The Devil's Favourite Obsession

”I can do things normal humans cannot do,” Cassian replied.

His gaze moved from her eyes to the mark on her neck. He looked at it the way one looks at something they have created and are satisfied with.

”That mark signifies that you belong to me.” His voice carried no possessiveness, no arrogance. Only fact. ”It manifested because you chose to be mine, just as I have chosen you.”

Cixi’s tears, which had been gathering since Cassian decided to annoy her, stopped. She looked at Cassian carefully, studying his face the way she studied difficult equations, searching for the meaning behind his words, beneath his words, in the spaces between them where the truth usually hid.

”Are you saying you are not human?” The question left her mouth quiet and clear.

That would explain many things. The doors that opened by themselves. The cameras that recorded what he wanted. The bridge. The water. The survival that should have been impossible. The bath that appeared while he fucked her. The way he moved through the Palace as though the building itself answered to him without being noticed. From the car to the bedroom. Probably the mirror also....

Who was he?

”I did tell you,” Cassian replied. ”You make me human.”

Cixi tilted her head. She did not understand why he kept repeating the same phrase. How did she make him human? Was he something else before? Something immortal? Something that existed beyond the boundaries of what she understood as living?

Then a thought struck her. Sharp and cold and sudden.

Wait!

She was mortal. She had been mortal her entire life. And then the curse arrived, and she became immortal. The Grim Reaper had taken her mortality and replaced it with something that would not let her die.

What if Cassian was the opposite?

What if he had been immortal, and she had somehow taken that immortality? What if whatever connected them had created an exchange? She took his immortality. He took her mortality. Two sides of the same coin are flipping in opposite directions.

Was that even possible?

Cixi pondered it. It was possible. In a world where Grim Reapers wore the faces of dead empresses, and curses turned mortals into undying vessels, anything was possible. Perhaps the Reaper had forgotten to mention this particular detail. Like always...

That woman never gave her the full picture. She dispensed information the way a miser dispensed coins, one at a time and only when forced.

”Who are you?” Cixi asked once more. Anticipation laced her voice. She wanted him to confirm what she had calculated in her mind. She wanted to hear him say it.

Cassian studied her face. He saw the gears turning behind her grey eyes, the connections being drawn, the conclusions being tested. And something in his expression softened. Not into warmth. Into the decision.

”How about I show you tonight?”

Cixi scowled. ”Show me?”

”I want to take you somewhere. And there, I will show you who I am.”

”You are dragging this out.”

”A little.” The corner of his lip curved. ”But it will be worth it.”

Cixi gave the offer a moment of thought. Her fingers still rested against the mark on her neck. The warmth pulsed gently beneath her touch, steady as a second heartbeat, as though something inside it recognised her hand and responded.

”You promise me it will be tonight?” she asked.

”I promise.”

Cixi held his gaze for a long beat, weighing his word against every other promise she had ever received from a man. Most of those promises had turned to dust. Cassian’s had not. Not yet.

She nodded. ”I am being accommodating. You had better not fool me.”

Cassian grinned. ”You will not be fooled, Cig.”

The nickname landed softly as though he had been calling her that for years instead of choosing the syllable for the first time.

What even did cig mean? Cixi pondered but decided to stay quiet.

He sat beside her. His hands moved across the plates, arranging the food in front of her with the quiet precision of a man who had spent centuries attending to details that most people considered beneath them. He placed the toast nearest to her right hand. The scrambled eggs in the centre. The coffee was at the exact distance her arm would naturally reach.

”Eat,” he said. ”You need a lot of energy to keep up with me.”

Although Cixi understood what he meant. She did not react. She did not answer. She simply looked at the plate.

Her face turned red.

The blush climbed from her neck to her cheeks to the tips of her ears, and she pressed her lips together and stared at the scrambled eggs as though they were the most fascinating objects she had ever encountered. As though eye contact with a plate of eggs was preferable to eye contact with the man who had just implied, with devastating casualness, that tonight would require stamina.

Cassian saw her cheeks turning red. He watched the colour spread across her skin with the quiet satisfaction of a man who could, at any moment, say something that would deepen the blush to its absolute limit.

But he chose otherwise.

He let her eat in peace. He poured her coffee. He reached for his own plate. And for a few minutes, the bedroom held nothing but the clink of cutlery and the warm silence of two people sharing a meal after a night that had changed the shape of everything between them.

Cixi ate slowly. Cassian ate more slowly. And neither of them spoke about what would happen tonight, because some promises carry more weight when they are left alone.

*

In the Palace, in the parlour room, another drama was taking place.

The room was large and formal, decorated in the Crown family’s signature style of dark wood, deep green velvet, and gold trim that gleamed dully under the afternoon light. The furniture was arranged in a semicircle, designed for discussions that required all parties to see each other’s faces. Today, every seat was occupied.

Michael sat calmly beside Tamara on the central sofa, his posture relaxed, one ankle resting on the opposite knee. Tamara’s spine was rigid, her hands folded in her lap, her expression that of a woman bracing for an argument she intended to win.