Chapter 18
ARK
There was a moment, just before waking, when the pain dulled and the world narrowed to a warm hum. He drifted there—suspended between dream and reality—until the sharp, familiar pain in his hand dragged him the rest of the way.
His body ached. His throat was dry, and something hot pulsed just beneath the skin of his right arm.
He cracked his eyes open to the sight of Cassia in the corner chair—legs folded, hair loose, a small conjured light hovering above her shoulder. The glow fell across the book in her lap, an old edition from the Aegis & Ash library he’d left on the table.
She was reading Introduction to Dealing with Cursed Objects as if it were a recipe book.
He let out a faint sound—part groan, part sigh—and her head snapped up.
“I didn’t know you were awake,” she said softly, slipping in a ribbon to mark the page. “I don’t mean to disturb—”
“You’re not,” he rasped, voice low and sleep heavy. “Though I’ll admit, I never imagined my postmortem vigil would include being judged based on the pages of my field manual.”
Cassia blinked. “You’re not dead.”
“Tell that to the three ribs currently filing a grievance, not to mention my right hand.”
A smile tugged at her mouth, though she tried to hide it. “You gave us a scare.”
“It’ll take more than a possessed mirror’s tantrum to kill me,” Ark murmured. He flexed his fingers. The pain was a steady throb beneath his skin, but dulled now—held at bay by her nearness, her scent.
His gaze drifted to the book still resting in her lap. “So . . . is that riveting textbook winning you over?”
Cassia glanced down at the cover, then back at him with a faint smile. “It’s giving me a surprising amount of insight into your world. I’m learning a lot about curses.”
One brow arched. “Don’t witches know a thing or two about curses?”
She gave a soft snort and leaned back in the chair. “Not Kitchen Witches. Especially not ones like me—home-trained and self-taught. I went to Little Mineola Public, not the Academy for Witches. Without a confirmed lineage, the path of formal learning is barricaded.”
He’d spent his life surrounded by power tied to pedigree—knowledge hoarded, passed through bloodlines like inheritance. Cassia spoke of hers differently, like something she’d pieced together herself. A quilt, not a crown.
“Then how,” he asked, “did you get to be so good at healing? I may complain about my ribs, but truthfully . . .” He let his eyes close for a beat. “I didn’t expect to have healed this much after only a couple of hours of sleep.”
Her expression softened. “My mother taught me everything I know. She was very good. Much better than me.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He meant it too. The salve she’d used had dulled not only the pain in his body, but some ache in his chest he hadn’t known could exist. He didn’t say that when he’d woken up to find her reading his manual, it had felt like witnessing something precious.
Cassia caught him staring, and tucked a curl behind her ear. The book toppled forward to rest against her chest. “What is it? You look rather dazed.”
When he didn’t respond, she rose and crossed to the bed. She leaned in, her face hovering inches above his, close enough that her breath mingled with his own.
“You’re still a bit feverish,” she murmured and laid her palm on his temple.
Everything inside him went still. Her hand was against his skin—warm and certain, as if she had always belonged there. He knew it was just a healer’s touch, born of concern, but his body didn’t seem to know the difference. His pulse answered. Quickening, galloping.
He closed his eyes. The fever, the pain, the screaming mirror—they all faded beneath the press of her palm.
When he opened his eyes again, she was still there, watching.
Too close, yet not nearly close enough. She smelled like clove and honey and something green and living—like the first warmth of spring after too long a winter.
His gaze caught on the soft curve of her mouth, and gods, he wanted.
Not just to kiss her—though that thought burned bright enough to scorch.
He wanted to reach up and slide his hand around the back of her neck, pull her down until her forehead rested against his.
To press his face into the hollow of her throat and breathe her in—slow, deep, until her scent replaced the smoke and blood clinging to his lungs.
He wanted to gather her against his chest and know what it felt like to hold something real and freely given.
Bury himself in the miracle of her existence and stay there until the world forgot to come looking for him.
His hand twitched—already rising before he stopped it.
The contract held him, but it wasn’t just the contract anymore.
It was her. What she deserved. Not a fevered grasp from a man half-broken on a sweat-soaked bed.
It must be something chosen in full light, with steady hands and clear eyes.
When he touched her—if she ever let him—it wouldn’t be because he was desperate.
It would be because she wanted him to.
So instead, he let the tension stretch between them, taut enough to snap. Then she moved, only slightly, but it broke the moment. And Ark, throat dry and chest still tight, grasped for the first solid thing he could find that wasn’t a confession.
“I’m wearing a different shirt.”
Cassia blinked. She scooted back and lifted both hands. “It wasn’t me. Caius did it, I swear.”
Ark studied her, then let his head sink back into the pillow. “What a shame,” he sighed.
“What was that?”
“Nothing,” he said quickly, though he couldn’t hide his smirk.
She narrowed her eyes, the edge of a smile forming. “Are you saying you wanted me to undress you?”
It was his turn to lift both hands. “I’m saying I wouldn’t have objected. Strictly for medical purposes, of course.”
“Of course,” she echoed, folding her arms across her chest. “And here I thought you preferred order and professionalism.”
“I do. Which is why I’d fill out a consent form. You know, for next time.”
Cassia laughed, brushing a curl behind her ear. “No, no next time!” Then, softer: “I don’t think your ribs—or my nerves—could survive another stunt like that.”
His ribs ached, but it wasn’t the injury. It was something higher, deeper—a strange agony he didn’t recognize. He’d been punched, stabbed, and thrown against walls. He knew pain. This wasn’t pain. This was worse. This was unfamiliar.
She moved, rising to her feet, her skirt whispering along his arm. He felt her absence before she’d even taken a step—a sudden, hollow space where warmth had been.
“Well,” she said, hands on her hips, a flicker of her usual playfulness returning, “since you’ve proven you can string together a sentence again, I suppose I can stop hovering.”
His lips twitched. “You hover with impressive grace. A better caretaker than Caius and Rhodes combined.”
The banter came easily now, practiced. Safe. He let it happen. It anchored him inside this comfortable boundary, and it seemed to be doing the same for her.
“Flatter me again and I might bring you a meal,” she said, already halfway to the door. “Something mild, maybe. You look like someone who shouldn’t eat anything more aggressive than toast.”
He chuckled. “Do I at least get butter and jam?”
She turned in the doorway, one brow lifting. “That depends. Can you sit up without fainting this time?”
“I make no promises,” he murmured, the fatigue catching up with him again.
“Then you get herbal tea and dry bread.”
He watched her go, her figure swallowed by the hallway. He lay still a moment, catching his breath. Then he shifted—testing his ribs, the sting in his hand. Every nerve told him to stay down. But the silence pressed in, and the quiet without her was more unbearable than the pain.
“I hope you’re only joking about herbal tea and dry bread,” he called out.
From down the corridor, her voice drifted back. “Freshen up if you can. I’ll see what I can do with your . . . very basic pantry.”
His stomach rumbled—low and undignified, eager for something made by her hands. “Try not to judge me too harshly. Organization is my strength. Buying groceries, less so.”
She didn’t reply, but he could picture her smile anyway.
He moved slowly, careful not to disturb the bandages she’d so neatly wrapped around his right hand. In the adjoining bathroom, he splashed cold water on his face and brushed away the sourness clinging to his tongue, each gesture a small reclaiming of order.
When he lifted his head and caught sight of himself in the mirror, his heartbeat stuttered.
He hadn’t re-cast his glamour.
The horns remained—large and ridged, arching from his crown in dark symmetry. The shifting swirls on his collarbones. His eyes, still holding that golden, uncanny gleam.
She’d seen all of it. Cassia had been looking at this version of him since she arrived.
His stomach gave a twist.
Horns were no small matter in demon society. A mark of status, power, and prestige. A visible, inescapable signifier of bloodline and potential—especially desirable when choosing a mate. Formidable, virile, and entirely impossible to hide when his glamour dropped.
And he had two sets.
Then there were his markings. They traced back to his family’s nobility from before demons had even fallen into Meredith—a lineage that had kept the Varils in power for centuries. These ever-shifting scrolls and swirls marked him as the highest Echelon among demons.
But Cassia wasn’t a demon.
She didn’t come from a world that revered horns or measured a man by the power running through his veins. Her world was teacups and starlight, mismatched chairs and sunlit clutter. Her power ran quiet and warm, not sharpened to an edge like his.
And yet, she had seen him. All of him. Horns, claws, the whole of what he was, and she hadn’t looked away. But in a city of four factions—each with their own shifting ideas of beauty and trust—he never assumed admiration.
So . . . what did Cassia think?
He ran his palm down his face. It shouldn’t have mattered. This was all for show, wasn’t it? A performance. A carefully choreographed lie.
He stared at his reflection, his grip on the edge of the sink tightening.
Damn it.
The scent of butter browning in a pan hit him before he even reached the corridor. Rosemary. Thyme. It wove through the hallway like an answer to his grumbling stomach.
He stepped out into the main area and looked around. She’d only been here for less than half a day, yet the space felt different already. Brighter. Warmer. Human, in the best way.
Cassia stood at the long oak table, smoothing the edge of a napkin.
She’d laid out a plate topped with a simple, fluffy omelet flecked with green herbs, a golden sheen of butter pooling at the edges.
A ceramic mug steamed gently beside it. He could smell broth and perhaps . . . was that a whisper of nutmeg?
She didn’t notice him at first. The light from the high windows limned her in silver. Her curls had loosened from their tie, spilling down her back in that untamed way he was beginning to think of as specifically, dangerously hers.
Something in his chest tugged sharply at the sight.
He’d never imagined this kind of gentleness for himself. And yet, here it was, draped over him like a blanket she’d placed over his shoulders without him realizing.
Cassia glanced up, a small smile on her lips. “Better now?”
He cleared his throat, his words emerging slower than he’d like, “That doesn’t look like dry toast.”
Her smile turned mischievous. “I decided to take pity on you. Don’t get too excited, though. It’s a basic omelet, good for your stomach, but the herbs are fresh from Starlight.”
He sat slowly, carefully, and picked up the fork.
The first bite of egg was fluffy, soft, buttered through.
Salt and herbs, balanced just so. He closed his eyes.
Immediately, he tasted the subtle magic laced through the mouthful, folded into the dish as naturally as salt or heat.
It unfurled inside him like warmth drawn into chilled bone, tender but insistent, coaxing his body to mend what it couldn’t on its own.
Cassia, woven into food the way gentleness lived in a lullaby.
“Perfect,” he said quietly.
She didn’t answer. She just sat across from him and watched, hands wrapped around her cup, as if this small act of care hadn’t altered him forever.
Ark cleared his throat and tried to return himself to a semblance of normalcy. “You’re not eating?”
“I ate earlier at Starlight.”
He continued eating while she nursed her cup of tea. Her gaze was on him, lingering not on his face but a little higher.
“So. This is you,” she said.
He finished his last bite and placed his cutlery down. “This is me.”
“I can see why you wear glamour.”
She didn’t look unnerved—just thoughtful, maybe a little amused. “They certainly attract a lot of attention. People would be gawking at you and stopping you on the street. You’d never get anything done.”
He chuckled. “It’s happened more than once. I learned early that if I wanted peace and less stares, a more human-like facade was the only option.”
She smiled, her voice soft. “And yet you let me see through it. I’m flattered to be included in your inner circle.”
He held her gaze. She didn’t seem to realize how small that circle was, or how long it had been since he’d let anyone new inside it.
He gestured around the space. “And this is me too. Caius, Rhodes, all of us. This is what we do.”
“So you really do deal with cursed objects?”
His mouth tugged into a small smile. “Yes. Cursed, corrupted, hexed, haunted, forgotten. Artifacts with ancient power. Houses that should be homes, but have become tombs.”
Cassia tilted her head, and simply waited for him to continue.
“Aegis & Ash acquires properties or relics that people have given up on,” he explained.
“Places and objects that are abandoned because no one knows how to make them safe. We purchase them at a lower cost, cleanse the spaces, contain the corruption, and restore them—magically and otherwise. Some we sell for a profit, others we keep and rent out.”
“And the artifacts?”
“Most of them are rare and dangerous, so we seal and study them, see if we can harness the power in a safe way. The most valuable we keep in our own vault. Some others, we sell to a limited numbers of collectors of rare items, to museums, or the occasional client who actually knows what they’re getting into. ”
“Ah. That’s what the auction was for.”
“Precisely.”
“And you’ve been doing this since . . .”
“Sixteen.”
Her brows lifted. “That early?”
He nodded. “Caius, Rhodes, and I filed the charter the day we were legally allowed to register a business. Everyone thought it was a phase. My father still calls it a hobby.”
The soft, rueful look in her eyes made his blood rush. He rose carefully and tilted his head toward the hall. “Come. I’ll show you the vault.”