The Princeβs Pet[Ao3]: Diavolo x Reader
You knew that something was going to happen. You felt it deep in your chest. But nothing could have prepared you for the hand that clamped over your mouth. Branded with gold cuffs and paraded before a crowd of bidders, you catch the gaze of one powerful demon in particular. The future king has decided you belong to him, body and soul. A dark romance where love is just another word for ownership. {Chapter 1}
βΊΛβ’Μ©Μ©Νβ©β’Μ©Μ©ΝΛβΊβ§ΝβΊΛβ’Μ©Μ©Νβ©β’Μ©Μ©ΝΛβΊβ§ΝβΊΛβ’Μ©Μ©Νβ©β’Μ©Μ©ΝΛβΊβ§ΝβΊΛβ’Μ©Μ©Νβ©β’Μ©Μ©ΝΛβΊβ§ΝβΊΛβ’Μ©Μ©Νβ©β’Μ©Μ©ΝΛβΊβ§ΝβΊΛβ’Μ©Μ©Νβ©β’Μ©Μ©ΝΛβΊβ§ΝβΊΛβ’Μ©Μ©Νβ©β’Μ©Μ©ΝΛβΊβ§ΝβΊΛβ’Μ©Μ©Νβ©β’Μ©Μ©ΝΛβΊβ§ΝβΊΛβ’Μ©Μ©Νβ©β’Μ©Μ©ΝΛβΊβ§ΝβΊΛβ’Μ©Μ©Νβ©β’Μ©Μ©ΝΛβΊβ§ΝβΊΛβ’Μ©Μ©Νβ©β’Μ©Μ©ΝΛβΊβ§Ν
Diavolo looked down at you expectantly, mirth still shimmering behind his eyes. You felt shock radiating through you like the aftermath of an earthquake, heart dropping to your core. Silence stretched between you. He waited.
Slowly, you lifted your hand in front of your face, spreading your fingers wide as if the simple motion could shatter the illusion. You could see yourself. You could see flesh, veins, the faint tremble of fear. Was this some cruel trick of his? You couldnβt be invisible. Not when his gaze still pinned you in place like a specimen under glass.
He reached up and grabbed your hand, observing closely as though he were unraveling the secret for himself. Then he pressed his lips to your palm, a lingering kiss that sent heat flooding through your veins. If you truly were invisible, you were pathetically grateful for it. Grateful it hid the flush crawling up your neck.
Too gentle. The kind that made your mind fracture and your body betray you in that dark, unwanted way you hated.
He looked directly at you, it seemed, but his eyes narrowed as he looked past you. Through you. Directly to the sigil you had drawn that was still glowing on the table.
His eyes shifted to meet your own. His gaze seemed calculated and questioning, before the delight faded into something almost suspicious.
βLittle pet,β he murmured, voice low and smooth as he rose to his full height without breaking that piercing eye contact. βYou havenβt been keeping secrets from me, have you? Surely you wouldnβt dare do something... reckless after Iβve only been gone a single day.β
You froze, the cuffs at your wrists pulsing once in warning, a silent reminder of who owned you.
Diavolo's smile hadn't vanished entirely. It lingered at the corners of his mouth, but no longer held warmth. His golden eyes met yours with that particular quality of stillness that you had learned to fear more than his anger. This was quiet in the way a trap is quiet.
"I couldn't sleep," you said quietly. The words came out steadier than you felt. "The tug was... it was difficult. I was trying to distract myself."
He regarded you for a moment without speaking. Then, without any change to his expression, he released your hand and turned toward the table.
He moved the way he always moved. Unhurried and effortless, as though the world arranged itself ahead of him rather than the other way around. He stopped before the table and looked down at what was there. The open book. The scattered study notes. The pages of failed attempts. The single sheet of grey parchment with the sigil you had drawn still shimmering on its surface.
He was quiet for a long time.
You watched his back and the steady rise and fall of his shoulders. He stood with his hands clasped behind him at first, simply looking. Then one hand came forward, and his thumb traced the line of what you had drawn. Not quickly. Never that. Following the vertical stroke downward, the curve at its crown, then the spiral at its base.Β
He picked up the parchment.
He held it for a moment, and you opened your mouth, though you weren't certain what exactly you were supposed to say. That you hadn't known what it was? That Barbatos had left the books, that you had only been-
Neither with a match nor any visible motion. The flame appeared between his fingers suddenly and without warning, moving across the parchment and consuming the sigil first, then the rest of the sheet, until nothing remained between his fingers but a small bit of ash that dissolved before it could fall.
The moment the sigil burned, you felt yourself lurch forward.
It was like catching yourself from a stumble. Your body snapped back into its own weight, gravity reasserting itself all at once. You braced your hands against your thighs to steady yourself, heart hammering. You stared at your own fingers gripping the fabric, entirely visible.
That was the part that was nagging at you as Diavolo turned back around. You had drawn that mark and your body had simply disappeared around it, not knowing until he laughed.
He looked at you now with an expression that was not quite angry, not quite amused. He was holding the book open at the page you had been studying. He crossed the room and held it out to you, in front of your face.
"Tell me what you see," he said.
You flinched lightly as you looked at the page. The characters shifted and coiled in the way they always did, retreating from direct attention. You could make out the shape of the example you had copied and the Latin notation beneath it.
"A sigil," you said carefully. "Itβ¦ It says itβs called the seal of shadows."
Something moved behind his eyes. Something with the essence of discomfort.
"You translated this by yourself?" he questioned.
"Barbatos taught me how to translate Latin yesterday. I didn't get very far, I only managed a few characters before-"
"This is not the book that was given to you for studying. You should not be able to understand these sigils at all, Y/N." His voice was still measured, but something beneath it had shifted. Something quieter and more careful than seriousness. "There are demons who have devoted entire lifetimes to this particular script. Centuries of attempting to copy what is written in these pages, only to find the ink refused to hold the shapes." He paused, letting his words land. "And yet you, a human, copied it after a single night of practice?"
You stared at him, breathing slowly, and said nothing.Β
His gaze moved over you in a way that unsettled you deeply. He had never looked at you quite like this. Not like prey or a possession to be admired. Like he was cataloguing something he hadn't expected to find. Checking for cracks in something he thought he had understood entirely. "You should be in considerable pain right now for even attempting such a thing."
"Pain?" The word came out smaller than you intended. "I⦠I had a headache, but it was manageable. I didn't think-"
"A headache." The two words came out with a flatness that made the back of your neck prickle. He glanced down at the book down between you, face up, characters still writhing across the page "You experienced a headache."
You could hear your own voice growing smaller as you spoke, the explanation falling apart under his attention. "Barbatos said that a headache was a normal side effect. I could see the characters if I looked indirectly. It worked, so I practiced on just the one." You swallowed. "The shape was simple enough, so I assumed it might be for beginners."
He stared at you. "Simple," he repeated, very quietly.
When he said it back to you in that tone, the logic that had seemed perfectly reasonable at three in the morning became difficult to defend. You pressed your lips together and said nothing as he tapped the spine of the book rhythmically.Β
He looked at the book, then at the space where the parchment had been. Then, briefly, at your hands. You felt that last look the way you felt most of his attention. Physical. A pressure that lasted longer than the glance itself. His expression didn't change, but the furrow between his brows deepened fractionally before smoothing again.
The cuffs pulsed once, quietly, seeming to match the rhythm of his emotions.
He finally looked directly at you, and you made yourself hold his gaze rather than drop it. His eyes moved over your face in an analyzing way, and for once the hunger that usually lived there was absent. What remained in its place was harder to name. He was searching for something. Whatever it was, he had not yet decided if he had found it. The firelight caught the gold of his irises, burning low and steady.
The calculation softened.
Not entirely. Not in any way that would have been visible to someone who hadn't spent weeks learning to read the small changes between his expressions. But it was there. Something in the set of his mouth eased, and the tension between his brows released, and he looked at you the way he had looked at you when he first walked through the door tonight. Before he had noticed the book.Β
Your own expression did something you hadn't planned for. The careful stillness you had been holding in place loosened, just slightly, and couldnβt stop it. Your eyes met his, searching for an answer.
Then he sighed, a long exhale that carried the last of whatever he had been deciding, and spoke. "The sigils in this book are not Devildom script, but rather its predecessor." You waited, and the room seemed to hold its breath with you.Β
"Before demons ruled this realm, something else did." He let a moment of quiet settle between you before continuing. "The fae," he said. The word landed in a way you hadn't expected. Familiar and deeply unfamiliar all at once. Stories. Children's myths. You had grown up with a vague, secondhand understanding of fae as small, whimsical things that granted wishes or stole children from cradles.
"They⦠ruled the Devildom?"
"They ruled everything beneath the Celestial Realm for an age that predates history. They were precise. Strategic. They understood language in a way that nothing before or since has quite replicated." You kept your expression still and listened.
"The fae did not use weapons or magic the way demons do," he continued. "What they had instead were sigils. Marks that, when rendered correctly, carried power into the world." His eyes held yours.Β
You watched his face as he spoke. There was something different in it, something you hadn't encountered before in all your weeks of survival. He wasn't watching you for a reaction to use or building up to a punishment. He was simply⦠telling you something. Explaining. The realization settled over you strangely, like recognizing a room you had never been in before.
Every other conversation had been laced with possession and power. This was different. He was telling you something real because he had decided you needed to know it, and the distinction felt significant in a way you couldn't articulate.
"When the war ended, the fae were gone but their sigils remained. Written on stone, pressed into materials that resisted being destroyed as stubbornly as the language itself." He looked at you. "These sigils arenβt judged by their βsimplicity,β as you put it. Their power is determined by the hand that drew it. Demons adopted their writing in hopes of capturing something of what they possessed. What we built from it became the Devildom script. Functional. But a copy. And copies lose something in translation."Β
Your mouth had gone very dry. You looked at the book sitting on the table with its ordinary appearance. You had pulled it from the shelf because it was there. Because you couldn't sleep. Because your hands needed something to do.
You had drawn one of their marks because you were restless.
The thought refused to settle into anything coherent. You had no particular gifts, no training, no history that could explain any of this. You were simply someone who had picked up a pen and copied the first character your eyes could make out. Demons couldnβt replicate this text, but you could? You were sure he found it just as ridiculous as you did.Β
Where understanding should have been, you found blankness.
"That book," you said, your voice considerably smaller than you intended, "was in the bookshelf. Within reach."
"Yes," Diavolo said. "It was. I am the only demon permitted to keep such items, and hadnβt expected anyone to open them, let alone write the sigils found within. Let alone by my own pet."
You crossed your arms tightly over your body. "I-I didn't have any luck studying the book Barbatos had given me and I couldn't sleep and I-" You stopped. Breathed. You could feel the edge of panic begin to creep up as you processed his words. "It was one of the few symbols I could make out, so I translated the notation. I thought it referred to an actual word, not aβ¦" You gestured vaguely toward the space where the parchment had been. "Not that."
"The seal of shadows," he said, tipping your chin up to hold his gaze. "Is a fae sigil of oblivion. It does not make things invisible. It removes them from the awareness of the world entirely. Whatever has activated it, in any meaningful sense, has ceased to exist."
The fire crackled. You became aware that your hands were gripping your arms hard enough to ache and consciously loosened them.
"So I⦠disappeared?" you asked quietly.
"Incompletely, yes." He looked you up and down, as though taking inventory of something that belonged to him. "That particular sigil, if completely rendered by someone who understands what they are doing, is absolute. Nothing remains. Not sight, not sound, not scent." He paused, thumb brushing your jaw just once, almost idly. "You rendered it imperfectly. Enough to remove you from sight. But I could still smell you. I could still feel the shift of air when you breathed." His voice dropped. "Had you rendered it correctly, I would have walked into this room and found it empty."
The implication of that settled over you slowly, like cold water rising rather than falling.
Had you rendered it correctly.
You thought about what that would have meant. Arriving in a room that smelled of you, held the evidence of your presence, only to find nothing. His reaction to that. The conclusions he would have drawn. What he would have done next, and to whom?
The cuffs gave a sudden sharp pulse against your skin that made you flinch.
"It wouldn't have mattered," he said, voice dropping low. "Had you vanished entirely. Had you walked out of this room and out into the Devildom itself without a single soul perceiving you." He held your gaze without blinking. "The cuffs would have led me to you. They are bound to me. And what is bound to me does not disappear. Not by fae magic. Not by any other method you might consider in the dark hours when I am away."
Your heart was hammering, and you braced yourself without meaning to. You had learned what came after moments like these, whether your transgressions were accidental or intentional. The sharp, searing current through the cuffs. The way your own screams could empty you of everything else until nothing remained.
He reached out, and you went very still.
The golden bands at your wrists and throat pulsed once, anticipatory in a way that made your stomach drop. You were acutely aware of them at that moment. The weight of the metal, the warmth of it against your skin, the way they seemed to breathe in time with your own frantic heartbeat. They were never more present than in moments like these.
His fingers found the side of your face, and brushed the hair back from your cheek. His thumb traced the line of your cheekbone, almost absently, palm engulfing one side of your face.
The cuffs settled into a low, pleased hum against your skin.
You told yourself the rush of warmth that moved through your chest was relief. It had to be. You had been bracing for searing pain from wrist to throat. Instead he had touched your face gently, and your body was simply responding to the absence of pain. That was all. That was the only reasonable explanation for the way your pulse refused to slow, for the heat that crept up the back of your neck and into your cheeks with a thoroughness you could do nothing to stop.
You were not fooling either of you.
"You made me a vow," he said quietly. Not an accusation. Simply a fact. "The night before I left. You looked at me and you said you would stay." His eyes searched yours, golden and steady and far too perceptive. "I have not forgotten it. And neither, I think, have you."
Without any announcement of the intention, he took your right hand and lifted it, turning it palm upward. He examined it with a quiet, attentive care that confused you. His thumbs moved across the lines of your palm slowly.
You watched his face while he watched your hand. The tiredness you had noticed when he first walked in was still present, visible in the set of his brow. He had been awake all night on crown business only to find you invisible. Now he was standing here in the amber light of early morning, holding your hand as though checking it for damage.
You looked away before the thought could settle any further.
"Does it hurt?" he asked.
"A little," you admitted, your voice very small. "My hands. Since I finished the mark."
He said nothing. He continued his quiet examination of your palm for a moment longer, then released your hand and straightened.
"You will not touch that book again," he said. The gentleness of his tone did not soften the finality of the words. "What is in those pages is not yours to explore, Y/N. And if you find yourself restless in the dark again," he said, each word enunciated with intent, "you will wake me. If I am not present, you will call for Barbatos. You will not sit alone in the dark making decisions about what is and isn't worth attempting." His gaze held yours, steady and absolute. "Do you understand?"
The cuffs hummed their warm, approving pulse.
He held your gaze for one moment longer. Then he drew your hand upward and pressed his lips briefly to your knuckles, unhurried, as though the gesture were simply his due.
"Now that that's taken care ofβ¦ Shall we?"Β
He didn't specify what he meant. He didn't need to. His hand found the small of your back as he turned toward the bathing chamber. The warmth of his palm through the thin fabric of your nightgown was answer enough.Β
The bath was already drawn by the time he guided you into the adjoining room. You didn't know how. The copper tub steamed gently, surface scattered with those same dark petals. The scent was familiar by now.Β
Diavolo stopped at the edge of the tub and began to undress with the same unhurried ease that had always undone you. Shirt first. The fabric fell from his shoulders and he set it aside without looking at you. Next his pants.
You had seen him unclothed quite a few times by now, and the embarrassment had not diminished, but rather changed. Less terror. You kept your eyes fixed on the far wall, on a particular vein of gold running through the black marble, until you heard the soft displacement of water that meant he had stepped in.
The word was quiet, and held that particular register that your body had learned to respond to before your mind could catch up.
You reached for the hem of your nightgown and made yourself move.
Your hands had stopped shaking. You noticed it as you undressed. You stood in the light of the bath chamber, bare, felt your body flush, but your hands were still.
You stepped into the tub without being told twice.
The water was warm, heat moving up through your legs and into your chest as you sank down. Diavolo was already settled against the curved back of the tub, one arm draped along its rim. You sat across from him as you usually did, drew your knees up slightly, let the water and the scattered petals settle around you both.
You quickly looked up. His arm still rested along the rim, his posture still perfectly relaxed. But his eyes were on you, steady and unblinking, in a way that never left room for debate.
You moved through the water toward him slowly, petals parting around your arms. When you reached him he didn't wait for you to negotiate the distance. His hands found your waist beneath the surface and drew you the rest of the way, settling you back against his chest with an ease that still managed to unsettle you no matter how many times it happened. One arm stayed low across your stomach, fingers spread wide. The other returned to the rim of the tub as though nothing significant had happened.
Your back was warm against the hard planes of his chest and you could feel the rhythm of his heartbeat against your spine.
Neither of you spoke, but the silence was not uncomfortable.
You stayed quiet. You had volunteered enough already, stumbling through explanations that kept making things worse the longer you talked. You let the water hold you and gently swirled the petals with one finger.
One arm moved beneath the surface, and you felt his hand slowly begin to caress the flesh of your thighs.
You breathed carefully through your nose and kept your eyes on the water.
"Youβre quite troublesome, little one," he said finally. The word came out with a tone of reflection, almost fond. Almost. "In the time you have been here, you have wandered the castle without escort and drawn so much attention to yourself that I was forced to cast out a member of my own aristocracy." His thumb made slow circles across your warm skin. "You still have not learned your place. You hesitate when I give you the simplest instructions. You disobey and then look at me with those wide eyes as though you're surprised by the consequences." A brief pause. "And now I find you drawing sigils from restricted texts."Β
You pressed your lips together.
βThe humans I met last night," he continued, voice dropping lower, the smile audible beneath it even as his tone stayed even, "were so very well behaved. Quiet. Perfectly dressed. They sat exactly where they were placed and did not move unless spoken to. No wandering. No complaints. And they complied with every demand."
You felt your heart drop before you could stop it. You recognized the feeling half a second after it arrived, and the recognition was worse than the feeling itself. You were not jealous. You were not. The idea was absurd. You certainly did not feel any particular way about the thought of other humans sitting quietly at his feet, looking at him with contented eyes.
Your jaw tightened fractionally.
He didn't respond immediately. The hand beneath the water continued its slow, unhurried path along your thigh. Patient as everything he did.
"One of them," he said after a moment, "was particularly attentive. Lovely thing. Extraordinarily well trained. She seemed to understand every request before it was even made." He let those words settle enough for discomfort to rise. "I found it quite refreshing."
You drew your knees up slightly beneath the water, closing your posture without meaning to. A petal drifted across the surface and stuck to your forearm, and you peeled it away as though it required your full concentration.
Heat climbed up the back of your neck in a way that had nothing to do with the bath or your previous embarrassment.Β
"Not a single moment of resistance. Not one wandering glance, not one question she wasn't invited to ask. She simplyβ¦" The hand on your stomach spread wider, slow and warm. "β¦gave."
You said absolutely nothing.
Something in your chest began to pull tight. Not the tug. This was sharper and had nothing to do with the cuffs and everything to do with his voice when he said that word. Gave. The satisfaction.Β
You peeled another petal from the surface of the water and released it. Watched it drift.
You could feel the tension in your jaw traveling up to your temples with a low, grinding ache that you were almost grateful for. Physical discomfort you understood. It was tidier than what was happening in your mind.
She gave? You had given him things too. Things you had not chosen to give and had not gotten back, and he had the audacity to sit here in the warm water with his arm across your stomach describing some other human's obedience with that tone. Of quiet, satisfied appreciation. As though he were recounting a pleasant meal. As though you were supposed to hear it and feel nothing.
The cuffs pulsed again. Warmer this time, and you recognized the meaning. It was warning you. Warning you to control the anger it could feel rising to the surface.
"Did you," you began, and stopped.
The words had arrived before the decision to speak did, and you caught them just in time. You pressed your lips together very hard and returned your attention to the petals with intentional focus.
"Did I?" he prompted, the words perfectly pleasant and coaxing.
You said nothing. You were not going to finish that sentence. You were not going to give him the satisfaction of hearing the question out loud, of watching his expression when he had gotten exactly what he wanted. Your jaw stayed locked. Your eyes stayed on the water.
You turned your focus to the petals on the surface and began counting them, which was difficult because they kept drifting in the current your breath made against the water, and also because the anger had made your vision slightly unsteady.
The chest behind you began to shake.
Gently at first. A faint, barely perceptible tremor that moved through his ribs and into your back. Then less gently. Then not gentle at all. The laugh that came out of him was warm and unguarded, rolling through the steam of the bathing chamber.
"My darling," he said, and his voice was still threaded with it, laughter catching on the edges of every syllable. "My poor, furious little pet."
"I'm not furious," you said flatly.
"No." His arms tightened around you, drawing you further back against his chest. His chin came to rest on the top of your head, and you could feel him still smiling. "You are absolutely livid and doing a remarkable impression of someone who is not."
"Adorable," he murmured, lips pressing to your hair once, then again. The word didnβt seem to carry condescension. "The way your shoulders went up. The way you found suddenly very important business with the petals. The question you refused to finish." He exhaled, slow and fond. "You are jealous, little one."
"I," you said, with as much precision as you could manage, "am not jealous."
"Of course not. Nothing of the sort."
His lips found the shell of your ear, and his warm breath caused shivers to run down your spine, betraying you. "Nothing happened," he said quietly. The amusement had softened, but not disappeared. "Not in the way you are imagining. Not in any way that would interest those particular thoughts you are refusing to acknowledge."
"The humans I was with last night were not there for my entertainment." His voice had shifted again. The lightness remained, but something more professional had come into it. "They belonged to Astaroth."
You were not relieved. You had no reason to be relieved. You had no claim over him, had never wanted one, and had spent the better part of your time in this castle actively resenting his claim over you. The idea that you might feel anything resembling relief at being told nothing had happened was not something you were prepared to examine.
"He fled," Diavolo continued. "And whatever network of contacts, properties, and assets he maintained in this realm have been dissolving in his absence, piece by piece. His estates. His titles. His debts." A pause. "His humans."
You shifted slightly against him and he let you turn enough to see the edge of his jaw without breaking the loose hold of his arms.
"He curated quite the collection," he said. "Although he was known to buy a wild human from time to time, such as yourself, most of his were born there, raised fully in captivity."
The phrase landed somewhere in your stomach and stayed there.
Wild human. You had been called many things since you arrived in this place. Pet. Little one. His. But wild human carried a different weight. You were a category. You, with your fear and your resistance and your pathetic, stubborn attempts to remain yourself, were simply the undomesticated version of something that could also come domesticated.
"Generations of humans were raised inside his estate walls," Diavolo continued, his voice unhurried, "bred as pets for demons who do not want the trouble of breaking one in." He said it the way he might describe a livestock practice. Efficient. Practical. A reasonable solution to a logistical problem. "They don't know the Devildom the way someone taken from the surface might. They have no knowledge of the human world, no knowledge that freedom is a concept that could ever be used to describe themselves."
You refused to imagine what it meant to have no frame of reference. To have been born inside those walls, raised within them. To have never had a self that existed prior to the cuffs or the conditioning. You thought about the blonde man in the salon, his dreamy eyes and his easy laugh, the way he spoke about his demon with reverence that made your skin crawl. You had assumed it was the cuffs. Weeks of syrupy pleasure and searing correction reshaping a person from the outside in.
But what if it hadn't required reshaping at all? What if some of them had simply never been anything else?
The nausea moved up from your stomach and settled at the base of your throat. You swallowed against it carefully. Everything felt suddenly distant, as though you were perceiving it from outside yourself.
"When his estate was seized," Diavolo said, "his humans had no master. No one to continue their care. As such, they have begun to starve."
The steam moved around you both. You kept very still against his chest and let the information settle.
"What will happen to them?" you asked.
"That is currently being decided." His thumb resumed its slow arc across your thigh. "The practical options are limited. Some of the houses have expressed interest in taking on the more attractive ones as pets. There would still be the matter of the remainder."
You felt the shift in his tone before the words arrived.Β
"It would be simpler to hand them over to the lower houses. Let them be useful one final time."
The word useful arrived in your chest like a blade.
You knew what it meant. You had learned it when Barbatos had told you, in that emotionless way of his, about the ones with black cuffs and what became of them.Β
Your hands moved before anything else did. They came up from the water and gripped the arm across your stomach, fingers closing around it tightly. The motion was involuntary and you did not try to stop it.
"Don't." The word left you without hesitation, cracking at the edges and far louder than anything you had said in the past several minutes. "They deserve to live. To have at least a fighting chance. Don't let them be eaten. Please." Your voice had gone rough, catching on the last word in a way that humiliated you even as it happened.Β
You stopped as he just stared at you.Β
He didnβt reply right away. Instead he held your gaze and his eyes warned you that youβd almost gone too far. You drew in a shaky breath, nerves fried from the emotional rollercoaster this morning had put you through. Slowly, you released his arm and turned away, obeying his silent command.
His hand came to your hair.
He pressed his palm flat against the crown of your head. Slowly, he combed through the damp strands in long, even passes that started at your temple and moved back.
"For the time being," he said, "they will be brought here. To the castle."
You lifted your head slightly from his chest. He allowed it, watching you from above with that steady, unreadable gaze.
"Here?" you asked carefully.
"It is the simplest solution while more permanent arrangements are being made. Here they will be housed, fed, and protected," he said, with the precision of someone who understood exactly what he was and was not promising.
"You explained this all to me from the beginning," you said. Very carefully. "Instead of⦠the other thing."
"I could have," he agreed, and the smile was back in his voice. "But then I would have missed out on the pleasure of feeling your envy and anger."
You exhaled through your nose and looked back at the petals.
His lips found your temple gently. Then your cheek. Then the corner of your jaw, each kiss placed with quiet intention. His arms wrapped firmly around you and he drew you back against him fully.Β
"You're mine," he murmured against your hair. Said simply as a fact that he seemed to find comforting. βAnd there is nothing that could take you from me, or me from you.βΒ
You kept your mind on Astarothβs humans. You knew the castle was not salvation. But they were not going to the lower houses tonight.
They would be taken care of tonight.
βΊΛβ’Μ©Μ©Νβ©β’Μ©Μ©ΝΛβΊβ§ΝβΊΛβ’Μ©Μ©Νβ©β’Μ©Μ©ΝΛβΊβ§ΝβΊΛβ’Μ©Μ©Νβ©β’Μ©Μ©ΝΛβΊβ§ΝβΊΛβ’Μ©Μ©Νβ©β’Μ©Μ©ΝΛβΊβ§ΝβΊΛβ’Μ©Μ©Νβ©β’Μ©Μ©ΝΛβΊβ§ΝβΊΛβ’Μ©Μ©Νβ©β’Μ©Μ©Ν
I apologize for the wait. It is, yet again, finals week.
dailybridgerton
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