Chapter 226: His own Personal Hell - 4

"No one has called me that," he said, "in a very long time."

They sat in silence for a moment. Both of them were dry. Not a drop of water on their skin or their clothes, despite the ocean they had travelled through to reach this place.

"Am I a sinner?"

The question caught Cassian off guard. He turned his head and looked at her, and then he chuckled at her strange question. It was a short, genuine sound that echoed off the sparkling walls and bounced back to them.

"What do you mean?"

Cixi did not look at him. She looked at her feet, her toes pressed against the cool stone floor. "I mean, you are a Demon. So am I a sinner in the eyes of God to choose you?"

Cassian laughed out loud this time. A full, open laugh, and yet somehow it was gentle to hear.

Cixi glanced at him sideways, confused...

How could this be a demon? How could the thing sitting next to her, laughing with that sound, looking at her with those eyes, be a creature the Bible warned the faithful to flee from? This was cheating. She screamed in her head.

Making demons beautiful like angels. Giving them faces that belonged on magazine covers and voices that settled into a person’s chest like warm smoke. Who would look at these men and think demon? Who would see Cassian Crown walk into a room in a tailored suit with that jaw and those hands and that quiet, devastating confidence and think, ’That is a creature I should fear?’

No one.

This was unacceptable!

"You said you loved me," Cassian voice held softness. He was looking at her side profile now, his yellow slit eyes tracing the soft line of her jaw, the curve of her cheek, the way her lashes cast faint shadows against her skin. No matter what day or time it was, Cixi always looked like a fresh breath of air. A small, soft pull tugged at the corner of his lips. "My question would be, could love be called a sin?"

Cixi’s eyes dropped even lower.

It had been a lie when she told Cassian that she was in love. Back then, to get rid of her curse, she had said it. She had not meant them that time. Not fully. Not in how the word deserved to be meant.

But now she knew she had fallen for him anyway.

Somewhere between the lie and this cave, the pretence had become real. She had fallen for him while he had told her explicitly not to. He had warned her. He had drawn lines. And she had crossed every single one without even noticing she was doing it.

"Does this mark represent that you love me?" Cixi dared to ask.

She knew the risks. Cassian could shut down. He could remind her of the contract, the arrangement, the terms that did not include the word love anywhere in their structure. He could break whatever this was between them with a single sentence, and she would have no ground to stand on because he had told her from the beginning not to fall.

But he had never given a mark to anyone before.

She was certain of this. If he had, the woman would not have hidden it. No woman who received a mark from Cassian Crown would keep it quiet. It would be on social media within the hour. Someone who wanted the world to know she belonged to him would photograph it, display it, and flaunt it like a trophy.

No one had ever worn his mark. Until Cixi.

"What does this mark mean?" she pressed on the question.

She turned her head to look at him. To search his face. To see if the word love existed somewhere behind those inhuman eyes, buried under the pride and the power and the ancient, impenetrable certainty with which he moved through the world.

But was she ready to hear it?

She was still processing what he was. Everything had happened too fast. From death to curse to contract to love to a mark burned into her skin. Each step had arrived before she finished absorbing the one before it, and now she sat in a sparkling cave at the bottom of the ocean beside a seven-foot demon and asked him if he loved her while her mind was still catching up with the fact that demons were real.

Was she ready to accept any of it?

She was confused. Being with Cassian felt right. It felt like the most natural thing she had ever done, as effortless as breathing, as instinctive as reaching for warmth in the cold. But he was a demon. And she did not know what that made her. A fool? A sinner? A woman so desperate for love that she would take it from the one source every scripture in the world told her to refuse?

She was not sure anymore.

"What does it mean," she asked quietly, "to get a mark from a demon?"

Cassian’s long fingers reached toward her. They found the mark on the side of her neck, the warm, raised shape she had touched a hundred times in the dark when she thought no one was watching. They settled over it, gentle and precise, and entirely covered the mark as though his hand had been built to fit that exact shape.

His skin was warm against hers. The mark pulsed faintly beneath his touch, responding to the contact the way a flame responds to oxygen, brightening, steadying, burning a fraction hotter than it had a moment before.

He did not pull his hand away. He held it there, his fingers resting against her neck, his yellow eyes looking into her grey ones, and the cave sparkled around them in patient, silent witness.

"The mark represents that you are mine. Officially!"

"So you do not love me... But you claimed me..... like a trophy?" Cixi questioned Cassian. A pang of pain pressed in her heart, which she tried to mask.

"The mark represents that you are mine," Cassian said. His thumb traced the raised edge of it slowly. "Officially."

Not ’I love you.’ Not ’it means I chose you.’ Not any of the words she had been reaching for in the dark behind his eyes.

’You are mine. Officially.’

A pang of pain pressed into Cixi’s chest. Sharp and sudden, like a needle driven between her ribs. She felt it spread outward through her body, hot and cold at the same time, and she tried to mask it. She tightened her jaw. She steadied her breathing. She kept her grey eyes fixed on his yellow ones and did not blink.

But the pain was there. Sitting behind her face like a bruise she could not hide, no matter how still she held.

"So you do not love me," she said.

It was not a question. It was a statement. Flat and quiet and delivered with the careful composure of a woman who had expected to be hurt and was hurt anyway.

"You claimed me. Like a trophy."

Cassian’s fingers stilled on her neck.

Cixi pulled back from his touch. She shifted her body sideways, creating an inch of distance between her shoulder and his arm. A small gap. But it was the first time she had moved away from him since she sat down beside him in this cave, and the absence of contact said more than any word could.

"You slept with me," she continued, and her voice cracked on a fault line she had not known was there. "Why? Were you pitying me because I love you?" Her grey eyes searched his face. The inhuman face with its horns and veins and slit pupils. The face she had touched minutes ago without flinching. "Or did you take advantage of my emotions?"

The question hung between them.

"What is it, Cassian?" She used his human name deliberately. Not Asthor. Not the name she had whispered minutes ago with tenderness. Cassian. The name that belonged to the man who made contracts and set terms and told her not to fall in love.

"Which one is it?"

"You are twisting my words, Cig."

Cixi rose to her feet. She walked away from him, putting distance between them, her bare feet pressing against the cool stone with each step. She stopped with her back to him and folded her arms across her chest.

"Do not call me Cig." Her voice was firm. The softness from minutes ago had been packed away and replaced with something harder. "I have more questions. Answer them."

She stood facing the sparkling wall, her shoulders tense, her spine straight. She did not turn around.

"So when I looked like I was six months pregnant this morning, that was your magic?"

Behind her, Cassian rose to his full height. Seven feet of bare torso, black veins, and curved horns straightening against the glittering cave wall. He stayed where he was. He did not follow her. He did not close the gap.

"Yes," he replied. "It was magic."

Cixi absorbed the confirmation without flinching. She moved to the next question.

"Is this why you survived the accident on the bridge? And the terrace?"

Cassian’s eyes narrowed.

The shift was subtle but immediate. The yellow slit pupils contracted by a fraction, sharpening, and the unhurried patience that had carried his voice for the last hour thinned into something alert.

"Yes," he answered. "I cannot be killed easily. And on the terrace," he asked slowly, "how did you know I was attacked on the terrace a second time?"