Page 76 of Smoke, Mirrors, & Misdemeanours

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.