The TV was already on when I woke, its blue light filling the room with that cold morning gloom that clings to early hours. Corvian sat at the edge of the bed, remote in hand, back straight as if he'd been awake far longer than I had.
A news anchor spoke in her polished voice, the kind that makes tragedy sound like routine. "Beloved magician Igor Ivanov was found dead in his hotel room, in what authorities call an apparent suicide."
My spine locked. I sat up too fast, the blanket twisting around my legs. "Bullshit," I muttered. "This can't be real."
The reporter continued, filling the silence between us. "Sources cite 'immense pressure' following the Fall Ball."
"Depressed over a performance?" I scoffed. "Come on. Who even talks like that?"
Corvian exhaled, long and quiet. His eyes stayed on the screen, unreadable. "Sometimes it's like that," he said.
I shook my head, disbelief prickling under my skin. "Now they're going to blame me?"
"Probably not," he replied. "They'll call him a loser and move on with their day. People are predictable like that."
I rubbed my face with both hands. "Damn… Kent must be devastated."
A smirk curled on Corvian's lips—small, sharp, deliberate. "Oh, I'm sure he is."
I frowned. "What's with that smile?"
"Nothing," he said, voice too smooth. "Just the irony of it all." Then he changed the channel with a lazy flick of his thumb. "Anyway. Enjoy the dominance. Henry's already setting up every stage in the city for you. You're about to become his new favorite pet."
"I'm no one's pet," I said.
Corvian turned his head slightly, giving me that half-interested, half-amused look of his. "Not even mine?"
A reluctant smile tugged at my mouth. "Not anymore."
He let out something between a sigh and a huff. "Yeah, you're right. We're far past that point." A beat passed. "You're marked by me now."
I leaned back, eyes drifting to the corner of the room where sunlight was trying to push through the curtains. "Was it really suicide?" I asked. "Or framed that way?"
Corvian shrugged lightly. "Does it matter?" Then his tone deepened, quiet but firm. "But yes. It was suicide. He did it. The thoughts in his head got louder."
A shiver went down my neck. "How do you know?"
He paused, then spoke with the kind of calm that always left me uneasy. "Let's say someone made the choice for him to be gone."
I turned to him fully. "Why are you talking in puzzles, Corvian?"
He met my stare, eyes dark, ancient. "I didn't mean to be vague. I thought you'd pick it up." His voice softened, strange for him. "Anyway. No more Kent. No more Igor. Can't you just calm down and enjoy your time?"
I swallowed. The air around us felt thin, stretched. "Corvian… did you kill him?"
He laughed—a low, cold sound that held no real humor. "Silly. We don't take human lives."
My stomach twisted. "You pushed him?"
He tilted his head as if weighing a thought. "That's debatable."
The room fell still. The morning light grew stronger, creeping warmer across the bedspread, touching everything except him. Corvian sat there, serene, unbothered, as if life and death were just stories told to keep mortals entertained.
And maybe they were.
Then he spoke, almost lazily.
"Would it be too bad if I did it?"
His tone carried that quiet weight he used when he wanted to see how I reacted. I leaned back against the headboard, heart picking up a slow, deliberate beat. "No," I said, after a breath. "Just… why would you?"
"It's not about Igor," he replied. "It's about something else entirely."
I narrowed my eyes. "You don't trust me enough to tell me?"
He scoffed, shifting his body toward me. "Trust you? What are you going to do about it anyway?"
"Exactly," I said. "So spit it out."
He studied me, silent long enough that I started thinking he wouldn't answer. Then he dragged a hand through his hair. "Let's just say Kent and I had a past. And I might have used my power to… nudge him into getting rid of his human."
My eyes widened. "Kent killed Igor?"
"Slow down," he said, raising a finger. "I told you—devils don't participate in killing. We don't stain ourselves like that. We do… other things."
A pause. "But yes. Kent did it. It was either him or Igor."
My stomach twisted. "You were going to kill Kent," I said. "Or—you can't do that either?"
"Oh, I can do that to Kent." The way he said it made something cold slither down my spine. "I just don't do it to humans. Not the same way we handle each other." His eyes sharpened. "So yes, Kent made a choice."
"He chose himself over the man he'd been accompanying for what—eighteen, twenty years?"
"That's right." Corvian shrugged. "Why is that surprising?"
"Because I thought maybe he'd be loyal," I said. "Stand his ground."
"Well, that's your mistake," he said. "Kent values his existence far more than he ever valued Igor, or the life Igor gave him, or any of it. Kent doesn't care that deeply. He'll find another magician. Another routine. The cycle will go on."
I dragged a hand over my face. "What's the deal between you and Kent?"
Corvian let out a breath that wasn't quite annoyance, but close. "Oh, that's a long story."
"I have all the time in the world."
He hesitated, which he rarely ever did. "I really don't want to tell it. I don't want you to—"
"To be scared," I said.
His jaw tightened.
"And," I continued, "can you really do the same thing to me that Kent did to Igor? Now that you marked me?"
"I'm not going to do that," he said immediately.
"What's the guarantee?"
"This," he muttered, tapping his temple twice with two fingers, "is exactly why I didn't want to tell you anything."
"What difference does it make whether I know or not?" I asked, voice rising in spite of myself. "If you want to do it, you'll do it. It's not like my opinion matters in the equation. If some other devil came and told you it's either 'you or Hugo,' you'd choose yourself."
He didn't flinch. He didn't pretend. He didn't offer comfort.
"Yeah," he said. "I would. But the chance that a devil older than me would give that order is extremely low. I don't make enemies with my peers. I don't provoke anyone. Well—except one."
He waved it off. "Besides, I'm not the only one who can pull the strings over life. There are other forces in this universe. The Creator. His angels. The angel of death takes his orders from Him, not from us. So tell me—can you truly say this is the devil's work? Igor's time came. That's all."
"This is very confusing," I whispered.
Corvian laughed quietly. "Yeah. Probably." He leaned back, resting his elbow on the blanket. "It's different. It's never simple. How can I explain it in a way that makes sense to you?"
He fell silent, searching for words he never intended to share.
The morning light slid across his face, softening nothing.
"Alright," he said quietly. "Enough of this." His voice shifted—light on the surface, though I could still hear the cavern under it. "Let's go out and do something fun."
I blinked at him. "Fun? After that?"
"Yes, Hugo," he said, almost patient. "Fun. Eat, drink, wander around until your mind stops gnawing at itself. Whatever you want." He pushed himself away from the edge of the bed. "The world doesn't end today."
I breathed out slowly, tension sliding in uneven lines down my spine. The room felt too still, the air too thick, but his offer sliced through it like a hand pulling back a curtain.
"Yeah," I murmured. "Alright."
He tilted his head, waiting for more. I nodded. A simple motion. Small, but enough to shift something in him. He didn't smile, not really, but there was a calmness around his eyes that hadn't been there moments before.
"Good," he said. "Get dressed."
There was no command in his tone. No push. Just an invitation.
Maybe I needed that more than I realized. Maybe he did too.
I swung my legs off the bed, the bruise on my cheek tugging when I moved. Corvian watched the motion, subtle concern flickering through him like a shadow passing over light. He didn't comment on it. He never did unless he needed to.
"Breakfast first?" he asked.
"Sure," I said, reaching for my jeans. "Breakfast."
He nodded once, slow and deliberate, as though sealing a quiet pact between us.
Outside, the world went on. Inside, I tried to follow.
The city was still half-asleep when we stepped outside. The air carried that mild chill particular to autumn mornings—neither biting nor gentle, only aware of its own passing. I could taste the night still dissolving from the corners of the streets, the way dew clung to parked cars like the residue of forgotten dreams.
Corvian walked beside me, silent but solid, his presence so steady it almost disguised the unrest that always followed him. The kind of quiet that hums behind thunder. I watched him as we passed a bakery already breathing out warmth and sugar into the cold air. He didn't look like someone capable of what he'd implied earlier. But then again, devils rarely look like what they are.
We turned down a narrow street where the morning light pooled over the stones in long, lazy streaks. He stopped in front of a café with iron-framed windows and a single crooked sign that read Olivine's. The doorbell gave a short ring when we entered, and the scent inside was thick—coffee, baked butter, something spiced.
"Sit," Corvian said.
I took the table near the window. A couple of pigeons pecked at crumbs outside, wings shivering every few seconds like they, too, were trying to wake up. The waitress came, hair pulled back, eyes tired in the ordinary way of people who know their hours too well. Corvian ordered without looking at the menu—two coffees, eggs, toast, something sweet.
He waited until she left before speaking. "You're quiet."
"I'm thinking."
"You're acting like all this time I didn't have the option to hurt you. But I didn't."
"I beg to differ—those memories cut. You tell yourself that's different from Kent, but pain doesn't care about your categories."
His eyes hardened, a flicker of warning beneath the calm. The café was quiet except for the murmur of strangers, the scrape of plates, the hiss of milk being steamed somewhere behind the counter. I leaned closer and whispered, careful, almost inaudible, "Because what you did to me is not that different from what Kent did to Igor."
Corvian's jaw tensed. "There is a difference," he said, barely above a breath.
"Then tell me," I said. "What's the difference? What did Kent ever do to you?"
He exhaled through his nose, long, deliberate, as though he was forcing himself not to vanish from the conversation altogether. "Kent," he said, "is a meticulous creature. Always was. But he… appreciated humans more than he should have. Bowed lower than he was meant to. That kind of thing doesn't end well in our order."
I didn't move.
"He's younger than me," Corvian continued, "by about a thousand years or something. Still a brat at heart. Never understood restraint. Never learned the weight of deference. We take an oath to respect those above us—it's old law, older than the world you know—and he broke it more times than I can count."
He trailed off, staring somewhere into the dark reflection of the café window. "He disobeyed the rules in more ways than one." His voice quieted, rougher now. "I don't really want to talk about this."
"Fine," I said, leaning back. "Suit yourself."
Our food arrived—eggs, toast, a small dish of sliced fruit that neither of us touched. The waitress smiled and left, unaware of the gravity sinking between us.
Corvian reached for his fork but didn't use it. The sunlight had shifted; it painted him in amber now, catching the fine edge of his profile. He looked almost human like this, until he blinked—and I remembered he wasn't.
He pressed a hand against the table, exhaled, and said quietly, "Eat, Hugo. You need it."
I did as he said, though each bite tasted distant, hollow. Between us, the air felt heavier than any silence I'd known—two creatures pretending to share breakfast, both nursing wounds neither would name.
The walk back was quiet. The kind of quiet that hums just below the skin, like a held breath that doesn't know whether to leave or stay. The streets blurred—faces, windows, traffic lights—all bleeding into one long line of movement that meant nothing. Corvian didn't speak, and I didn't ask him to. I didn't even know what I wanted to hear anymore.
I'd trusted him once. Or maybe I hadn't. It was hard to remember where it started—me trying to use him, then trying to manipulate him, then orbiting him as if he were the only gravity left in the world. Whatever it had turned into, I knew I was in too deep to tell where my choices ended and his began.
By the time we reached the apartment, the afternoon had already folded into that dim, uncertain hour between gold and grey. I went straight to my room without a word, closing the door with a soft click that felt heavier than it should have. I didn't lock it. I never did. Locks didn't matter much with him around.
The silence pressed in. I lay on my side, facing the wall, trying to steady the rhythm of my breath. I thought maybe if I stayed still long enough, my thoughts would lose interest and leave. They didn't.
Two minutes. Maybe three. The door opened.
His presence filled the room before the sound even reached me—the air shifting, charged, alive with something unnamable. My breath hitched.
I didn't turn. I didn't need to.
"I don't like it when you sulk like that," Corvian said from the doorway. His tone was neither reproach nor concern—just a statement of preference, as if my sorrow were an inconvenience he'd rather rearrange.
"Just let me be," I said quietly. "I'll get over it. Like everything else."
There was a pause, long enough for me to think he'd left. Then the floor creaked; he stepped closer.
"You know, Hugo," he said, voice low now, nearer, "I'm not going to hurt you. I won't."
I didn't move.
"I know you want reassurance," he continued, "but I don't do that. I never have. And all this—" his words slowed, softened—"is probably what you're looking for from me. Reassurance. But I just can't give that."
He stopped, as if the next line cost him something. "But I'm not going to hurt you. Not anymore."
I turned slightly, enough to catch his outline against the dim light spilling from the hallway. "You never told me what Kent did," I said. "Why do you hate him so much? It can't just be about disrespect. Your entire existence is built on it, Corvian. It has to be more than that."
He was quiet, his breath faint but audible. "In a way," he said at last, "you and I aren't very different."
"Don't," I murmured. "Don't make this poetic."
He ignored that. "I told you before, I don't feel emotions like you do. Down there, we experience something—but it's twisted. Filtered. We feel certain things toward our own kind. Devils. And yes, we prefer humans for possession, for anchoring, because it makes sense for what we are. But with each other…" He trailed off. "It's rarer. Harder to define."
He stood still, long enough that I thought he might stop there. Then he said, quietly, "There was one creature I once connected with. Thought it was mutual. Thought it meant something. But they were just… playing. Testing how far they could stretch the illusion."
He hesitated, almost imperceptibly. "That creature was Kent."
The words seemed to weigh on the air. I turned fully then, lying on my back, eyes tracing the shadow that obscured half his face. "You… had feelings for him?"
He didn't look at me right away. His gaze lingered somewhere beyond the room, beyond even the present moment. "You can say that."
"What kind of feelings?"
Corvian's mouth curved slightly, though the expression carried no amusement. "The kind we aren't supposed to have. The kind that make us forget what we are."
He stepped closer to the bed, the floor sighing beneath his weight. "He went behind my back. Did things he shouldn't have. Started something he couldn't finish. A competition of power, of loyalty. It's old history. I won't tell you details—not because I don't trust you. You couldn't use them even if you wanted to."
His voice lowered, almost tender. "Even marked, you're still human. There's only so much you can do. But there's also… something you can do that I can't."
"What's that?" I asked.
He didn't answer right away. The pause lingered, thick and alive. Then, quietly, "Feel without caution."
He stood there for a long moment, watching me. "We're not the same, Hugo. What I feel and what you feel—they aren't equal in depth or purity. But don't mistake that for nothing. There's… something here."
He stopped, as if uncertain what he'd just admitted.
"A connection," he said finally.
I swallowed. "A connection here? Between us?"
"Yes."
"And with Kent," I whispered, "you had… feelings? Whatever they were?"
He looked down, shadows cutting across his face, soft but deliberate. "You can say that," he murmured again.
The silence after his words was immense. It filled the room like a tide—slow, deliberate, heavy enough that it seemed to press against my chest.
Corvian didn't move. He stood near the window, the dim light touching the edges of his hair, his face unreadable. I couldn't tell if he was waiting for me to say something or for himself to turn into someone else.
"So that's it?" I said at last, my voice quieter than I intended. "You just… cared for him. Whatever that means to you."
He didn't look at me. "Care is not the right word."
"Then what is?"
He let out a small breath, almost a laugh but not quite. "It's something between ownership and reflection. You see too much of yourself in another, and suddenly you want to protect it—or destroy it. Sometimes both."
He turned then, his eyes catching mine, the shadow breaking over his face. "You of all people should understand that."
My throat tightened, but I didn't answer. I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing how right he was.
He came closer, each step measured, careful, like he was walking toward something fragile. The air shifted around him, carrying that subtle pull that always made me want to lean closer, even when every instinct told me not to.
I turned my face toward the wall instead, trying to steady my breathing.
"You're quiet," he said softly.
"There's nothing left to say," I murmured. "You've said enough."
"You think I'm lying."
"I think you never tell the truth unless it serves you."
That earned a faint smile. "And yet you still listen."
He reached the side of the bed, stopping close enough that I could feel the space warming between us. His presence was never loud—it seeped in, like water finding every crack.
"You don't trust me," he said.
I laughed under my breath. "I used to. I don't know what I do now."
Corvian studied me for a long time. "It doesn't matter. Trust is a mortal preoccupation. You confuse it with survival."
He crouched slightly, eyes level with mine. "You're still trying to understand me through the language of people who pray. But you can't pray your way into knowing me, Hugo."
"I'm not praying."
"No," he said quietly. "You're worshipping."
That word cut through me—clean, merciless. It wasn't accusation; it was observation. Like he'd just pointed out gravity itself.
He stood again, the distance between us widening. "You should rest."
I didn't respond. I couldn't. My pulse was too loud, my thoughts too many. He turned toward the door, hand on the frame, the shadow of him blending into the dark.
"You asked what the difference is between Kent and you," he said without looking back. "It's simple."
I waited.
"With Kent," he murmured, "I mistook interest for affection. With you—" He paused. "I'm still trying to decide what it is."
The door closed behind him, the click soft but final.
I stayed there, staring at the dark where he had been, the sound of his voice still curling around the air like smoke. Whatever passed between us—whatever name he refused to give it—it was neither mercy nor ruin. It was something older than both.