I sat across the flimsy, slightly sticky table from the black mage and watched as the elderly waitress set down plate after plate from her overburdened tray. Cage smiled at her and chatted with an affable mien while his fingers once more toyed at the ribbon tied about his throat.

I said nothing as I stared at the single plate she had slid before me. 

We sat at a booth in a dingy twenty-four hour diner on the outskirts of the city, not far from the on-ramp to the highway that carved its way into the high desert. I'd been here once before, months ago with Sara, after the bomb on Mitch's yacht had exploded. It was impossible for Cage to know about that incident—and yet, I couldn't figure out why he'd chosen this place out of all the places in Verweald.

The window at my side was scratched and mutilated by lines of crayon wax, obviously the handiwork of an unattended toddler scribbling mercilessly upon it. Despite the damage, the window still offered a partial view of the city, the parking lot, and the crowded on-ramp. Verweald glittered in the distance, where its lights burned in the blackness of night like torches of an approaching horde. The parking lot was nearly filled to capacity, though I was unable to comprehend why. The diner sat alone on its weedy lot and didn't seem to me a popular destination for the humans.

"What's wrong now, boy?" Cage asked as the waitress departed. He'd ordered several entrees, and he began to eat with gusto. "You've got that ugly broody face on again."

I scoffed and glared at the mage as he stuffed a forkful of country fried steak into his mouth and a dollop of gravy dripped onto his scruffy chin. "I've never known a mage to be so juvenile," I said as I reached for my plastic cup of water. The cup didn't appear fully clean but I drank from it regardless. "Let alone a fugitive mage on the run from the Blue-Iron wardens."

He chuckled and dumped four whole sugar packets into his black coffee. "Technically I'm a fugitive black mage on the run from the Blue Fire Syndicate. Blue-Iron wardens are just the poor sobs those crotchety old bastards send after me." He drank the coffee in one go, tipping his head and the cup back until he smacked his lips and set the cup at the table's edge to catch the waitress's attention. "Not that you'd know anything about that or even understand the difference."

I sipped my water and shifted my attention from the mage before my irritation got the better of me. He was being intentionally aggravating, though I didn't see the benefit of his behavior. What did the mage stand to gain by pissing me off in a public place? Not that I could do much else besides yell and shout now. Balthazar had once said humans were needlessly noisy creatures, screaming without benefit.

My eyes narrowed at the thought of the dead Sin of Envy and my grip on the plastic cup tightened until my knuckles shown white through the skin. He hadn't suffered enough in his end, because there was no existing torment that would've sufficiently impressed my rage upon Balthazar.

I hadn't been able to kill him, though. I hadn't even survived him.

Sara killed him, Amoroth had told me. She killed him when he let his guard down. Shoved her hand right through his heart.

The frustrating mortal had once stated she'd kill Balthazar if I was unwilling to do so. I found it ironic that she was the Sin's end when I'd laughed at the absurdity of her statement.

I concentrated on the layout of the diner and the mixture of patrons savoring their dinners. Behind Cage was a table full of loud teenagers who'd most likely come from the bowling alley on the other side of the highway. One of their number, a young boy with thin arms and uncut hair had grabbed a chair to sit at the end of the booth, crowding the aisle. He kept shooting jealous glances at the oldest boy of the group who had his arm around a young, giggling girl wearing cosmetic glitter on her lips and down the line of her throat.

Behind me I knew an elderly couple sat enjoying a quiet evening together. They were still waiting for their meal, undoubtedly because Cage's massive order had delayed the kitchen. They didn't seem to mind, as they each had an arm extended over the tabletop with their hands pressed together, fingers entwined.

Cage followed my gaze. "You can have that now," he said as his assault on the country fried steak slowed so he could bite into his order of teriyaki chicken. All the food looked repulsive to me.

I straightened myself in the booth, unsure of when I'd twisted around to blatantly stare at the elderly couple. "Have what?"

"That." He jabbed a fork in my general direction, indicating the table behind me. "You can meet a girl, have two point five kids, buy a minivan, and grow old together. You can have that whole blissful human scenario now. As a human, it's well within your rights."

I didn't deem his words worthy of a response, as it was one thing for the mage to be snide, but I couldn't stand the current note of sincerity in his voice, as if he actually believed that I desired such a prosaic future. I wanted to reach across the flimsy table and strangle him with that ribbon already tied around his throat.

"No? Is that not what you want?"

I used one finger to twist my plate and spin my meal. I'd never eaten a hamburger before. It seemed a simple enough combination, but I was still wary of it. I couldn't breathe in and simply taste everything within the meal before physically bringing the hamburger to my mouth as I'd once be able to do. "No, I do not want that."

An image suddenly superimposed itself over my vision. Cage disappeared and was replaced by my memory of Sara sitting across from me in this very diner. She was half-drowned and encrusted in brine from the harbor, the whites of her eyes red and irritated from the grime. I'd ordered all the greasy food I could possibly stomach just to replenish my strength and she'd had a beer as she stared out the window.

At that moment, witnessing the toll our nascent quest had already reaped from her, I'd thought her a very peculiar creature. I'd witnessed many calamities in my life, and had known humans to react more hysterically to near-death experiences. Sara had simply drunk from that amber bottle in her hand and had stared at the parking lot.

Cage considered me as the waitress returned and refilled his cup. She was nearly knocked down when the small teenager at the table behind the mage jumped to his feet and threw his chair back without regard as he stormed out of the diner. Cage spun his fork between his fingers, the metal clicking against the large ring encircling his middle finger.

"I guess not," he muttered. "Not now, anyway. You wanted her, am I right? Wanted a life with Sara?"

I stopped rotating my plate. The motion was so sudden the seeded bun slid off the lettuce.

"Were you in love with her?"

"You're ridiculous," I snapped, my fury constricting the volume of my voice. "Why are mortals so obsessed with love? It's not the pinnacle of actualization. It's not the sum of life's equation, nor is it eternal. Love is fleeting, ephemeral, and something shared between hormonal fools." I jerked my head toward the table behind him. "It's utterly stupid to ask if I loved Sara or not."

Cage waved a hand. "What of those behind you? Isn't that love?"

"That—." I tipped back and didn't look at the elderly couple. "—is devotion. Loyalty. Not love."

"Are they not the same thing?" Cage stuck a few french-fries into his mouth, smirking. "Aren't they all just threads of the same tapestry woven together? As a mortal, can't you freely admit you were in love with Sara Gaspard without infringing on any of your wild conjectures of Sin morality, or are you a completely different creature now? Aren't you the same, Darius? Aren't you the same man you once were?"

Aggravating cretin. Uncertain of what to say, I lifted my water glass to my lips and drank. I wasn't often so uncertain—but in the past six months I'd had my fill of indecision. Again and again I had vacillated between two desires: the need to live, and the need to survive, and though some would mistake those desires for a mutually exclusive end—they were not. A cornered soldier can forsake his entire troop to the enemy and survive for years in exile, or that soldier could live but for few hours alongside his allies. He could be the traitor. Or the martyr.

While Sara was alive, indecision had me wanting to be the traitor and the martyr. Had I killed her, I would have survived longer as a Sin. But I didn't. I hadn't been able to.

Still, I didn't believe what Cage said was true. I'd walked this world for millennia, had met and killed and saved countless human beings, had watched them destroy each other and their civilizations, had stood upon the crags above raging wars and had placed bets on the outcome with the other immortal creatures. I'd been a god worshiped in golden halls by the men and women who'd crawled at my feet and had begged for my divine attention with their hands trembling to simply brush the hem of my robes.

I'd been a demon chased by priests and dogs and horses, living breath by breath, racing through forests and mountaintops and cracked deserts.

I'd been an Absolian, a familiar of the High King, who'd fallen from favor and from that lofty realm to the darkness below, where I'd broken into pieces and had lost all memory of self-worth and recognition.

I'd been—and still was—a monster. A monster loves no one but himself.

I opened my hands to observe the streaks on condensation left on my palms.

The creature who'd given in to the siren call of madness under the ministrations of the Baal didn't concern himself with love, and despite otherwise appearances, I was still that creature.

Cage was oblivious to my inner turmoil as he forged onward with the conversation, munching on buttered toast. "I know a fair amount about Sara, though we never had much time to converse freely whenever we met. I surmised she was an intelligent, curious—perhaps a touch naïve—woman. Would you agree?"

I shrugged as I rubbed the condensation between my fingertips. "She was an idiot."

The mage chuckled as he drank more coffee. Half of his dishes had been decimated while my hamburger was growing colder.

"She was quite striking that evening."

"What evening?" I wished he would talk about something else. I didn't want to discuss Sara anymore. Perhaps never again.

"You know which evening I mean. The solstice." A half-smile tipped the corners of the mage's mouth as the dim lighting played across his face. "She fit in well with all those svelte, otherworldly beings. She wasn't entirely of this place, was she? I even saw her dance with the Vytian princeling. Both were dark-haired, light-eyed beauties that night." His eyes slid to mine, tone dipping into that snide lilt of his, lips drawn back far enough to reveal crooked teeth. "At least he seemed to enjoy her company."

He was trying to goad me. I didn't let the rage boiling in my gut manifest, but it was difficult, and I had to press my palms against the table lest I lunge across it to break Cage's face. I didn't like thinking of Sara in the Vytian's arms, though I didn't know why the idea seemed to fester so. I knew the Vytian had fancied Sara, and I knew she had been largely indifferent to his advances. I wouldn't have left her alone at Crow's End if I'd thought she'd fall prey to Anzel Vyus's entanglement.

I pursed my lips as my impassive gaze listed to the window where fresh rain speckled the glass and blurred the glare of distant taillights on the highway.

Why did that bother me so much? I demanded of myself, fingers curling in on my palms to form fists. Why should I give a fuck what some human girl did or even who she did? It was an old question, one I had asked myself almost every day I'd spent at Crow's End and—later—in the northern territories of Scandinavia searching for the Baal's fallen weapon.

I still didn't have an answer to that question, but the mere concept of Sara and the Vytian together still made me seethe with blood-curdling ire when I should've been above such petty anger. Cuxiel had called the emotion jealousy, but what did he know? The fool had let his love for Kyra twist his mind and break his sanity long before Balthazar ever ripped out his throat.

I was not Cuxiel.

"Why are you asking about her?" I finally inquired from the mage once my temper cooled. I knew that irritating smirk remained on his face so I refused to turn my gaze to his—but with my emotions under better control, my suspicions were beginning to rise. "You didn't know Sara. Not as I knew her. Why do you keep asking about her? Why do you keep bringing her up?"

Again, he waved his hand as if to disperse the issue into the air and that disfiguring brand caught my eye. "I am simply curious about the woman the mighty Sin of Pride decided was worthy enough to become his shadeborn."

"It was out of necessity. It saved her life."

"But it also saved yours." He was on his last dish, and the other plates were stacked around him, all but licked clean. "You know, I've studied the Sins for decades. Had some of, ah, the best sources to lecture and tutor me. I understand that making a shadeborn is a dangerous endeavor for a Sin, as it means chipping off a piece—however small and insignificant—from his already twisted and broken soul. Doing so risks complete degradation of the soul's integrity and the possibility of either losing his mind or becoming a fractus, a lesser demon. It's happened to a few of your brethren in the past, hasn't? That's why it's not a popular practice."

What he was saying was true. We—the Sins—all knew how to make a shadeborn. It was an innate knowledge, something the Originals never even had to teach the second-borns. As a demon, all I had to do was summon my power, summon it from my Seat in the Realm, and let it bathe that cold stillness inside of me that had been my soul, a spikey, malformed shape of brittle, frozen essence. Once sufficiently bathed in my stolen power, all I had to do was break a bit of that cold glass shape off from the rest and press it into a warm-blooded creature.

I sighed. "Your point?" I finally picked up my fork and prodded the hamburger, shedding the lettuce from the meat patty.

"I thought my point was obvious. Let me reiterate; you're a selfish dunce and she was a mortal so far beneath your consideration it's surprising you even stopped to step over her let alone save her. Why did you take that extra step? Why make her shadeborn?"

"Let me reiterate; it was to save her life."

"But what else, Darius? Why did you choose to save Sara?"

The waitress stopped at our booth again to remove Cage's empty plates and leave the check. I took it without a word, as I was certain the vagabond across from me didn't have a dime to his worthless name. I slid my wallet out of the back pocket of my jeans and sorted out the necessary bills Amoroth had given me to pay our tab.

The mage was already up and strolling, straightening the collar of his duffle coat as he eyed the rain through the windows he passed. I left the money neatly folded in the black tray and stood to follow Cage, shoving my hands into my pockets as I went.

Why did you choose to save Sara?

I lingered, once more seeing the dead woman sitting at the booth with her chin cupped by her hand and her elbow on the table's edge as she looked out over the parking lot. There was blood on her shirt and her fingers were red from the chill. Her hair was a wet, disordered mess and I wanted to reach out and tuck the stray strands crossing her face behind her ear.

I kept my hands at my side, knowing it would do no good. Sara was dead.

Why did you choose to save Sara? Selfish monster. Beast of the Pit. Arrogance. Pride. Why did you think your choice would even matter?

The woman turned then, her intangible eyes rising to mine as if she could see me—but she couldn't. She was a figment of my imagination.

She smirked. Because it's our decisions that define us.