The Devil's Favourite Obsession

”I leave you two for centuries,” the King continued. His voice did not rise. It did not need to. It carried the way earthquakes carry. Through the ground. Through the bones. Through the organs inside the body that vibrate before the mind has time to register danger. ”Three centuries. And this is what I return to. My two favourite warrior demons are throwing fists at each other like tavern drunks fighting over a bar tab.”

”He got too possessive about a human female,” Rafael said, still kneeling.

The King glared at him, and Rafael shut his mouth.

”You.” The King’s gaze settled fully on Rafael, and no mercy remained in those molten-gold eyes. The lava beneath his feet brightened with each slow pulse, as though his anger had seeped into the ground itself. ”When you asked to accompany Cassian, I thought you wished to stand beside him and help him build an empire on Earth, one that would stretch my claws farther across existence. But the moment you entered that world, you abandoned the purpose and reduced yourself to a creature of envy.”

Rafael said nothing. His jaw worked.

The King turned to Cassian. ”Cassain!”

Cassian met his gaze. He did not look away. He did not even lower his chin. He stood on his shrinking island of cracked Earth, bleeding from his knuckles, but it started to heal and dust in his hair, and he held the stare of the King with the stubbornness of a man who would rather burn than bend.

The King turned to Cassian, and the amusement lingering on his face became sharper when his gaze settled on him. ”Cassian.”

Cassian met his stare without lowering his chin. He stood upon the shrinking island of cracked Earth, with dust caught in the dark length of his hair and blood still staining his knuckles, though the torn flesh had already begun to knit itself back together. Even wounded and half-buried in the ruin around him, he held the King’s gaze with the stubborn defiance of a man who would rather be reduced to ash than bend his knee.

The King’s lips curved faintly, as if Cassian’s anger entertained him more than it offended him. ”I see you are still angry with me.”

Cassian’s jaw tightened until the muscle in his cheek pulsed.

”If you had not disobeyed me,” the King continued, speaking with infuriating calmness, ”I would never have sent you to Earth as punishment. You earned that exile yourself.”

Cassian’s healing hands curled slowly into fists. ”So you sent her into my life to make that punishment more entertaining for you?” His accusation came out low, but every word carried the force of something that had been burning inside him for far too long. ”Is that why you have come here? To watch what became of the game you started? You throw people into one another’s lives, ruin them, wound them, and then stand above everything as though their suffering is nothing more than your amusement. Should you not be satisfied already? Did you not achieve what you wanted when you sent me to Earth?”

The King’s smile widened, but there was no warmth in it. He stepped closer, and the cracked ground beneath him glowed brighter with each measured movement. ”Cixi was never part of my plan.”

Cassian’s eyes narrowed.

”She placed herself in your life,” the King said, his voice turning smoother, almost taunting.”And do not forget, Cassian, that it was you who asked for every first daughter of the Romanov family to be given to you. You made that demand. You sealed that fate. So I would not say I brought Cixi to your door. Your own decision did.”

For a moment, Cassian said nothing, yet the fury in his eyes deepened.

The King noticed it and looked even more pleased. ”You have always enjoyed blaming me for the consequences of your own desires. Yet look at you now. Angry at me, angry at Rafael, angry at the world, and still you have marked the very woman you claim I used against you.”

His gaze drifted over Cassian with cruel interest before his grin sharpened. ”How interesting.”

The King looked at both of them.

”You have been fighting like mortals. Rolling in the dirt. Throwing elbows. Headbutting.” He said the word headbutting the way a person says the name of a disease. ”You are demons. You fight with fire. You fight with form. You fight with the elements that obey your blood. Not with your knuckles like street children.”

He raised one hand.

The lava responded. A column of molten rock erupted from the surface thirty metres to their right. It rose in a towering spiral, spinning and glowing, the heat radiating from it so intense that the air between them rippled. The column held for three seconds. Then the King closed his fist and the column collapsed back into the river of fire without a sound.

”That,” the King said, ”is how a demon fights.”

He looked at Rafael. ”Your fire control is sloppy. You have not practised in decades. I can tell by the way the ground responds to you. It hesitates. Fire should not hesitate.”

He looked at Cassian. ”Your containment is deteriorating. The desert I built for you crumbled the moment you lost your temper. A Devil who cannot hold his own terrain during a fight is a Devil who will lose his throne.”

The King turned his back on both of them.

He walked three steps across the obsidian path. The lava parted for him. The ash in the air drifted away from his body as though even the debris knew not to touch him.

He stopped.

”I will be staying,” the King said without turning around. ”There are things that need correcting. In both of you. And in the world, you have been mismanaging in my absence.”

Rafael’s face drained of whatever remaining colour it had.

Cassian’s expression did not change. But his hands, at his sides, curled into fists again. Not for a fight. For control. The kind of fists a man makes when the thing he dreads most has just announced it is moving in.

”And Cassian.” The King’s voice carried over his shoulder like a blade thrown without looking. ”The girl. The mortal. I know about the mark you placed on her neck. I know about the blood you drank. And I know about the thing you did while she was not looking.”

Cassian went still... Completely still.

”We will discuss it,” the King said. ”Tonight.”

He walked forward. Each step cooled the lava beneath him. Each step left a trail of black obsidian in his wake. He did not look back.

The two demons behind him, once bloddied and bruised were standing on the shrinking remains of a world that had been built to contain their arguments, watched him go.

Rafael sat down on his narrow pillar of earth. He leaned back on his palms and looked up at the crimson sky.