The Devil's Favourite Obsession

The words had left her mouth before she realised what she had spoken, and now they sat between them, impossible to take back. She knew about the second terrace attack because she had been there. Hiding. Watching. Pressed against the wall in the dark while men tried to kill the man standing in front of her.

But she could not tell him that.

Her mind scrambled for an explanation, grasping at anything that could fill the silence before he filled it with a conclusion she could not afford him to reach.

”I...” She swallowed hard. ”I looked for you. Officer Bill helped me. And-and that is how I...” She trailed off, feeling uncertain. She could hear herself clearly how thin her voice sounded.

”You are getting worse at lying, Cixi,” Cassian said, his voice now strong and stern. The warmth that had enveloped their earlier conversation had vanished. ”No one knows.” His gaze was fixed intently on Cixi’s back. ”Except for those involved in planning my murder. If you’re not one of them, then the only other reason you would know is that you were present on the terrace while I was being attacked. So tell me, which of these two are you? It’s amusing, really—I haven’t managed to track down the ones behind the attempts on my life. So, tell me, Cixi—are you working with them?”

”No!” Cixi turned around instantly to face Cassian head-on. How easily things turned against her with her careless words. ”I would never do such a thing. And you know that very well, Cassian.” Her chest heaved. ”If I had connections, do you think I would be on the terrace trying to kill myself? Do you think I would be homeless if I had helped them plan your murder? I would be in a far-away country where you couldn’t reach me. But I stayed here and looked for you like a madwoman. How dare you think so ill of me!” She couldn’t contain her anger. ”You know who my true parents are, and you are not telling me about them. Here I am, being patient with you, and you are accusing me of things you are sure I cannot be part of. Stop playing with me.”

Suddenly she felt grateful she had never told Cassian about the deepfake video. Because she was certain now. If he had seen it, he might have believed the footage instead of her words.

A man who accused her of planning his murder over a slip of the tongue would not hesitate to believe a video that showed her doing things she had never done.

Cassian’s face showed nothing. His expression was blank as a polished white wall. But he was weighing every word she had spoken.

Cixi didn’t like the way his silence pressed in the cave. If this had been any other matter, she would have walked away and let the silence win. But this was about attempting to kill him. And she could not leave without saying something, not when he suspected her.

”Fine!” Cixi’s voice rose. ”If you do not believe me, then let me tell you this...” Before she could finish the sentence, Cassian smiled.

”Why are you giving me an explanation when you hadn’t done anything?” Cixi’s frown deepened. ”Did my acting impress you, Cig?”

Cixi’s jaw dropped in disbelief.

”You are a cruel Demon!” Cixi crossed her arms. ”What does even Cig mean? And I have never seen such bad acting in my entire life. You need improvement. ” Cixi’s voice trembled with fury.

”I would say I am the best, seeing your response.”

She took a step toward him. Her grey eyes blazed. ”First, you kidnapped me. Then you told me I am yours. And then...” Her face burned. The anger flushed through her cheeks and down her neck, but the heat was not anger alone. ”And then you drive me crazy in bed, that I want more of you all the time.... And then you mark me, claiming me like a werewolf. And then you bring me to a cave. Then accuse me. And now you’re trying to get off easily after making me angry?”

Cassian raised his brows, a slow smirk spreading across his face. ”We can go all night and day if that’s what you want, Cig. I am a demon with inhuman stamina,” he teased.

Amidst all her complaints, he couldn’t help but latch onto the one about him driving her crazy in bed and her yearning for more of him.

The words left her mouth at full volume and full force and hit the sparkling walls of the cave and bounced back to her in a sharp, ringing echo.

Cixi’s heart beat like a drum, and her eyes widened with realisation of her own words.

She stood frozen for two full seconds as the weight of what she had just shouted at a seven-foot demon in an underwater cave caught up to her. Her lips parted. Her face, already flushed with anger, deepened to a shade of red that had nothing to do with fury and everything to do with mortification.

She closed her eyes. Squeezed them shut. ”Oh God,” she whispered under her breath, cursing herself silently with every word her vocabulary possessed.

Then she turned around, showing Cassian her back, and pressed both hands to her burning face.

Behind her, the demon of pride said nothing. But the silence that filled the cave carried the unmistakable texture of a man who was smiling.

The smile would have turned into a tease, a playful gesture, something designed to make Cixi’s mortification worse in the way Cassian enjoyed most, if not for the spark.

However, the spark soon erupted without warning.

A violent splash of light burst through the air of the cave, sharp and gold and blinding, as though someone had torn a hole in the atmosphere and poured sunlight through it. The sparkling stones on the walls flared in response, their gentle silver overwhelmed by the intensity of whatever had just forced its way into the space.

Cixi stumbled back. The light hit her like a physical force, pushing against her balance, and her foot slipped on the smooth stone. She would have fallen if Cassian had not already been beside her, his hand closing around her arm and holding her firmly in place.

She could not see. The light flooded her vision, white and absolute, swallowing every shape and shadow in the cave until there was nothing but brightness pressing against her closed eyelids.

It did not affect Cassian.

He stood with his hand on Cixi’s arm and watched the light with eyes that had been built to see through worse things than this. His yellow slit pupils contracted but held steady, tracking the source as it gathered and shifted and began to condense.

His jaw tightened. His teeth pressed together. One brow rose slowly, not in surprise but in recognition, the kind of recognition a man shows when the thing he least wanted to see has arrived exactly where he least wanted it.

Someone had invaded their privacy. His private sanctuary. The one place beneath the water that no one was supposed to know about, the place he came to escape the world, and someone had torn through its walls like they were paper.

The light started to take form.

It pulled inward, condensing, thickening, drawing itself together the way smoke draws together in reverse. The shapeless brightness narrowed into the outline of shoulders, arms, a torso, legs. A human form. The details sharpened. Fabric appeared. Colour bled into the white. The light solidified and hardened and became something real.

Cixi’s eyes fluttered open slowly. The brightness dimmed. The cave returned to its gentle, sparkling silver.

A man stood in front of her.

He wore a tailored suit, cut with the kind of precision that did not belong to any era or any country, timeless and immaculate, as though it had been sewn by hands that understood elegance at a molecular level. His golden hair was pulled back and tied in a bun behind his head, sleek and deliberate, not a single strand out of place. His face was sharp, symmetrical, carved with the certainty of something that had never once been ordinary.

His eyes were intense. Not dark like Cassian’s. Not yellow like the demon form standing beside her. Something else entirely. A colour that shifted when the light caught it, bright and ancient and holding a depth that made Cixi’s stomach drop the way a stomach drops when a person looks over the edge of a very tall building.

He was smiling at her.

And that smile.

If Cixi thought Cassian’s smile could kill, this man’s smile could make kingdoms kneel. It was not warm. It was not cold. It was something beyond both, a smile that carried the weight of absolute authority, the kind of smile worn by someone who had never in his existence needed to ask for anything because everything had always been given before the asking.

Cassian’s smile made her heart race. This man’s smile made her want to lower her eyes and fold her hands and be still.

Who was he?

”I assume you are — Cixi. Or should I call you Cig?” His voice. Cixi’s heart almost melted like butter on the hot pan.

How could his voice be better, Cassian? Cixi was confused about whether to feel offended or praise him.