The Devil's Favourite Obsession

Cassian looked at Olga across the length of the room.

He did not appear surprised to find her there. He did not appear required to explain himself to her, either. He simply held Cixi in his arms a fraction more securely, inclined his head by the smallest possible degree of acknowledgement and carried Cixi, without a word, past Olga toward the bedroom door, with his unhurried footsteps. His expression remained unreadable.

Olga did not move.

She watched the Devil of the Crown family carry the woman she had begun to believe was her daughter across a living room, toward a bed Olga had no right to know the location of. With possessive composure, he held Cixi like a precious object to a shelf that belonged to him, and the betrayal she had carried out of her own marriage a few minutes ago doubled in weight without warning, because Cassian was carrying a woman who could be her daughter. She was worried about Cixi and that Cassian was —Alive!

Cassian closed the bedroom door using his feet.

Olga stood alone in the living room, in a borrowed jacket, in her sleeper, in the middle of the night, with the lavender wind from the open terrace doors moving slowly through her hair, and did not know, for the first time in twenty years of marriage, what she was supposed to do next.

She stood there for what might have been ten seconds or two minutes.

The closed bedroom door at the far end of the living area stared back at her without invitation, and she didn’t know whether to go inside to check on Cixi or let her feet take her back to the room. But then she didn’t want to go back to the room where a murderer was staying.

Somewhere on the other side of that door, Cassian Crown was laying Cixi, who might be her daughter, down on a bed Olga had no permission to enter, and the longer Olga remained in this borrowed jacket failing to follow, the more the night was deciding itself in his favour.

Her feet moved before her mind had finished giving them the order.

She crossed the living area slowly. Her hand reached the bedroom door and rested on the polished wood, and she paused for the briefest of moments, the moment a woman gives herself in order to decide whether she has the right to do what she is about to do, and then she pushed.

The door yielded under her palm.

She stepped inside.

The bedroom was lit only by the small lamp on the nightstand and the moonlight bleeding in through the half-drawn curtains. The bed sat at the centre of the room. Cassian Crown stood at the side of the bed with his back to her, leaning forward, and what he was leaning forward for was Cixi. Cixi lay across the silk sheets where he had just set her down, her dark hair fanned out across the pillow, her cheek turned toward the lamp, her eyes still closed.

Cassian had not put her down the way a man set a parcel on a shelf.

His hand was beneath her head. The other was at the small of her waist. His fingers lingered a half-second longer than they needed to at the edge of her hairline. Olga saw the half-second. She saw the way his thumb brushed a single strand of dark hair off Cixi’s cheek before he straightened.

Olga’s hands, which had been holding the lapels of the borrowed jacket closed at her throat, fell to her sides.

”What happened to her.” Her voice came out lower than she had intended.

The vowels scraped against the back of her throat on the way out.

Cassian did not turn around. He picked up the corner of the silk sheet at the foot of the bed and began, with the same precision he had used to set Cixi down, to draw the fabric upward across her body.

”Where is the baby?” Olga asked, looking at Cixi’s flat belly.... ”Is she ok? I think we need to take her to the hospital.” Olga sounded worried.

Cassian covered her ankles. He covered her knees. He smoothed the fabric flat across the curve of her hips with the side of his palm. He did not look at the woman standing behind him.

When she didn’t get any response. Olga’s voice came out sharper this time. ”I asked you what happened.”

Olga took one step closer to the bed.

Cassian did not turn.

He drew the sheet up across Cixi’s stomach and stopped at her ribcage. His hand returned to the bedside. He stood there, his back to Olga, his shirt open at the collar, his hair still disturbed.

The silence in the bedroom stretched.

”If you are taking her to the hospital, I will call an ambulance.” Olga threatened this time.

Yet he did not answer. ”I am asking you what happened to her, Cassian. And how are you even alive?!”

This time, Cassian only turned his head. One eye in the lamplight.

”Who pushed her?”

Olga’s mouth opened and then closed in confusion. ”What?”

”Who pushed her, Olga?”

The use of her name did its work. ” Are you saying I pushed her? When I entered the living room, I heard a scream, and I ran to the terrace only to see Cixi was in your arms....”

”Yes, exactly, you were the only one on the terrace.” Cassian is now facing Olga and looking at her with a burning gaze.

”Why would I push her? Why would I try to kill her?” Olga shook her head in anger.

”Then who did it?”

”I don’t know! I’m asking you to take her to the hospital, and here you are wasting time. Aren’t you concerned about the baby she’s carrying?” Olga moved closer to the bed and pulled back the blanket from Cixi, searching for signs of bleeding. But the sheets and her clothes were pristine. ”How is this possible?”

Olga’s gaze swept over Cixi’s stomach, then down to her lower abdomen, before turning back to Cassian.

”She was never pregnant... It was all a lie...” Olga’s eyes widened with the realisation.