The restaurant had that expensive quiet where even voices seemed to dress themselves. Linen shone under glass; knives and forks lay arranged like small, obedient soldiers; the light filtered through tall windows, turning the steam from teacups to pale threads that rose and disappeared. A waiter set a basket of bread between us, the heat of it loosening butter with a soft sigh.
She arrived exactly on time. Patrick Swanson's secretary—Ms. Stobbs—sat across from me with a practiced smile and a leather folio clasped in both hands. Her perfume was clean and unmemorable, the scent of a woman who intended to be forgotten the moment she left a room. To my right, Eddie slouched like he was at war with posture; to my left, Corvian—Corrin to her—sat with his usual disciplined stillness, hands folded, eyes lidded in a way that made listening look like prayer.
"Thank you for coming on short notice," Ms. Stobbs said. Her voice was measured, the kind that didn't need volume to command a table. "Mr. Swanson appreciates punctual partners. It suggests you know what matters."
The waiter poured water. The ice cracked softly, a small bright sound. She opened the folio and slid a single page toward me, then another toward Corrin. I could feel the heat from the plate beneath my palms; my appetite had stayed upstairs, but the room insisted on feeding me.
"As we discussed," she went on, "this is a private engagement at Mr. Swanson's residence. Attendance is invitation-only. You will perform twice—once to gather them, once to close the night. Between those, you are welcome to move among the guests." Her glance lifted, weighing us with quick precision. "Within reason."
Eddie reached for bread, tore it in clean halves. "What's unreasonable?" he asked around a mouthful he pretended didn't exist.
Ms. Stobbs didn't look at him, which was its own kind of answer. "Phones remain sealed on arrival," she said. "Our staff will provide pouches and claim tokens. No recordings, no photographs, no post-event recollections on social media. If anyone asks what you did last night, you say you slept."
She placed a pen beside my page. The pen was heavy, cool against my fingers when I tested the weight.
"The first set," she said, tapping the header, "should be impression. Attention is elastic in the early hours—stretch it, but don't tear it. The second set may be sharper. Mr. Swanson enjoys culmination." A slight smile. "He is a man of trade. He likes to see things finished."
I swallowed the dryness in my mouth with water that tasted of lime and polished glass. "What kind of guests are we speaking about?"
"People who dislike being called guests," she said. "Ministers, donors, three judges, two publishers, one man who swears he doesn't collect anything while buying entire lives at the price of a wristwatch. Their spouses. Two names you won't recognize and one you will but must not say aloud."
Eddie's foot nudged mine under the table as if to ask if she was serious. She was very serious.
"There will be masks," she added. "Not a theme. A convenience. If someone says they know you, they don't. If someone says they don't, they might. Do not ask who anyone is. Let them speak from behind what protects them."
The waiter arrived with plates—fish lacquered with a bitter glaze, a bed of greens that smelled of citrus and soil. Ms. Stobbs didn't touch her fork. She watched our plates land, then continued without looking down, as if eating were a task for later, elsewhere.
"You will be surprised by certain things," she said, and the way she folded her hands made the word surprised sound provincial. "Refrain. Men like Mr. Swanson dislike overt reactions. If you must react, make it small. If you must gawk, do it with your back turned."
"What sort of things?" Eddie asked, softer now.
"Patronage," she said. "Arrangements. People with more power than shame." She let a beat pass. "Sometimes art approaches the edge of confession. We remain on the safer side of it by never declaring what we saw."
Her eyes flicked to Corrin. "Mr. Corrin, are you comfortable with a prearranged cue? When I adjust my bracelet"—she lifted her wrist; a fine chain caught the light—"you step in. Interrupt gently. Direct attention to where Mr. Swanson prefers it."
Corrin inclined his head. "I'll see it."
"You will also be offered things." She said it like a weather report. "Gifts, introductions, powders, bodies, promises. Decline or accept, but do it cleanly. If you accept, make certain Mr. Swanson believes you did so because of him."
I felt the food cooling untouched. The room had a pleasant murmur—glass meeting glass, the steady scrape of chairs, the hiss from the kitchen door when it swung open and shut again. It all pressed into me as if to reassure me this was ordinary: a lunch, a booking, a house with music at the end of it. But Ms. Stobbs's voice kept sliding the world a little to the left.
"And the performance itself?" I asked. "There's a garden of sorts? Or a hall?"
"Both," she said. "Your opening is in the atrium—sound carries, so keep it tight. The finale happens in the east parlor. Smaller. The ceilings are low, the audience closer. If you require darkness, you'll get nearly all of it. If you require silence, you'll get something like it."
Her attention settled on me, weighing not my questions but the space behind them. "If anyone approaches you with… theological inquiries during the intervals, nod politely and tell them you've made a vow of discretion. If they press, ask for water. Someone will relocate you."
I felt Corrin's gaze graze my cheek, then leave. I kept my eyes on the paper, though the words had started to double. No phones. No names. Masks. Cues. Culmination. The rules fit together with a logic that made me think of chess—each piece moving toward a ritual that would only look like chance to anyone not invited to watch.
"And one more thing," Ms. Stobbs said, finally lifting her fork to rest it on the rim of her plate without eating. "There will be a woman in a red dress who will pretend to have known you as a child. She will be wrong. You will not correct her. There will be a man with a cane who will ask for your price and mean your salary. He is not asking for your salary."
Eddie coughed into his napkin. I reached for my water again; my hand wasn't entirely steady.
"If at any point you require me," she said, "I will be at the long table beside the harpsichord. I do not dance. Do not ask me to."
She finally lowered her gaze to her plate, cut a small, exact piece of fish, and set it carefully on her tongue like a secret. When she looked back up, the smile had returned, seamless as a seal on an envelope.
"Questions?"
Eddie had dozens; they crowded his face. He said none of them.
"Timing?" Corrin asked.
"Nine for the first. Midnight for the last. You may leave at one, or when Mr. Swanson looks at his watch, whichever occurs first." Her attention flicked, testing us one by one as if for fractures. "Wear what flatters the myth they've already built of you. If you must bleed, do it where it reads as art."
The room clinked and breathed and pretended to be normal. I chewed a corner of bread and tasted nothing. Somewhere between her bracelet and her pen and the way she didn't bother to finish her meal, I understood what kind of night we were walking toward: not spectacle, but ceremony. Not sin, exactly, but a vocabulary that let sin sound like culture.
Ms. Stobbs closed the folio. "Then we agreed," she said softly. "You will be on time. You will be extraordinary. And you will be unsurprised." She slid the pen toward me, the smallest invitation.
I signed where she indicated. My name looked too bold on the thin line—like a person stepping over a threshold without permission.
"Good," she said, standing. Her chair glided back without protest; her shadow slid off the table and took nothing with it. "Eat," she added, almost kindly. "You'll need the steadiness."
She left with the same quiet she'd arrived in, perfume already thinning from the air. Eddie exhaled first, a low sound like disbelief. Corrin remained still, watching the water turn back to glass in my cup.
I folded the paper once, then again, until it fit my pocket like a weight I could carry.
Eddie set his fork down with a soft clatter and leaned back in his chair, squinting at me like he was trying to see through a fog. "I don't feel like this is anything normal," he said. "Or that it's supposed to be normal."
I pushed at the food on my plate, drawing lazy circles through the sauce. "No, no," I said. "I think it's pretty much fine. You know—it's just a party. If you're a little skeptical about it, feel free not to come."
He scoffed, mouth twitching into a grin. "Are you fucking kidding? Of course I'm coming. I need to see this firsthand, man. You think I'd miss the chance to watch the elites unmask their dirty secrets? Not a chance."
"Suit yourself," I said. I hadn't eaten a bite.
He returned to his meal, easy, unbothered. I watched the steam rise from his plate, watched how comfortable he was pretending that none of this was strange. It almost made me envy him. I wanted to borrow that ease, that disbelief—anything that could make this feel less like an invitation to something unholy.
The bill was already covered.
We left the restaurant, the city air pressing warm against our faces, and walked in silence toward the car. The noise of Ebonreach rolled faintly around us—distant laughter, engines humming, the glint of signs shifting color. Nothing about the world had changed, but something inside it had turned.
Back in the hotel, Eddie split off toward his room, muttering about needing a drink and a nap before "facing whatever rich man's séance this Swanson guy's throwing."
Corvian and I went up together. The elevator felt slower than usual, its walls reflecting him beside me—taller, still, unreadable.
In the room, I sat at the edge of the bed, elbows on my knees, while he undid his cuffs with the precision of someone removing armor. The silence stretched until I broke it.
"Have you seen parties like these before?" I asked.
He glanced over his shoulder, the corner of his mouth lifting—not a smile, but something that remembered the shape of one. "Of course I have."
"And?"
"They're messy as hell," he said simply. "Whatever you try to imagine, it will exceed that. These parties aren't celebrations, Hugo. They're small rituals disguised as pleasure. Altars hidden in laughter."
He crossed the room and sat in the chair opposite me, the lamplight laying against the side of his face, hollowing it slightly. "People think depravity is rebellion," he said. "They think sin is freedom. But these gatherings, they're not about indulgence—tribute. They don't own their vices; their vices own them. Every glass raised is a tithe."
"Tribute to what?"
"To whatever answers when called."
I didn't realize I was holding my breath until he continued.
"They perform their wickedness like prayer," he said. "Music, wine, skin—every act is a petition. They think they own their vices, but it's the other way around. They're offering themselves piece by piece, waiting for something to take notice. They wouldn't say the word, but it's worship."
He leaned forward then, eyes half-lidded, voice low enough to make the air seem smaller. "Each one of those nights draws something near. Not enough to break through—but enough to look back at them. They crave that gaze, that acknowledgment. It makes them feel chosen."
He paused, searching my face. "I've seen men ruin themselves trying to feel seen."
I looked down at my hands, clasped so tight the knuckles whitened. "And you think Swanson's one of them?"
Corvian's eyes flickered, like he already knew the ending of the thought before I reached it. "Swanson doesn't seek attention," he said. "He seeks transaction. That's worse. He knows exactly what he's calling."
He rose from the chair and walked toward the window, pulling the curtain aside with a quiet hand. The city stretched below—streets glowing like veins, a pulse that never slept.
"Whatever you see there tomorrow," he said, voice distant, "don't react. Don't look too long at what looks back. You aren't part of their devotion."
I wanted to ask what he meant, but the words stayed behind my teeth. His reflection in the glass looked like something remembering how to be human.
And for the first time that night, I realized the party wasn't what frightened me most. It was that he spoke of it like an old wound—something he'd attended long before I was ever born.
"Corvian," I said quietly, breaking the stillness. "What does your original form look like?"
He turned from the window, his expression unreadable. "Why, are you intrigued?"
I leaned back against the headboard, arms crossed. "Yeah, of course I am. I want to know what you actually look like. Not this—" I gestured vaguely at him, at the body he wore so effortlessly. "—not this suit, but you."
He studied me for a long time, then said, almost indulgently, "You wouldn't be able to see me."
"What does that mean?"
"Even if I showed up in my original form," he said, walking closer, "your eyes wouldn't understand what they're seeing. You can't perceive what you're not permitted to perceive. Your mind would fill in the blanks with what it finds familiar, and still you'd only see fragments—shadows of something it refuses to shape."
He stopped near the foot of the bed, his silhouette faintly backlit by the window's dull glow. His voice softened, but it wasn't kind. "You think sight is power. It isn't. It's permission."
I hesitated, my curiosity prickling against the dread that rose like static. "Are there ways," I asked, "that I can maybe see you—your real form?"
He tilted his head, considering. "Well," he said slowly, "possibly. There are two ways I can think of."
"Two?"
"We can ascend together," he said, the words slipping out with an almost tender calm.
"Ascend?" I repeated. "What do you mean—ascend together?"
He smiled, faintly, as if I'd asked the most obvious question in the world. "We could pay hell a visit. You'd see me there. Every shape I ever was. And others, too. Devils, the remnants of what used to be grace—whatever's left of us down there."
He said it the way some people talk about visiting their childhood home. Casual. I couldn't tell if that made it worse.
"And the other way?" I asked.
He took another step closer, close enough that I could feel the air shift between us. "Through the marking."
I blinked. "You mean—like staying with me forever kind of thing?"
He nodded. "Yes. I mark you. You gain full potential—your powers stop hesitating. And in return, I stay. You'd be able to see my original form then, and others. Devils, souls. The veil between worlds would no longer apply to you." He paused, his gaze slipping over me like a warning. "But I should tell you, I'm not that pretty when I'm in my original form."
I laughed once, uneasily. "So fallen angels don't look the same as angels, looks-wise?"
"This is very subjective," he said, almost amused. "Who decided angels are beautiful? Because they're good? Because they serve some ideal of light?" His tone sharpened, quiet but cutting. "Who said goodness must look appealing?"
He turned away, voice lowering as he spoke. "They might not be what you think. Not shining. Not winged. Just… unbearable to look at. Too much of what they are compressed into a shape that shouldn't hold it."
He glanced back at me, and the light caught the scar at the base of his neck again. "Heaven's creatures aren't always radiant, Hugo. Some are simply tolerated. Even when they fall."
The way he said fall lingered. It didn't sound like sin. It sounded like gravity.
I wanted to ask him more—to see how far this conversation could go before it became a threat—but part of me already knew the answer. He had shown me glimpses before: the tremor in the air when he lost patience, the pull in his voice that bent reason around it. Whatever he was in truth, I wasn't ready to see.
Still, I found myself whispering, "If I asked to see you… like that—what would it cost me?"
Corvian smiled without warmth. "Everything you haven't yet lost."
Corvian moved closer until I could smell the faint trace of his cologne — something clean, almost medicinal, that seemed at odds with everything he was. His eyes were steady on mine, unblinking, the calm before a statement meant to wound.
"Let's prepare for your visit to Patrick Swanson's tomorrow instead of this bullshit conversation," he said. "You're not going to get through it anyway. You'll walk away in a second, like you always do. You're not that brave, Hugo."
The words hit where they were meant to. I bit the inside of my cheek and said quietly, "I still have things I want to accomplish before we get to the marking."
He studied me for a moment, then nodded once, the motion precise and almost respectful. "Fair enough," he said. "See you on the other side then, when you're ready."
And with that, he left — door opening, closing, silence returning like a tide.
I stayed where I was for a while, staring at the empty space he'd just walked through, feeling that familiar ache — the pull between wanting him gone and not knowing how to exist without his presence filling the room. Then I stood, took my jacket from the chair, and stepped out.
The hallway smelled faintly of old polish and wine. Somewhere, music leaked through another door — low, restless, something half-drowned in laughter. I followed the sound of glasses clinking and found myself at the hotel bar.
Poppy was there, perched on a stool, twirling a straw through the remains of her drink. She looked small against the marble counter, her hair a careless frame of gold and light.
"Hey," I said, walking toward her. "What are you doing here?"
She looked up, startled, then smiled, her voice bright as if nothing in the world ever lingered too long on her. "Oh—hi, Hugo. I was actually here to see Corrin."
That name again. Corrin. The public mask.
"See Corrin?" I asked. "Why?"
She leaned closer, lowering her voice like she was confessing something harmless but precious. "Okay, I'll tell you a secret," she said, grinning. "That friend of yours is hot. And he's, you know, kind of mysterious. I feel like I want to talk to him more. He's really nice, too— he listens. He's open-minded. Doesn't look at me like he's judging what I do or who I am."
I stared at her, a prickle running down the back of my neck. "No," I said. "You can't do that."
Her smile faltered. "Can't do what?"
"You can't just… want to mingle around Corrin like that."
She frowned, confusion creasing into something sharper. "Why not?"
"Because I said so, Poppy."
The words came out too quickly, sharper than I intended, and I saw it land in her expression — the flicker of annoyance, the subtle stiffening of her jaw.
"And who are you," she said, her tone clipped but steady, "to dictate something like that?"
I looked at her, and a whole tide of thoughts began to churn beneath the surface.
She didn't understand — how could she? There were two reasons behind my warning, neither fit for speech. One: Corvian wasn't just another man she could flirt with over drinks; he was a devil in borrowed skin. She couldn't be near that without consequence. Two: he was mine. My companion, my burden, my undoing — whatever name fit that bond, it belonged to me. But none of that could be said aloud. Not to Poppy, not to anyone.
So I forced a small, strained smile. "You know what? You're fine. Forget what I said. I just…" I exhaled, searching for words that wouldn't betray what I was thinking. "I wanted you to be more cautious about the men you decide are good or worthy of your time. But never mind. Enjoy your night."
She didn't answer.
"I'll just sit at the bar," I added. "I came for a drink anyway, so I won't interrupt your time. Okay?"
I turned and made my way to the other end of the counter, sat down, and ordered something strong enough to quiet the noise in my head. The first sip burned clean through my chest, a small, necessary violence.
I closed my eyes for a moment, breathed in deep, and let my thoughts loosen—just enough to let the heat of the drink settle behind my ribs. The air in the bar shifted, slow and deliberate, as if the world were inhaling with me.
Then came the scrape of a chair.
When I looked, Poppy was standing. Her face had changed—no longer annoyed, no longer anything. Her expression was pale with uncertainty, as though she'd woken from a dream and couldn't recall how she got there. Her eyes drifted around the room, searching for something she couldn't name. For a breath, a shadow crossed her pupils like a cloud over a lens—and then it was gone.
She straightened her dress absently, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and started toward the door. Her steps were slow, hesitant, but sure enough, she crossed the threshold and disappeared into the corridor beyond.
I turned back to my glass. The ice had already melted.
Outside the bar, her footsteps faded down the hall, and the silence that followed felt earned—like something I had set carefully in its place.
A few minutes passed. The low chatter in the bar had thinned, leaving only the soft pulse of jazz threading through the air. I was halfway through my drink when the door opened.
Corvian stepped in.
He didn't belong in places like this—too composed for dim corners and watered whiskey—but the room shifted around him anyway, quieting just a little, like it knew what had walked through. His eyes found me almost instantly. For a heartbeat, neither of us moved.
Then that smirk appeared—lazy, knowing, the kind that pulled at the edges of his face without ever touching his eyes.
He crossed the room with unhurried steps and took the seat beside me, close enough that I caught the warmth of him through the air. "Well played," he said, his tone dipped in quiet amusement.
I let out a breath that was half a scoff, half relief. "Wasn't a game," I said.
His smirk deepened. "Everything is."
I turned toward the counter, ignoring the weight of his gaze. The bartender drifted over, and I gestured toward my glass. "Another," I said.
The bottle tipped, the liquid folding over ice, soft and golden. I watched it rise, the way it caught the dim light—still, almost holy—and thought of Poppy's confusion, the way her eyes had emptied before she left.
I didn't look at him when I spoke. "You knew I'd do it."
Corvian's voice came low, smooth, unbothered. "I hoped you would."
I brought the glass to my lips, the chill biting gently against my teeth, and said nothing.
Between us, the silence had texture. It was the kind that meant understanding, or something close to it.