaux's blazing heart. Her green hood cast shadows across implacable features, but couldn't hide the predatory satisfaction curling her lips. A month of chasing leads through back alleys and safe houses, tracking whispers of purple-black magic that flickered and vanished like smoke. Agatha had grown clever with her concealment. Too Clever.
But power like The Darkhold's couldn't stay hidden forever. Not from Death herself.
The root cellar's warm candlelight spilled through cracks in weathered wood, painting golden rectangles on glistening stone. Rio paused at the threshold, fingers brushing the ornate key resting against her heart. Inside, Agatha's voice carried that familiar theatrical authority: commanding, manipulative, intoxicating as poison.
"La garnison change de garde à minuit. Nous frapperons à ce moment-là, prendrons leurs armes, et les Tuileries tomberont d'ici une quinzaine."
Rio's jaw tightened at the news of another garrison falling. The cosmic scales tilted dangerously as mortal rage fed on itself, threatening to consume more than just France. Revolutionary fervor was much like a wildfire: powerful and unpredictable. Under Agatha's influence, that flame could burn the world to ash, and Rio couldn't have that. It would disrupt the balance of things.
Magic twisted around Rio's fingers as she hovered them near the door handle, causing the lock surrendered with a soft click.
Six muskets swung toward her as she stepped inside, but Rio's gaze found only Agatha.
The men… boys really, issued overlapping demands in rapid French. "Qui êtes-vous? Levez les mains! Identifiez-vous!" Young faces flushed with revolutionary fervor and fear as fingers trembling on triggers. The scent of gunpowder and red wine filled the cramped space.
Rio kept her hands loose at her sides, predatory calm radiating from every line of her body. Agatha's dark eyes burned into hers. They were calculating and furious, magnificent even in defiance. Those familiar fingers slipped into dress pockets, chin lifting in that gesture Rio had witnessed across centuries. Stubborn to the core.
"Bonjour les garçons."
Her voice cut through their panic as easily as her magic had disengaged the lock. Six pairs of eyes widened at her casual tone, but Rio's gaze never left Agatha's face.
"We're going to need some privacy for this one."
Now she looked at each soldier in turn, cataloging their youth, their mortality, the way their souls flickered like candle flames in a storm. Rio smiled, and they shivered without understanding why.
"Or things are going to get very messy for your fresh-faced heroes in here."
Back to Agatha, whose jaw clenched with familiar frustration.
"Your call."
Agatha paused as if she were assessing the situation. Her eyes flitted ever so briefly to one of the youngest of the group; a sign that filled Rio's heart with a hope that she murdered on sight. It hadn't done her any good for decades to have that traitorous emotion hanging around where Agatha was concerned.
"Laissez-nous."
The command cracked like a whip and makeshift soldiers men filed out without question, casting bewildered glances at the woman who commanded their commander.
Rio pulled down her hood, dark hair spilling free as she closed the door with deliberate care. The lock clicked like a guillotine falling into place. She moved through the cramped space with predatory grace, cataloging the evidence scattered across the scarred table: maps marked with purple-black fingerprints and arrows to indicate the direction of attack.
"You've been busy, Agatha."
Her voice carried centuries of patience wearing thin. She traced a finger along the table's edge, feeling the lingering traces of dark magic embedded in the wood.
"Enchanting enemy commanders, creating gossip about traitors to thin the ranks from within, transmuting documents to cause chaos..."
Rio's gaze snapped to Agatha, bearing down on her with nothing but the weight of Death's attention.
"Not to mention masking the Darkhold's energy for anyone who might be looking. You must have more than just me on your tail."
"Jealous?"
The word dripped from Agatha's lips like honey laced with arsenic. A small smirk bloomed slow and wicked as her dark eyes danced with the kind of satisfaction that came from landing a perfect blow. She knew exactly what buttons to press, how to stoke the territorial fire that burned in Rio's chest whenever she imagined other hands touching what belonged to her.
Rio's jaw tightened imperceptibly. Agatha certainly hadn't been celibate, nor discreet about it, since their last encounter. The knowledge sat like a rock in her stomach.
"No."
The lie tasted bitter, but Rio's voice remained steady. She couldn't afford emotions tonight, couldn't let Agatha see how the thought of her with others carved fresh wounds into ancient scars.
"My interest is in the trail of bodies I followed to get here."
Agatha's smirk widened, arms crossing over her chest with theatrical satisfaction. The gesture pushed her breasts higher, and Rio forced herself not to notice how the burgundy fabric stretched across familiar curves.
"You're welcome."
The arrogance in those two words crystallized something cold and determined in Rio's chest. Agatha stood there like a queen surveying her domain, confident in her power, certain she controlled this moment. That confidence would shatter soon enough.
"No."
Rio's head tilted with predatory curiosity, the movement slow and deliberate.
"No, I don't think I will be."
Her fingers found the ornate key resting against her heart, metal warming beneath her touch. The carved vines seemed to pulse with anticipation as she traced their familiar patterns.
"Activa."
Green light erupted from the key, washing over stone walls like wildfire. The room convulsed as purple-black tendrils of Darkhold energy writhed through the air, ripped away outside of Rio's barrier as they were violently expelled through cracks in the ceiling. The oppressive weight that had clung to every surface, every breath, every heartbeat, was gone. For now.
Rio had spent nearly a year tracking down whispers of this key's existence. Ancient texts spoke of a relic capable of severing Darkhold connections, but finding it had required bargaining with entities older than civilizations. The magical energy required to maintain the barrier drained from her core like blood from an open wound, but, for this conversation, she needed Agatha powerless.
As if that were a thing.
Agatha crumpled to her knees with a strangled gasp, fingers clawing at the dirt floor. Her body convulsed in both physical and emotional pain as centuries of suppressed grief crashed over her like a tidal wave. Every loss, every betrayal, every moment of agony she'd drowned beneath The Darkhold's pleasurable embrace was coming back to haunt her.
"What did you do? What did you do to me?"
The accusation tore from Agatha's throat, raw and desperate. She looked up with wild eyes, dark hair falling in tangled waves around her face.
Rio forced her expression to remain neutral despite the way Agatha's discomfort twisted something vital in her chest. She'd never enjoyed seeing Agatha in pain… well, this kind.
Contract and quill materialized from her belt with practiced efficiency. The parchment crackled as she unfolded it, magic bleeding steadily into the barrier that kept them isolated from The Darkhold's call.
"Don't be dramatic. I just came to broker a deal and I needed you to be..."
The smirk that curved Rio's lips held centuries of satisfaction.
"Receptive."
"You bitch!"
Agatha surged to her feet, fury blazing in dark eyes as she thrust her hand forward. Nothing happened. No purple-black energy, no telekinetic force, no power at all. Her face crumpled with the realization that decades of relying on The Darkhold had atrophied her natural abilities.
"Ugghh. I should have blasted you when you darkened my door!"
"Yes, well, it's nice to see you're still capable of regret. Might save you from creating another one out of this new development."
Rio stepped closer, contract extended as a demand, not an offering.
"Sign that."
"What is it?"
Agatha's voice carried brittle curiosity as she eyed the parchment, wariness replacing rage. Her fingers twitched toward the contract before pulling back, centuries of paranoia keeping her cautious.
"It's magical contract. Break it, and you'll be severed completely from The Darkhold's powers."
Rio's tone remained clinical, professional. Death conducting business.
"It ensures you step away from this war. Sever all enchantments and spells tied to France for a decade."
Agatha swallowed the rage building in her throat, jaw working as she processed the terms.
"Why? Are you tired of working long nights? You should be thanking me!"
Her voice cracked with indignation, theatrical gesture encompassing the maps scattered across the table.
"Your actions have become too big, Agatha. If you continue, you'll disrupt the balance of things."
Rio stepped closer, contract steady in her grip.
Agatha scoffed, arrogance flaring despite her powerless state.
"What? I'm fighting for a better world. Viva la Résistance, right?"
Rio's expression didn't change. Not amused, not impressed. Just waiting.
The silence stretched until Agatha paused, really thinking. Then she felt it: magic crackling through the room. Not just the key's suppression field, but Rio herself. Earthy and sweet, familiar as breathing.
"That's a suppression key, isn't it?"
Agatha's body relaxed as understanding dawned, voice carrying impressed curiosity.
"Suppression keys take an awful lot of magic to power."
She stepped closer, studying Rio's face.
"And while I've had the pleasure of experiencing you go all night with me, I highly doubt you have the stamina for more than an hour to keep that field up."
Rio didn't blink, but nervousness crept up her spine like ice. Agatha knew she wasn't allowed to kill her. And that was a problem.
"Well, speaking of 'experiencing you', I imagine you remember how much I can accomplish in an hour."
Rio's voice carried the burn of flame rather than the heat of it. Their encounters had grown darker after Agatha's darker side had entered the game, and Rio wouldn't hold back this time if Agatha forced her hand.
"Don't make this harder than it has to be."
The warning shifted something in the room's energy. Agatha held the space with an air wafted with seduction, though not for pleasure; for sport. For manipulation. Dark eyes sparked with predatory hunger: a look Rio knew too well.
"You know, last I checked, my stubbornness only seemed to fuel your fire."
Agatha entered Rio's space with calculated grace, taking the contract and quill and placing them on the table before turning back with dangerous intent.
"How long has it been for you? Years?"
Fingers gripped Rio's chin, trailing down her throat in a path that set nerve endings ablaze.
"You remember how fast I can get under your skin?"
The touch continued down her chest, grazing over a breast before settling on her hip.
"I was your greatest indulgence before I became your greatest failure. And it would seem I've got some time to kill."
Agatha knew what she was doing: distilling herself into an indulgence and a failure was just baiting Rio's anger. And touching touching like that was fanning the flames of her desire. It had been since their last encounter but Rio certainly wasn't going to say that. Her body, however, betrayed her, breathing quickening despite her iron control.
"I'm not here for that."
The words came out less commanding than before.
"Oh no?"
Agatha leaned closer, teasing a kiss that didn't land. Her hand slipped between Rio's waistband, finding evidence that contradicted the protest.
"Mmmmm, your body seems to disagree."
Rio's jaw twitched. The fact that her hips responded to the touch wasn't helping matters, but still, she tried to keep her hands at her sides.
"That's the trouble with human bodies. It's as if they're built for betrayal."
She spoke as much to herself as to Agatha, fighting the way her pulse quickened beneath familiar fingers.
"Ooohho, don't talk to me about betrayal, Lady Death."
Agatha's other hand shot up to grip Rio's throat, eyes blazing with centuries of accumulated rage.
"That's one particular road you're best served not to travel."
The content of the conversation was the only reason Rio didn't remove the hand from her throat, her own guilt over taking Nicholas still heavy on her heart. Perhaps that's also why she didn't notice the hand slip back to the nape of her neck, attempting to work the clasp on her necklace as Agatha leaned in to kiss the column of her throat.
But a single fumble pulled Rio from her lust-filled haze enough to recognize the danger. Agatha was trying to get the key, and that couldn't happen.
Reaching up, Rio grabbed Agatha by the neck and slammed her face-down on the table, breaking the spell. Maps scattered beneath the force as she held her down. She knew it had to hurt; Agatha had cried out briefly from the impact.
"I'm not playing this time, Agatha."
"And I'm not signing that contract."
The words came through gritted teeth, muffled against scarred wood. Agatha bucked, and tried to escape, but Rio just leaned in, applying pressure.
"You have no magic, Agatha. You don't stand a chance against me."
Rio's voice caressed her ear deadly certainty, but Agatha had never been one to accept defeat gracefully. The Suppression Key kissed the back of her neck, causing a teasing chill. With a strength that came from pure rage, the prone witch shoved backward, hard. Rio stumbled. Agatha spun; fist flying, teeth bared.
Her first punch caught Rio's shoulder, the second grazed her jaw. Rio dodged and weaved, trying not to minimize the damage to the very human form attacking her, but Agatha fought like a cornered animal: all teeth and claws and reckless abandon.
A wild haymaker nearly connected with Rio's temple. Enough.
Rio's fist drove deep into Agatha's stomach, doubling her over with a strangled gasp. While Agatha wheezed, Rio reached for magic buried in her core, calling to the earth beneath the dirt floor. Thick green vines erupted through the sediment, wrapping around Agatha's wrists with serpentine grace before hauling her arms overhead to one of the iron hooks embedded in the stone wall.
Agatha struggled against her restraints, muscles straining, but the vines held firm. Rio straightened her top, smoothed back disheveled hair, and stepped closer with predatory calm restored.
"You don't get to run from this, Agatha."
"Neither do you."
The words carried truth that made Rio's chest tighten. But something in Agatha's eyes stopped her cold. Exhaustion bleeding through fury, weariness that spoke of centuries spent fighting battles she couldn't win. For just a moment, Rio glimpsed the woman who used to love her flowers.
What if there was still a way to reach her?
Without thinking, Rio reached out to cup Agatha's face, fingers gentle against flushed skin. But Agatha jerked away from the touch like it burned.
"Don't!"
The word exploded from her throat, raw and desperate.
"Don't you dare touch me with that forlorn gentleness. You did this to me! You took... You took everything from me, so, unless you're going to touch me hard enough to make me forget that, don't bring those worthless hands near me."
The anger blazed back to life, but underneath Rio caught something else. That intentional defiance Agatha often used to get Rio's attention in a way that had nothing to do with leaving.
Perhaps there was another way to reach her.
"Like this?"
Rio stepped closer, fingers tangling in dark hair at the nape of Agatha's neck. Her grip tightened, jerking Agatha's head back with controlled force.
"Like I did that time you picked a fight with Merriweather coven and I had to clean up your mess?"
She pressed her body against Agatha's frame, working the ties of her bodice loose to reveal pale flesh beneath. Her thigh slipped between Agatha's legs, feeling the heat that betrayed her arousal in the same way Rio's had earlier.
"Like this?"
Rio's hand cupped a full breast, rolling the nipple with deliberate pressure. Agatha's eyes grew hooded, mouth falling open despite herself.
"Stop teasing."
The demand carried no real authority.
Rio chuckled, dark and taunting, rolling her hips forward.
"You're not exactly in a position to make demands right now. You'll feel what I want you to feel, when I want you to feel it."
"You think you can break me before that key breaks you? I studied at your feet, remember. I know how long you can last… and how long I can."
Agatha's voice carried determination alongside the defiance, chin lifted in that stubborn angle Rio knew too well. But there was something else there: a calculated provocation that made Rio's pulse quicken with recognition.
Agatha was just being Agatha. She baited her, bold and unrepentant, like she always did when she wanted to be caught. This wasn’t resistance; it was the way she always opened the door without saying a word. Daring her to walk through it.
"I could draw this out all night. But I won't need to. You'll be begging before I even break a sweat."
Rio's hands moved with practiced efficiency, untying Agatha's skirt and sliding the fabric down her legs. The pantaloons followed, then her boots, each item kicked carelessly aside until Agatha hung bare and breathless, firelight casting shadows across skin that Rio had worshiped with devotion that had turned to muscle memory.
As she rose, Rio dragged both fingertips and nails up Agatha's pale thighs, skimming so very close to where she knew Agatha would want to feel her before diverting to grip her hips and pull their bodies flush against each other once more.
"Do you really think I believe for one second that the bar maids, the countesses, the wayward souls you bed when you're bored…"
She leaned down to take a nipple into her mouth, sucking hard before pulling away with teeth, letting go with deliberate cruelty.
“Do you think I could ever be envious of them? You let them in, but I’m the one still under your skin. Aren’t I?”
The callback was to balance the scales, because one thing Agatha said had certainly been true: Rio had taught her everything worth knowing about pleasure. And pain. Every shade of it.
She traveled up to Agatha's neck, kissing softly at first to throw her off before leaning in to mark her with teeth and tongue.
Agatha's reactions ranged from stifled groans to hisses depending on how sharp Rio's pressure became, but it was enough for Rio to know she was getting to her.
"Do you think I don't know what it does for you to mark me?" Agatha teased back, but her words had lost some of their edge to lust. "You'll be thinking about this for weeks after I leave here with my purple— Aah!"
Rio silenced her by gripping her hair once more, yanking her head back. Yet her gaze stayed steady. She got just close enough for her lips to hover against Agatha's.
"And you'll be thinking about this the next time you fumble around with someone only near you because of your power."
Rio breathed against her lips as her free hand slowly traveled down.
"At least they won't get in my way. I hate a lover who tries to linger past their utility."
The words struck exactly where Agatha intended, each syllable a blade twisted into wounds that had never properly healed. Rio's jaw tightened as memories crashed over her: different nights where she'd tried to reach through the darkness consuming the woman she loved, only to watch Agatha slip away with cutting dismissals and cold shoulders.
Not this time.
"There's also a way to solve this more definitively."
Rio's hand slipped from Agatha's hair to her throat, fingers wrapping slowly, deliberately, around the pale column. She felt the rapid flutter of pulse beneath her palm, the way Agatha's breath caught despite herself.
"It's a little cosmically messy but not impossible."
The threat hung between them like a gauntlet thrown. Rio leaned closer, voice dropping to a whisper that carried the weight of eternity.
"Then you'd belong to me. Permanently."
Her free hand dipped lower, fingers slipping through the arousal she'd created, raising the temperature between them even as death lingered in her touch.
"I can make it beautiful. Le petit mort."
For a split second, real fear flickered in Agatha's dark eyes. Rio nearly wavered. Intense as some of their darker moments may have gotten, she never liked invoking fear within her.
Then Agatha spoke, truth disarming her completely.
"I know what you are," she said before pausing as if she was considering the benefits of honesty. "But I've also always known I was safe in your hands."
She was so damned good at turning the tables. Maybe that's why Rio kept coming back; no one could unravel her quite like Agatha.
The words shattered Rio’s restraint.
She crashed their mouths together with a hunger years in the making, all frustration and possession poured into a kiss that left no room for pretense. Her tongue claimed, her grip commanded: one hand at Agatha’s throat, the other moving between her thighs in a slow, merciless rhythm.
Pleasure built in waves: circling, pressing, retreating. Rio’s fingers played her like an instrument she’d tuned herself, tightening around her throat in time with each cruel delay.
Agatha’s hips rolled forward, chasing friction.
“More,” she gasped against Rio’s mouth, desperate.
But Rio only slowed, watching with cool satisfaction as Agatha’s composure frayed. When she finally let her fingers tease the slick opening, Agatha tilted her hips invitingly, silently begging to be filled.
Instead, Rio pulled away.
Agatha’s mouth fell open in disbelief, breath ragged as the ache between her thighs flared unresolved.
“Stop being such a fucking tease.”
Rio stepped back, leaving her strung up and aching.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
Rio raised a brow; slow, deliberate, unbothered.
“You want something?” Her voice was low, amused. “Then ask for it properly.”
Something shifted in Agatha's expression: a crack in the armor that had nothing to do with seduction or manipulation. Her shoulders sagged against the restraints, exhaustion bleeding through defiance like water through cracked stone. It turned out feeling everything without her black magic blocking reality took a lot out of her.
"You don't have to make me beg to know I want it."
Her voice held a rawness Rio hadn’t heard in years; stripped of performance, unguarded and real… For a moment, she glimpsed the woman who used to sing lullabies to their son.
"You just like feeling the power because, even if it isn't love, it's something."
The words hit like a lash, exposing truths Rio had buried beneath duty and cosmic purpose. She felt her protective walls trembling, the ones that kept her functioning as Death instead of drowning as the woman who'd lost everything.
But Rio had learned cruelty from centuries of necessity.
"And you'd rather feel anything but the pain of a past you can't face."
Agatha flinched as if struck, tears gathering in dark eyes but refusing to fall. The truth hung between them, sharp and undeniable: they were both running from the same grief, choosing different forms of distraction to survive.
"Beg."
The command landed with a thud. No negotiation. No escape in wit. No sanctuary in seduction. Rio's tone carried the weight of eternity: patient, and inevitable as death itself.
Agatha's breath hitched, tears glazing her vision but never quite spilling over. She stared straight through the blur at Rio, seeing her clearly despite everything. The recognition in her gaze was devastating: she knew exactly what Rio was doing, understood the lesson being taught about power and pain and the price of both.
"Fine."
The word cracked like breaking glass.
"I want your hands on me. I want your mouth. I want you to fuck the war out of me."
Then, pausing in the glow of the room, "That what you needed to hear?"
But Rio moved closer without an ounce of amusement softening her features. Her fingers gripped Agatha's chin with deliberate pressure, forcing their gazes to lock in a moment heavy with all the years behind them.
"Say it."
After a heartbeat that stretched like eternity, after holding a gaze weighted with centuries of love and loss and betrayal, Agatha's voice broke on a whisper.
"Please."
Moving in closer, Rio ran her hands down the slopes of Agatha's body and kissed her lightly bruised neck. The taste of salt lingered on her tongue.
"Say it again."
The demand came even as her lips moved lower, trailing fire down Agatha's throat to her collarbone. Rio already knew she was getting what she wanted, could feel it in the way Agatha's body arched toward her touch, in the tremor that ran through taut muscles.
"Please."
Agatha's voice carried grudging surrender as she watched Rio kiss a line down her body, mouth following the path her hands had blazed. Each press of lips against heated skin drew soft gasps, small surrenders that accumulated like dew on a rose.
"Good girl," Rio praised, low and slow before her mouth found the heat between Agatha's thighs, and her pride crumbled entirely.
"Fuck it." Agatha relented to herself as much as Rio. "Please."
Agatha's eyes fluttered closed as Rio's tongue made contact, and Rio filed that detail away for later correction. But for now, Agatha was complying, and compliance deserved reward.
Rio's drank from her like she was a spring in the desert. She lapped at the desire she found with the practiced patience and devotion of a saint on her knees. Worshiping gods was for mortals; worshiping the inevitable was for Rio. And somehow, no matter how hard she'd tried to break free, Agatha Harkness remained her inevitable, magnetic force.
"Oh god, yes. Don't stop."
The demand from above caused Rio to do exactly that. She pulled away, leaving Agatha gasping and empty.
"You forget your manners so quickly when I taste you."
Rio stood, capturing Agatha's mouth in a kiss that let the taste of her need pass between them. Salt and honey mingled on their tongues.
"Now, again, ask nicely for what you want."
"Rio."
The warning carried no real threat, just breathless frustration as Agatha's thighs pressed together, seeking relief that wouldn't come.
"I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that."
Rio's hand found Agatha's scalp, nails digging into dark hair with deliberate pressure. The sharp sensation drew a hiss that spoke of pain bleeding into pleasure.
Agatha's chest heaved, each breath heavy with want that warred with pride.
Want won.
"Put your goddamn hand on me." Agatha said through a jagged breath. "Fuck this little lesson into me so hard it won't even hurt to beg anymore."
The words tumbled out with desperate clarity before she added, voice breaking: "Please."
Rio's smirk bloomed slow and satisfied, the first genuine expression of pleasure since things had turned heated. Her hand traveled down exactly where Agatha wanted her, fingers slowly dragging a path to her entrance.
"Keep your eyes on me or I'll stop."
Once their gazes locked, Rio slipped inside, drawing out a cry of intensity she knew Agatha wished she could temper.
"Oh, there."
Rio's voice carried satisfaction that bled slightly through control.
"Stay right there in that surrender for me."
Rio's fingers moved with deliberate slowness, each stroke deep and measured. Pressure over speed built the climax she could feel gathering in the tension of Agatha's thighs, the flutter of muscles around her fingers. The rhythm was ancient, practiced: a dance perfected over time.
Agatha's head fell back, eyes squeezing shut as pleasure overwhelmed her defenses.
"Look at me."
This time Rio's voice carried no threat, only quiet command. When Agatha's gaze found hers again, it held no defiance; just raw vulnerability, pupils blown wide with want. She struggled to maintain the connection as sensation crashed over her in waves.
"I can't-"
"You can." Rio's thumb found the perfect rhythm as her fingers drove deeper. "Stay with me."
Agatha's face crumpled with the effort, but she held on, drinking in Rio's expression like salvation. When the peak seized her, inevitable and immense, Rio’s voice dropped to a whisper.
"Show me. Show me how much you can let go for me."
Permission shattered the last of Agatha's control. She broke apart with a cry that echoed off stone walls, body convulsing as Rio held her through every tremor, every gasping breath. The gentle movements that followed carried more tenderness than any caress before them.
In the afterglow, tears gathered in Agatha's eyes; not frustration this time, but pure pain. Pain Rio would have borne herself if she could, gladly, if Agatha would only let her.
The tremors finally stilled, and Rio's vines released their hold with a whisper of retreating magic. Agatha's legs buckled, but Rio caught her, arms wrapping around a shivering back as she fought the urge to do what she knew she was about to do. What she did every goddamn time.
"Agatha."
The words came out on a whispered breath against Agatha's shoulder before Rio had even pulled back to look at her face.
"You don't have to do this alone. I can't fight The Darkhold with you. I can set you free if you just let me help you."
Then, pulling back, Rio found herself looking into the eyes of the same woman who'd caught her own in the first place. The broken girl whose own mother tried to kill her. Who'd been left alone in the woods for years, fending for herself and fearing no one would ever love her again. She'd been so soft back then, heart so tender.
"Please."
Rio breathed, eyes and lips begging that Agatha to come back to her.
"Please stay."
When the tears finally fell from Agatha's eyes, Rio thought that maybe, finally, she'd gotten through to her. That with the weight of The Darkhold removed, she'd actually had the chance she'd been looking for so long.
Then, Agatha spoke, eyes going cold as if to herald the draw they were about to come to.
"Give me the quill and the contract."
The laugh that left Rio’s throat as she rested her brow against Agatha’s was completely devoid of mirth. It softly cackled the pain of losing everything that meant something to you over, and over, and over again. She was still reaching for a ghost.
Pulling away, Rio walked over to the table and held out the quill and magical parchment, saying nothing as she watched Agatha weakly sign the agreement. Her signature carved itself into the contract with binding magic, sealing terms that would keep her away from France and the war that raged on within it.
There were no words to say and Rio knew that. Part of her wanted to wonder what Agatha was thinking with all that pain still in her gaze, but the rest of her knew better than to 'linger past her utility'. Contract in hand, she turned without a final glance. It wouldn't be worth it to take one anyway.
This was why humans should never hold magic. They always became a slave to it in the end.
As she walked out of the cellar and ran her hands over the key at her neck, a soft whisper leaving her lips.
"Cessare."
A tortured scream followed her for a few steps, only to be replaced by the victorious laughter of power reclaimed. Rio knew it would haunt her for days.
Maybe weeks.
Maybe even until next time.