The Devil's Favourite Obsession

Without blinking, Cixi met Lorian’s eyes. ”You have formed an opinion about a person you met eleven minutes ago. I find that more revealing about you than it is about me.”

”I don’t need eleven minutes,” Lorian said simply. ”I need only to look at the situation you have created.”

The table was completely silent, listening to the heated exchange between Cixi and Lorian. It seems Cixi has a wild mouth and is ready to talk back with anyone.

Cixi then folded her hands on the table in front of her and spoke. ”There was once an elephant walking through the jungle. She was not in a hurry, neither was she looking for trouble. She was simply moving through her own world, enjoying it.” Cixi’s voice was almost pleasant. ”A pack of wild dogs appeared and began barking. Circling around her. Making as much noise as they could.” She let her eyes move briefly around the table before settling back on Lorian. ”The elephant didn’t stop walking. It didn’t change its path. She kept walking because dogs’ barks.... Ask yourself which animals you all are tonight.”

She let the metaphor land.

Lorian’s eyes narrowed fractionally. ”And if the elephant walked into the wild dogs’ territory? Who is at fault then?”

”The jungle,” Cixi stated, ”belongs to one animal alone. The lion.” She didn’t raise her voice. ”And the lion is not at this table yet.”

The smile faded from Rafael’s face as he understood immediately whom Cixi was referring to a Lion. So did everyone else. The table that had been watching Cixi as a curiosity a moment ago was now watching her as something else entirely.

”I think she needs professional help,” Tamara stated, directing her comment toward the table rather than Cixi, as if she had arrived at a practical conclusion. ”Since her arrival, she has been talking about Cassian as if he’s coming back to save her or her pathetic child. This woman has lost her mind after losing Cassian; who knows what danger she poses to the child? I am not sure she should even have one.” She gestured toward a maid standing near the wall. ”Call the mental asylum. I will not host someone unstable under this roof.”

”Don’t be dramatic, Mother.” Rafael tried to stop his mother.

”She is right, Rafael. Stay out of it,” Ursa interrupted Rafael.

Rafael looked at his mother steadily. ”You want to have her admitted because I said I wanted to marry her. Say that plainly if you are going to say it at all.”

The words dropped into the room and sat there.

Tamara’s jaw tightened. She looked at her son with fury, who had expected better from him and had been disappointed so many times it no longer surprised her, only exhausted her. She had given birth to two sons. One had died, and she was left with chaos. Her only son, sitting at her dinner table, announcing intentions regarding the same woman who has no status, with guests present, without a single thought for what it cost her to hold this family together.

”Your marriage is arranged, Rafael.” Michael’s voice arrived from the head of the table. ”You will be getting married to the beautiful young lady Tatiana.... I gave Lorian my word. And if you cannot honour that, then the name Crown has nothing to do with you anymore.”

Rafael went very still at his father’s threat.

Now that Rafael understood the severity of the situation, Lorian leaned back in his chair and picked up his wineglass again, looking satisfied. ”That is what good parents do,” Lorian said, almost to himself. Then he looked at Cixi. ”Correct the children before they ruin themselves.” His eyes dropped to her belly and came back up slowly. ”A girl who grew up with a proper family would have understood that. She would have thought about her future. Rather than bringing a child when she herself has nothing secured in her life. And the result—” he gestured vaguely toward her—this.”

The room waited to see what she would do with that, as she always retorted back.

Cixi felt the heat rise behind her eyes. She blinked it back. She had sat through contempt and threats and thinly veiled insults since she arrived at this palace, and she had managed every one of them. But there was something in the way he said it, with that particular tone of a man who believed disappointment in her was rational and inevitable, that made her chest ache in a way she hadn’t prepared for.

She looked at him and then at every face turned toward her.

”You are all the same,” she said quietly. ”Every single one of you. You look at a person for five minutes and believe that you already know their entire story.” Her voice did not tremble. ”Let my words penetrate your thick heads: I am not interested in your money, and I did not ask for your opinion on my character, and yet you are so ready to certify someone’s character.”

Cixi pushed back her chair and stood. ”I am leaving!”

Tamara rose at the same moment, as though she had been waiting for exactly this. ”The only place you are going is a mental asylum.” Her voice climbed. ”I will not have you walking these halls casting spells you have put on my sons. First Cassian, now Rafael. I don’t know what you are, but I know what you do, and I will not stand for it in my own home.”

”Mother,” Rafael’s voice was sharp. ”I said it was a possibility. I didn’t announce an engagement.”

He looked at Cixi. Something resembling guilt flickered across his face. ”I did not mean to put you in trouble.”

”You shouldn’t have opened your mouth at all.” Cixi turned on him, and her voice carried something harder than anger, something closer to a warning. ”Your words have a cost, Rafael. You truly don’t like the head over your shoulder.”

How could Cixi forget? Cassian had killed in her name before. His hands were already stained with one brother’s blood. She had no intention of watching another name get added to that account.

”Rafael.” She held his gaze. ”Do not look at me. Do not speak about me. Do not put yourself in my direction again.”

She was not afraid of Cassian in the way people feared a mafia boss — the abstract terror of power and violence exercised from behind a desk. She was afraid of the surrounding people. Afraid of what Cassian would do to anyone who came too close to what he considered his. She could see it clearly — Cassian Crown, cigarette in one hand, sword in the other, stepping over the body of whoever had dared to breathe in her direction.

That was how she saw him. Not as her protector. As a threat to everyone who stood near her.

Michael Crown had not missed the certainty in Cixi’s voice. She had spoken as though she knew exactly what Cassian would do. As though she had seen it. As though she were not guessing but remembering. And the way she warned Rafael, it meant one thing....

Which raised a question.

Why did it feel as though Cassian was alive — and Cixi knew precisely where he was?

He filed the thought away behind his eyes and said nothing. For now.