The Devil's Favourite Obsession

When Cixi had agreed to those terms, she had understood ”kiss” the same way every sane human being on the planet understood it. Lips to lips. Mouth to mouth. The universal, unambiguous, uncomplicated act of pressing your face against someone else’s face.

She had never, in her most deranged nightmares, considered what Cassian had just explained.

A kiss on the neck counted. A kiss on the earlobe counted. A kiss on the forehead, the shoulder, the wrist, the stomach, all of it counted. Every definition Cassian had recited and every location he had named while his gaze traced her body as a cartographer mapping uncharted territory, every single one of those fell under the curse’s jurisdiction.

Which meant what, exactly?

Cixi’s mind spiralled. If Cassian kissed a woman on the cheek at a formal event, would that woman be considered bound with her? If he pressed his lips to someone’s hand in greeting, did Cixi now owe that person a love story? If he kissed his own mother, sister on the forehead, did the curse activate further?

How deep did this go? How wide? How many people could Cassian unknowingly drag into her nightmare with a single act of casual affection?

She did not know.

She needed answers. She needed the Grim Reaper. She needed to find the ex-Empress and demand clarification before this loophole swallowed her whole.

Cixi exhaled through her nose, schooled her expression into something resembling composure, and met Cassian’s stare with the brittle calmness of someone who had just discovered a ticking bomb beneath her own chair and was trying very hard not to look down.

”I want to rest.”

Cassian studied her face, and he could tell Cixi was thrown off balance.

”Take me back to the Palace.” Cixi held her voice level. ”Please.”

The ”please” cost her something. She felt it leave her mouth like a tooth being pulled.

Cassian watched her for three more seconds. Then he nodded once, pulled his phone from his pocket, and dialled.

”Bring the secondary vehicle to the garage entrance. Unmarked plates.” He ended the call and slid the phone back into his pocket. ”Mark will escort you downstairs. The car is not registered under my name. No one will trace it to this building.”

Cixi picked up her backpack, went to the washroom to fit the silicone belly band to her flat tummy, then slung it over one shoulder and walked toward the door without looking back.

She felt his gaze on her the entire way. Burning between her shoulder blades like a laser sight.

She did not turn around to look at him anymore.

*

*

*

In the Palace, Cassian’s living room swallowed Cixi in silence.

She dropped her backpack on the floor beside the sofa, kicked off her shoes, and paced. Five steps to the window. Five steps back to the sofa. Five steps to the window again. Her arms folded across her chest, unfolded, folded again. Her fingers drummed against her elbows. Her lower lip caught between her teeth.

Every word Cassian had spoken replayed in her skull on a merciless loop.

”A kiss is the act of pressing one’s lips against another person or a part of their body.

Five steps to the window.

”The definition does not specify location. It specifies contact.”

Five steps back.

”Any part of that person.”

She stopped in the centre of the room and looked around. The living room stretched out before her, dimly lit by the amber glow of wall sconces, the heavy curtains drawn across the windows, the shadows pooling in the corners like spilled ink.

”Grim Reaper.”

Her whisper barely disturbed the dust.

She waited. One second. Two. Five. Ten. The room remained empty. The shadows did not stir. No cold draft swept through the air, no spectral presence materialised from the darkness, no ancient voice answered her call.

”Grim Reaper Cixi.” She raised her voice to a whisper-shout, the kind of volume that existed in the uncomfortable space between speaking and screaming. ”Ex-Empress of the Qing Dynasty. I need to speak with you.”

Silence answered her back.

The clock on the mantelpiece ticked. The refrigerator hummed faintly from the kitchen. But the Grim Reaper did not appear.

Cixi checked the time on her phone. 9:32 PM.

Twenty-eight minutes.

At ten o’clock, her soul would leave her body. It happened every night without exception, without warning, and without mercy. The clock would strike ten, and whatever invisible tether anchored her consciousness to her flesh would snap, and her soul would be pulled across continents, across oceans, across time zones, to witness something she had no business witnessing and could do nothing to prevent.

She needed to be in bed before it happened. If her body collapsed in the living room, anyone walking past would find her on the floor with no pulse and no breath, and the resulting panic would unravel every lie she had constructed to survive inside the Crown Palace.

Cixi changed into her sleeping clothes, climbed into bed, pulled the covers to her chin, and stared at the ceiling.

9:47. 9:51. 9:56.

The numbers on her phone screen ticked forward with the indifferent punctuality of a countdown she could not stop.

9:59.

She placed the phone face-down on the nightstand, closed her eyes, and let her body go slack against the mattress.

10:00.

The pull came.

It started behind her sternum, a sharp, invisible hook lodging itself between her ribs and yanking upward with a force that had nothing to do with gravity and everything to do with something far older. Her body sank deeper into the mattress as her soul peeled away from her skin, rising through her flesh like smoke through fabric, weightless and formless and completely, terrifyingly awake.

The bedroom dissolved. The Palace dissolved. The city, the country, the continent, all of it folded inward like wet paper collapsing into a drain, and Cixi’s soul hurtled through the dark at a speed that turned the world into a blur of light and shadow and silence.