The Devil's Favourite Obsession

Cixi looked at the knife.

Cassian held it out to her across the small space between them, hilt first, the blade catching what was left of the gold coming through the window. He had said it lightly, almost as a kindness, that if Rafael ever stood close enough again, she was welcome to take one of his eyes out with it. As though that were a normal thing to offer a person. As though he had handed her a slice of cake.

She felt strange about it. Strange that the man beside her could suggest she pop a man’s eye like a grape and look pleased while he did. But her curiosity was louder than her unease, and so she lifted her hand and took the knife, not to do anything with it, only to see it properly.

It was small. Smaller than her palm was long, the kind of blade a person could hide and forget they were carrying. She turned it over. Below the cutting edge, worked into the metal where the blade met the handle, something had been carved. Letters, or marks that wanted to be letters, a row of small deliberate strokes in a script she had never seen and somehow did not like looking at directly. She tilted it to one side, then the other. The carving stayed just out of understanding, the way a word does on the tip of your tongue. The edge itself she did not need to test. She could tell it was sharp, the way you can tell a stovetop is hot without touching it.

”I am a non-violent person,” she said, and held it back out to him.

Cassian did not take it.

He had settled deep into the couch with one arm along the back of it, watching her examine his gift with open amusement, the way a man watches a cat decide whether to trust a new toy.

”It’s yours now, Love.”

The word landed somewhere under her ribs and stayed there.

”Love?” She lowered the knife slowly into her lap. ”Why are you calling me love?”

”After marking you, what else would I call you?” He said it easily, almost flirtatiously, his dark eyes warm and unbothered, and Cixi felt the heat climb straight up her neck and into her face before she could do a single thing to stop it.

”I am marked?” Her voice came out small and shy, nothing like the bold girl who had been hitting his chest an hour ago.

”What else do you think you have been carrying on your neck,” Cassian said, ”if not the mark of eternity.”

Cixi’s brow pulled tight. ”The mark of eternity,” she repeated.

Her free hand went up of its own accord, fingertips finding the side of her throat just below her ear, the place she had thought for days was only a bruise, a faint warm patch of skin she had stopped noticing the way you stop noticing a healing scrape. It was not warm now. It was hot under her fingers, and when she pressed it, she felt the shape of it, raised very slightly, a small, precise design set into her own flesh that she had not chosen and had not felt arrive.

Inside her head, she very nearly screamed.

She kept her face still, because she was getting better at keeping her face still, but underneath it, her thoughts went off in every direction at once. She was already cursed. She was already immortal, already chained to the dead land and its ten o’clock parade of the dying, already a girl who could not properly die no matter how many buildings she would throw herself from.

That had been the whole point. That was the entire reason she had let him close in the first place, the reason she had told herself she was being clever rather than weak. She had reached for Cassian as a way out to get free from the curse. And instead of a door out, he had pressed something into her skin that began with the word eternity.

Is he crazy? That’s why it’s so important to have communication. She didn’t tell him anything about her life because she wanted to first get rid of her curse.... and what did he do?

Marked-Of eternity. The two heaviest words she could think of, sitting side by side on her own neck, were put there by a man who said them as casually as he had offered her his knife.

Why? Why? WHy? WHY?!

That was the first thing. Why would he do it, and why to her, a cafe girl with an alien baby?

”Why do you sound different today?” she asked.

”I always sound intelligent.” That earned him a glare.

”Then explain to me how you are able to give me the mark of eternity. Are you an alien? From some other world, one that knows how to cast spells? Or are you a warlock?”

Cassian chuckled, low in his throat. ”No, Love. I am not a warlock. They are beneath me.”

”So you are not an ordinary human,” Cixi said carefully.

He only smirked and did not answer. ”Patience, love. Patience.”

”I do not have any right now. Tell me about the mark. What does it mean?”

”Ah! The mark, ofcourse, my Love.” His smile widened. ”It means that for all of eternity, you are Mine!”

”Oh!” Her cheeks went hot again, and this time it was not from fear. It was something closer to delight, and she hated herself a little for it. ”I thought it meant something else.”

She looked away, fingers drifting up to touch the mark on her neck once more.

Her door opened loudly.

She flinched at the sound and turned to see who had walked in on them without knocking, some apology already half-formed on her lips.

Cassian was standing in the doorway.

For a long, airless moment, Cixi did not understand. Cassian was sitting on the couch.

And Cassian was at the door, very still, looking at the man wearing his face.