The Devil's Favourite Obsession

But before Cassian could speak, the world changed. The obsidian hall folded inward.

Cassian stood still. His shadow wings shifted against his back. His black eyes stared at the empty space where the throne had been.

First, you come to Earth often... Unnecessarily. Secondly, you have always kept an eye on us. So what is the dialogue about leaving for centuries?

Cassian wanted to throw the words into the crimson sky and let the King hear them wherever he had gone. The words will reach the lord of sins.

But Cassian decided to keep the thought inside him. The King had said they would meet tonight. And tonight was already spoken for.

Tonight, he had promised Cixi his time and answers. He had promised to take her somewhere and show her who he was. He had promised, and Cassian Crown did not break promises. Not to her, especially.

But if the King demanded his presence tonight, Cassian would have no choice. The King outranked the Devil the way the ocean outranks the river. And if Cassian chose Cixi over the summons, the King would interfere. He would insert himself into their evening with the casual, destructive way he treated other people’s plans, the way a child treats a sandcastle.

And only the lord of all devils knew what he would do to punish Cassian and entertain himself in the process.

”Why did he come to interfere out of nowhere?” Cassian heard Rafael question.

Cassian turned his head. Rafael stood beside him now, watching in the direction where King had vanished.

In his true form, Rafael was seven feet tall. The same as Cassian’s. His silver horns caught the sunlight.

They were the same height. The same build. The same ancient blood running through veins that deepened beneath ashen skin. In their true forms, they could have been brothers. Horns and long hair and seven feet of something that did not belong in the mortal world.

Cassian did not answer his question. ”My fist will talk to you, Rafael, if you ask me one more question.” His voice was low and flat and carried the weight of certainty. ”Do not go near Cixi. Do not look at her. Do not think of her.”

The way Cassian looked at Rafael made it clear. The fight the King had interrupted was not over. It had been paused. And the pause was thinning with every second Rafael continued to stand this close.

Rafael studied Cassian’s face. The black eyes. The ridged horns. The shadow wings folded tight. He considered provoking him again. The impulse was there, sitting behind his teeth like a word he had not decided whether to say. He was interested in Cixi. That much was not a lie. But whether the interest was genuine or designed solely to unravel Cassian, even Rafael had not fully decided.

He chose not to comment on the matter. Not yet.

”I think you should reconsider your stance for now, Cassian.” Rafael crossed his arms over his bare, ashen chest. ”Now that the King has decided to step into our lives.”

Rafael was not one to back down. He had known Cassian for centuries. He had watched him rise. He had watched him fall. He had watched him get cast out from the Damnation World, stripped of his seat at the table of old powers and sent to the mortal realm like a prince banished to the countryside. And Rafael, who had grown bored without his brother’s chaos to orbit around, had followed him to Earth because eternity without entertainment was a punishment worse than anything the King could devise.

”Whether he is there or not,” Cassian replied, ”you are forbidden to go near her.”

Rafael tilted his head. His amber eyes gleamed.

”The forbidden apple was very tempting,” he said while a smile played at the corner of his mouth. ”And always will be tempting.”

Cassian’s fist connected with Rafael’s jaw before the smile could fully form.

Rafael’s head snapped sideways. He staggered one step. Two. His hand came up and pressed against his jaw, testing it, rotating it left and right. Blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.

Rafael laughed. The sound echoed across the volcanic landscape.

”It looks like you have fallen in love with that little human.”

Cassian’s yellow eyes burned. He lifted his right hand and held it toward the lava river.

The molten surface responded. A section of lava surged upward, twisting into a column of liquid fire that rose ten, fifteen, twenty feet into the air. It spun. It narrowed. It condensed. The outer layer cooled and darkened while the core remained white-hot. The shape elongated, thinned, and solidified into a blade.

A sword. Forged from the volcano itself. The blade was four feet long, black on the outside, glowing orange along the edges where the heat refused to die. The hilt was rough obsidian, still warm, fitting into Cassian’s palm as though it had been waiting for his hand since the volcano was born.

He gripped it. The heat did not burn him. The weight did not strain him. The sword sat in his hand the way a part of his own body sat in his hand. Natural. Inevitable. Correct.

Rafael watched the sword materialise, and his grin widened.

He extended his right arm to the side. His fingers spread wide. The air between them crackled. A sharp, electric snap cut through the volcanic haze, and a bolt of white-blue light shot from the sky and struck his open palm.

Lightning.

It coiled around his fist. It wrapped around his forearm. It snaked between his fingers and condensed into a long, thin line of concentrated energy that fell from his grip and uncoiled toward the ground. Ten feet of pure, crackling electricity. A whip, alive and vicious, its tip sparking against the volcanic rock wherever it touched, leaving scorch marks on the obsidian.

Rafael flicked his wrist. The lightning whip snapped in the air with a crack that sounded like bones breaking.

”Sounds like you are in denial about loving her,” Rafael said. He let the whip trail along the ground beside him. Sparks erupted from the stone. ”After giving her the mark. What would she think, Cassian? That you gave her a mark, but do not consider loving her?”

Cassian attacked him.

He closed the distance in a single stride. The fiery sword arced through the air in a wide, horizontal slash aimed at Rafael’s chest. The blade cut through the heat and left a trail of embers in its wake, a glowing orange line that hung in the air for half a second before dissolving.

Rafael leaned backwards. The blade passed inches from his chest. He felt the heat sear across his skin.

He flicked the whip.

The lightning cracked forward and wrapped around the sword’s blade. The electricity met the fire, and the contact point exploded in a shower of sparks and ash. For a fraction of a second, the two weapons locked. Fire against lightning. Orange against blue. Heat against energy.

Cassian twisted the blade. The whip uncoiled. He lunged again.

This time, the sword came from above. A downward strike that would have split a mortal man from shoulder to hip. The blade carved through the air with a sound like tearing fabric. Lava droplets flew from the edges with each swing.

Rafael sidestepped. The sword struck the ground where he had been standing and cleaved the obsidian in two. Lava erupted from the crack, spraying upward in a fountain of molten rock.

Rafael’s whip lashed out. It caught Cassian’s left arm. The lightning bit into his skin, and Cassian’s jaw clenched, but he did not flinch. He grabbed the whip with his bare hands. The electricity surged through his fingers and up his arm, and he held on.

”Love is a mortal disease,” Cassian said through gritted teeth. He pulled the whip toward him, dragging Rafael forward.

”Then you are infected.” Rafael stumbled forward from the pull but used the momentum. He drove his knee toward Cassian’s stomach.

Cassian blocked it with the flat of his sword. The impact rang through the obsidian hall. He shoved Rafael backwards and swung the blade in a tight, controlled arc.

Rafael ducked beneath it. He rolled sideways, and the whip followed his motion, snaking across the ground and lashing upward toward Cassian’s face.

Cassian tilted his head. The whip cracked past his right horn, missing by an inch. The sound split the air beside his ear.

”She asked you what you are,” Rafael said, breathing hard. He circled to the left. The whip trailed behind him, sparking. ”Did you tell her?”

”That is not your concern.” Cassian advanced.

”She knows that you are the Devil.” Rafael was not asking. He was stating. ”And she stayed.”

Cassian swung. The blade whistled through the air. Rafael caught it with the whip, wrapping the lightning around the black steel. The weapons locked again. They stood face to face. Black eyes and amber eyes. Inches apart. The fire from the sword and the electricity from the whip merged at the contact point into a white, blinding thing.

”A mortal woman who knows what you are and does not run,” Rafael murmured, ”is either the bravest creature alive or the most foolish. Either way, she deserves to know whether the Devil loves her back.”

Cassian’s grip tightened on the hilt. The blade flared brighter. The obsidian beneath their feet cracked from the combined heat.

”What I feel for Cixi,” Cassian said, his voice so low it was nearly swallowed by the sound of the lava churning below, ”is not something I will discuss with you. Not if you ask me for the rest of eternity.”

He thrust the blade forward. The whip snapped free. Rafael staggered back three paces.

They stood apart, breathing hard. Their weapons were still glowing in their hands. The volcanic landscape pulsed around them. Ash drifted between their bodies like snow made of fire.

Rafael lowered his whip. The lightning dimmed but did not disappear. It coiled loosely around his forearm, waiting.

”You know what I think, Cassian?” Rafael wiped blood from his chin with the back of his free hand. ”I think you are terrified. Not of the King. Not of any enemy that has ever walked any world you have ruled. I think you are terrified of a girl with grey eyes who weighs half of what you weigh and who called you a lust demon in a bathtub full of rose petals. And I think that terror is the closest thing you have ever felt to love, and you do not know what to do with it.”

Cassian’s eyes turned darker locked onto Rafael’s bright brown ones.

The sword burned in his hand. The shadow wings shifted behind his back. The lava churned below them, and the ash rose around them, and the crimson sky pressed down from above.

He did not deny it.

He did not confirm it either.