Chapter 19
Iwake up drowning in softness. Black silk sheets. Down pillows which smell like smoke. Warmth pressed against my back, solid, real, breathing.
Croesus.
Memory floods back. The greed absorption. The ritual. His blood mixed with mine.
I keep my eyes closed, taking inventory. My body aches everywhere, deep, bone-tired exhaustion that comes from absorbing a major sin. The forty-seventh tattoo on my arm throbs dully. My throat is raw from screaming.
I'm wearing one of his shirts, soft cotton, too big, smelling like him. I don't remember putting it on. He must have dressed me at some point while I slept, peeling off my blood-stained clothes and replacing them with something clean. The thought should bother me more than it does.
Behind me, Croesus shifts slightly. His arm tightens around my waist. He's wearing loose black pants and nothing else.
I can feel the warmth of bare skin against my back, the solid muscle of his chest, the steady rise and fall of his breathing.
His hair is loose, not pulled back like usual, and I can feel the strands against my shoulder.
This version of him is different. Softer. Without the suits and the perfect presentation and the weight of three thousand years pressing down on every word. Just an angel in his own bed, holding someone who understands his curse.
"You're awake," he says quietly. Not a question.
"How did you know?"
"Your breathing changed." His voice is rough, but I know he doesn’t sleep, so it’s not because of that. "How do you feel?"
"Like I got hit by a truck." I finally stretch a little and blink my eyes all the way open. Golden light filters through impossible windows showing a sunrise that doesn't exist. "How long was I out?"
"Eighteen hours." His hand spreads across my stomach, holding me close. "You slept through the night and most of the next day. I've been checking to make sure you were still breathing."
The admission is casual, but I hear the worry underneath it. He was afraid I wouldn't wake and that maybe the greed absorption had broken something vital.
"I'm okay," I say. "Just exhausted."
"You absorbed fifteen years of my curse. Exhausted is an understatement." He pauses. "Are you hungry? Thirsty? Do you need anything?"
The question catches me off guard. Not because he's asking, but because of the way he asks, genuine concern, not obligation. Like my needs matter more than his own comfort.
"Water," I manage. "And maybe food. I can't remember the last time I ate."
He's up immediately, moving with that fluid grace that reminds me he's not human.
His bare feet are silent on the floor. I watch him cross the room, black pants sitting low on his hips, the muscles of his back shifting as he moves, hair falling loose past his shoulders.
Without the formal clothes and careful grooming, he looks younger.
Less like a lord and more like... a person.
An impossibly beautiful person, but still..
Water starts running in the bathroom, then he's back with a glass which I drink like I've been lost in a desert.
"Slowly," he warns, but doesn't take the glass away. Just waits until I've drained it. "I'll have food brought up. What do you want?"
"Anything. I'm not picky when I'm starving."
"Everything, then." He moves to the door, speaks quietly to someone I can't see. When he returns, he settles on the edge of the bed again, his gaze off to the corner of the room, but I don’t think for one second he’s not laser focused on every part of me.
His hair falls forward, and he pushes it back absently.
The gesture is so human, so normal, that it makes my chest ache.
This is what he could be without the curse. Without the constant performance of being Lord of Gold. Just... him.
"What?" I ask.
"You're different." He reaches out, then stops himself. His hand hovers near my face before falling to the bed between us. "Since the absorption. Since you felt what I feel. You look at me differently now."
"How did I look at you before?"
"Like I was a monster wearing a beautiful face." His voice is matter-of-fact, no self-pity. "Like you were calculating how to survive me. And now..."
"Now what?"
"Now you look at me like I'm something that needs saving."
The words land between us like stones dropped in still water. Ripples spreading, disturbing the surface, revealing depths underneath.
"Is that so wrong?" I ask quietly.
"I don't know." He finally touches me, fingers brushing my cheek, tentative, like he's afraid I'll pull away. "I've been called many things over the years. Monster. Devil. Lord. God. But never something that needs saving. And definitely never been called something worth the effort of redemption."
"Maybe they weren't looking close enough."
"Or maybe you're seeing things that aren't there because you felt my pain for fifteen minutes, and it broke something in you." His thumb traces my jaw. "Pity isn't the same as understanding, Raven."
"I don't pity you." I catch his wrist, hold his hand against my face. "I understand you. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
"Yes." I turn my head, press a kiss to his palm. His breath catches. "Pity is feeling sorry for someone from a distance. Understanding is feeling their pain and choosing to stay anyway."
He goes very still. A statue carved from want. A breath held too long. A dam about to break.
"You're choosing to stay," he says slowly. "Not because of the contract. Not because I own your time. But because you want to."
"Yes." The word is simple. True. Terrifying.
"Why?"
I think about the greed. About drowning in thousands of years of hunger. About the loneliness of having everything and feeling nothing. About being a black hole that devours itself.
"Because you've been alone too long," I say.
"You've been suffering and hiding it and pretending you're fine when you're falling apart.
I felt what you feel, and it was the most horrible thing I've ever experienced, and you've lived with it for so many years, and you're still here.
Still fighting. Still trying to exist even when existence is agony. "
My voice cracks. "And because when you look at me, the hunger quiets. Just for a moment. And if I can give you that, if I can be the thing that makes your curse bearable even for a few seconds, then I want to. I choose to. At least for now."
He's staring at me like I've said something in a language he doesn't speak. Like I'm a puzzle he can't solve. Like I'm the first truly incomprehensible thing he's encountered in millennia.
"You're going to destroy me," he whispers.
"What?"
"You're going to make me want things I can't have. Hope for things that aren't possible. Feel things I haven't felt since before the fall." His hand slides into my hair, cradling my head. "And when you leave, when your year is up and you go to the next house, it's going to destroy me."
"Then don't let me leave."
The words slip out before I can stop them. They hang in the air between us like a confession. Like a promise. Like a door opening onto something that should stay locked.
"You don't mean that," he says.
"Don't I?"
"You have a life outside this house. A sister. Friends. A world that doesn't involve angels and sins and trapped souls." His forehead touches mine. "You're supposed to survive this year and move on. To serve the other houses and eventually go back to being human. To being normal."
"I stopped being normal the day my grandmother died and her debt passed to me." I close my eyes. "Maybe before that. Maybe the moment I was born with angel blood in my veins. Maybe I was never meant for normal."
"Raven..."
"I felt your curse, Croesus. I know what you are. What you're trapped in. And I want to help you."
"There is no help. There's only endurance."
"What if there isn't?" I pull back enough to look at him. "What if there's a way to break the curse? To free you from the greed?"
His expression shutters. "There isn't."
"How do you know?"
"Because I've been looking for thousands of years.
" His voice goes flat. "I've consulted oracles and witches and demons and gods.
I've read every text, tried every ritual, bargained with every power that exists.
There is no escape from this. The greed is what I am.
Taking it away would be like taking away gravity.
Like asking water to stop being wet. It's fundamental. Unchangeable."
"Everything can change."
"Not this." He stands, moves to the window. Stares out at the fake sunrise with his back to me. "Your grandmother thought the same thing. She researched. She planned. She died before she found anything."
My heart pounds. "Are you sure? What was she researching?"
He turns, and his eyes are guarded. "Ways to break angelic curses. Old magic. Forbidden rituals. Things that might have gotten her killed." His voice hardens. "Promise me you won't follow that path. Promise me you won't try to—"
"To what? Help you?" I sit up, ignoring the way my body protests. "I can't promise that."
"Raven." It’s all he says. Just my name. Almost an admonishment.
"You've been suffering for so long. All seven of you. Trapped in curses you didn't choose, feeding on sins just to survive. If I can help, why wouldn’t I. Breaking this puzzle will save so many souls in the future as well. If I can do that, then I would never have to eat another sin again."
"If trying to break the curse kills you, then it’s not worth it." His voice is hard.
A knock interrupts him. He pulls away, moves to the door, and returns with a cart loaded with food. Fruits and cheeses and bread still warm from ovens. Soup that smells like it was made by someone's grandmother. Coffee that looks like liquid salvation.
"Eat," he says, his voice carefully controlled. "We'll discuss this later."
"Croesus?"
"Eat." It's not a request.
I eat. Because I'm starving, so the order isn’t really necessary.