Chapter 11 #3
His chuckle was low and rich, resonating with warmth.
Gently, he lifted his hand. His gloved fingers hovered near her jaw—close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating from them, but he never made contact.
She wondered why he was still wearing them.
They had been inside for a while, and everyone else had long since removed their gloves.
But his remained, as if he needed the barrier.
For a moment, something flickered in his golden eyes, something raw and unguarded. Then, his hand stilled. Slowly, deliberately, he let it fall.
“I will endeavour to not disappoint, then,” he murmured, his voice a soft caress.
She straightened slightly, putting a subtle distance between them as she cleared her throat. “See that you don’t.”
They ordered.
Moments later, the first course arrived: a delicate tartlet of caramelized endive and soft cheese, garnished with candied orange peel and slivers of cured ham, arranged in such a way that the elements were stacked on top of each other. It looked like something made for admiration, not eating.
Cassia stared at it, then at Ark. “You know this isn’t food. This is a sculpture.”
He didn’t so much as blink. “I was assured it was edible.”
She took a careful bite. The flavours were a precise, intricate dance—bitter endive, sweet orange, salty ham. Across from her, Ark’s fork remained untouched beside his plate.
“Still full from lunch?” she asked. A pang of disappointment surfaced. She was actually looking forward to watching him eat again—even if she knew the sight would take much of her attention away from the food itself.
“The appetite is there,” he said, his gaze drifting over the sculpted food. “But it isn’t for this.”
“Not to your taste?”
He pushed his plate away. “I’ve had this before—a hundred times, in a hundred different forms. It’s flawless, and it tastes like nothing.” He glanced at her. “I’d rather have your stew.”
The demon lord who had devoured her humble stew with a reverence that bordered on sacrament now looked upon this masterpiece with profound indifference.
The memory of him in her bakery—the slow savouring, the closed eyes, the quiet surrender to pleasure—flashed before her, a stark contrast to this ennui.
Her gaze swept from his abandoned plate to the room around them: the tinkling of crystal tumblers, the measured laughter, the glittering jewels. For him, raised in this environment, perhaps it was all the same story, told in Daemaric-blue threads and whispered judgments.
“Yes, well,” she said, her voice cutting through the silence as she nudged the plate back toward him. A lifetime of seeing food as sacrifice, not just art, made the gesture instinctive. “The one sin a cook won’t forgive is waste. Eat. You’ll need your strength for the next act of this performance.”
A low chuckle escaped him, but he picked up his fork, and ate.
She watched him, and a memory surfaced: her mother’s hands, flour-dusted and worn, placing a steaming bowl before her.
A childhood measured not in toys, but in meals that always tasted of love.
That was the legacy she carried. She wondered what his hands had been given, what flavour his own childhood had held.
“What was your childhood like?” she asked.
Ark glanced at her, and for a moment she thought he might deflect, but he answered.
“It was spent in different places—one mansion after another, but always the same cold rooms, different windows.” He paused. “Eventually, we settled in the main estate just outside Angelene. A vast mansion that felt more like a museum than a home.”
“You lived with your parents, I assume?”
He shrugged. “They were rarely there. My father stayed in the capital to be closer to the political heart. My mother followed, as she always does.”
“So, who raised you?”
“A bevy of servants paid enough to care.”
She frowned. “Your parents never came to visit?”
“Some weekends. Mostly my mother. My father would always have to stay back—part of his duty as Daemar.”
Cassia folded her hands in her lap to keep from reaching across the table. “Was that lonely?”
He didn’t answer for a moment.
“I didn’t question it for a long time,” he said quietly. “When you grow up with absence, it becomes its own kind of presence. You fill it with routines. Rituals. Things that make you believe your sacrifices truly make a difference.”
“Are you an only child?”
He shook his head. “I have a brother, Oromon. He’s two years younger.
” He exhaled, eyes straying away briefly.
“We didn’t live together for long. My parents sent me away eventually to a special boarding school for the children of society’s elite.
It was founded to give us the education we needed to become leaders. ”
“Why didn’t Oromon go with you?”
He was quiet for a moment. “Because I was the heir.”
Cassia’s throat tightened. She pressed her fingertips to the edge of the table. The implication was clear: The heir got everything. The heir also lost everything. The heir was never allowed to be just a brother.
He looked down at the plate in front of him, still mostly untouched.
“One day, we found a dog, hid it from my parents. When it got sick, we had to tell them. They called a doctor, but it was too late. After that, they decided I needed to go to the school. For my own good, apparently. My brother was the one person I loved and trusted, and they pulled us apart when we needed each other most. I was eight.”
Cassia’s chest ached. She had no siblings, but she knew what it felt like to part with someone she loved. She thought of Ark as a boy in a mansion full of empty rooms—and felt a quiet, helpless anger on his behalf.
“I know how trite it sounds.” He met her gaze, a faint, self-deprecating smile tugging at his mouth. “The heir with the hollow childhood. The poor little rich boy.”
She didn’t try to correct him. Instead, she leaned back, letting her own breath ease out.
“It’s not that it sounds trite,” she said softly. “It’s that I’ve lived the other half of it.”
He went very still. His smile faded, as if something in her words had caught him off guard.
“I didn’t grow up with wealth or titles. I wasn’t given riches. But the ache’s the same, I think, whether you have too much or too little. Wanting to be seen. Wanting to matter. And hating that you care so much.”
His expression softened. “I used to hate it too,” he admitted. “That wanting. It made me feel small. Needy. Weak.” His eyes strayed, flickering over the gilded hall before returning to hers, the connection grounding them both. “It never quite goes away, does it?”
Cassia blinked. She hadn’t expected him to admit that. This wasn’t the guarded demon lord she’d been trading banter with all evening. This was someone else entirely.
She shook her head slowly. “No. It doesn’t.” She leaned forward. “But you see . . . The ache you hate? That’s where our soul lives. That’s not a weakness. That’s the part no one else can touch.”
There was a long silence after that, his golden eyes on her. She smiled first, because if she didn’t, she might say something she couldn’t take back.
“We really are a terrible match,” she said softly, voice laced with something wry. “You with your estate and titles and perfection. Me with my tiny bakery and emotional chaos.”
His mouth quirked. “Yet here we are.”
Her smile lingered, but her voice turned quieter. “Pretending to be in love.”
“Pretending,” he echoed, as though he was agreeing.
But his gaze didn’t waver.