Chapter 12 #3
I’d forgotten Croesus was there. I look up to find him crouched just outside the circle, watching me with those unnerving gold eyes. There’s something in his expression I can’t read. Something that might be wonder, or hunger, or both.
“I’ve seen sin eaters work before,” he continues, his voice quiet in the candlelit space. “Your grandmother, once, even though she wasn’t working for me in that capacity. Others, over the years. But I’ve never seen anyone do what you do.”
I wipe blood from my mouth with the back of my hand. “What do you mean?”
“They took the sins mechanically. Efficiently. Like swallowing medicine.” He tilts his head, studying me. “You felt it. All of it. I watched you become Barnes, with his arrogance, his desperation, his certainty of perfection. You didn’t just carry the pride. You were the pride.”
“That’s the job.” My voice comes out rough, scraped raw from the purging. “Can’t break a contract without understanding what it is. Can’t purge a sin without feeling what it does to people.”
“It would be easier if you could.” It’s not a question. “If you could take it without letting it touch you.”
“Easier isn’t always better.”
“No,” he agrees, still watching me with that unsettling intensity. “I suppose it isn’t.”
I drag myself to my feet, legs shaking but functional. The circle releases me, wards falling away like a held breath finally exhaled. I need to clean up the blood and the candles. Need to wash the ritual from my skin. Need to sleep for about twelve hours straight.
But Croesus is still looking at me like I’m something he’s never seen before.
“What?” I finally ask, too tired for games.
“You purged it in under ten minutes.” There’s a note in his voice I don’t recognize. “Your grandmother took time.” He’s right; her rituals always took longer than mine, but they were always so much cleaner, more controlled.
“I’ve had practice,” I hedge.
He’s quiet for a moment, and I can see him calculating. “You started at eighteen?”
“Yes.” I gather the candles, blowing them out one by one. “Gramms’ started training me at eighteen, but the first real absorption wasn’t until I was almost nineteen.”
“And your grandmother? How long did she teach you?”
“Why do you care?” The question comes out harshly with my exhaustion.
“Because I own your services for a year.” He stands, moving closer, and I resist the urge to back away.
“You live alone. You have a sister you’re protecting.
You’ve been eating sins since you were a teenager.
You’re more powerful than I anticipated.
You’re—” He pauses. “—stubborn. Defiant. Unwilling to simply accept your circumstances.”
“You want me to roll over? Be grateful you’ve enslaved me for twelve months?”
“I want to understand you.” His voice has gone soft, almost dangerous.
“Because every other sin eater I’ve met has been broken, desperate, barely surviving.
But you?” He’s close enough now that I can feel the heat radiating off him like summer pavement.
“You’re angry. You’re alive. And I find myself. ..curious.”
I should step back. Should remember that he’s an angel, that he owns me, that any interest he shows is just another way to control me. Should keep every wall up, every defense in place.
But I’m so tired. And he helped me through the absorption. And the way he’s looking at me right now doesn’t feel like ownership. It feels like...
Fascination.
“Gramms saw the angel blood in me, the potential, and decided I would be useful. Trained me to eat sins like other people train daughters to cook or sew. It’s the family business, she said. Our duty. Our purpose.”
“Did you hate her for it?”
“Sometimes.” I set down the last candle, turning to face him fully.
We’re too close, standing in this small room together, but I don’t move away.
“But she also taught me to survive. To be good at surviving. So I could protect Luna. Keep her out of this world. Give her the normal life I never got to have.”
“Luna.” He says her name like he’s tasting it. “Your half-sister.”
“Don’t.” The word comes out hard. “Don’t even think about her. That was the deal, she stays safe, stays ignorant. You don’t touch her. Ever.”
“I have no interest in your sister.” He reaches out slowly, and I watch his hand move toward my face like I’m watching a snake decide whether to strike.
His fingers brush my cheek, and I realize there’s blood there, must have splattered when I was purging the pride.
He wipes it away with his thumb, the gesture surprisingly gentle. “I’m interested in you.”
My breath catches. His hand is still on my face, warm and solid, and I should pull away, but I can’t seem to move. His eyes are warm gold, reflecting my face back at me, and I can see myself the way he sees me: fierce and tired and still standing.
Still fighting.
“Why?” I manage to ask.
“Because you want nothing from me.” His thumb traces my cheekbone, and I shiver despite myself.
“Everyone wants something: gold, power, favors, mercy. But you? You don’t want my wealth.
You don’t want my attention. You’re only here because you love your sister more than you hate me.
And that...” He leans closer, voice dropping to barely a whisper.
“That is more interesting than all the gold in my vaults.”
I should say something cutting. Should push him away. Should remind him that he owns me, that this isn’t a relationship, it’s a transaction. That whatever curiosity he’s feeling isn’t real interest, just the novelty of wanting someone who can’t be bought.
But the words won’t come.
Because part of me, the part that’s been alone for so long, that carries everyone’s sins but never shares her own, that’s been surviving but not living, wants to lean into his touch. Wants to believe that an ancient, terrible angel might look at me and see something worth knowing.
God, I’m pathetic.
I step back, breaking contact. “I need to sleep.”
“Of course.” He lets his hand fall, but that strange intensity doesn’t leave his eyes. “Rest. We have work to do tomorrow.”
“More contracts to steal?”
“Perhaps.” A hint of a smile touches his perfect mouth. “Or perhaps I’ll simply want to watch you work again. I find it...educational.”
I turn away before he can see my face, before he can read whatever expression I’m probably wearing. “Goodnight, Croesus.”
“Goodnight, Raven.”
I leave the ritual room and walk through the golden halls of his impossible house, every step echoing on gilded floors. Almost as if the house knows I don’t have time before I crash, it guides me quickly, and I slip inside my room, lock the door, and lean against it with my eyes closed.
My cheek still burns where Croesus touched it.
I drag myself to the bathroom and wash the blood from my arm, my face, my hands. The cut is already mostly healed, just a thin red line which will be gone by morning and bloom for the forty-fifth tattoo. Angel blood has its uses.
In the mirror, I look like myself again. Not perfect. Not special. Just tired and human and marked by years of eating other people’s mistakes.
But when I close my eyes, I can still feel his hands steadying me. Can still hear his voice saying he’s curious. And I don’t know if that’s the best thing that’s happened to me in months.
Or the most dangerous.