The house in Verweald's Evergreen Acres was the same as I'd left it: disorderly, but clean. Filled with my misery and my loneliness, her memories and her scent. Only days ago I'd cursed this house—had cursed this entire city—and yet so soon it felt like home, like the place where I belonged. It was where I decided to take her. 

Appearing in the living room, I tossed the black mage toward the armchair and lowered Sara to the couch. I tipped her chin to the side and felt her pulse again, then measured the steadiness of her breath against my palm. I needn't have worried, as she was still resting, lost to those unknowable dreams that lurked in the depths of her slumber. 

She was home. Safe. 

The street beyond the front window was drenched in the rich colors of the late afternoon and it was warmer here, the clutches of winter long since vanquished in these western climes. The dry heat in the air was reminiscent of the summer, when I'd first met Sara Gaspard, and when I'd laid her on this sofa for the first time.

I'd been a recalcitrant creature then. I liked to think I was different now, that I'd grown in some manner, but I knew I was the same Sin I'd always been.

As Cage groaned and situated himself in the armchair, I sat on the coffee table's edge and stared toward the window, hands clasped before myself.

"How long have you been in the Baal's service? How did your association come into being?" I asked, the demand implicit in my uttered words. "Did he send you to spy on me? To report to him?"

"Not exactly." He sunk into the cushions, legs sprawled before himself, and exhaled. He did so with the mien of a man releasing a crippling burden. "He encourages me to chase information, to follow whatever attracts my interest. His instructions are rarely explicit, but every so often events occur that he feels require monitoring, and I am bid to entrench myself in the issue, feeding him information."

"You didn't answer me." I steepled my fingers as I lifted my feet to crouch at the table's lip—like a gargoyle, Sara had once said. "How long have you been reporting to him? How are you associated?"

"It's not obvious?" He fanned a hand across his face as the sun glowed on his simpering smile. "I'm the latest in a long line of shadeborns created by the King Below. We are somewhat like a true King's familiars, though it is not quite the same. We are...imperfect. I am not immortal. I am not omnipotent. He can channel his awareness through me when he so chooses, though I've since learned to...suppress this awareness. I do not enjoy possession nor being a victim to his fitful rage—though that's a story for another time, I'd wager."

The Baal's shadeborn? I knew Kings created familiars but hadn't considered that the King Below would attempt to create something similar. I wondered if there were more men or women like Cage out in the world, acting as the Baal's unseen spies, relaying information about this realm to his pointed ears. The King was not as ambivalent as he pretended.

"Well." Cage got to his feet and grumbled about his sore back as he came to the couch. One of his hands was broken, finger swollen to twice the proper size, but the mage was unconcerned with it for the moment. He propped a hip against the couch's side and crossed his arms, looking down at Sara. "What will you do now?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean exactly what I said: what will you do now? Are you going to insinuate yourself into her life? Be her partner? Her demon? Though your soul has been healed, you still require a host, do you not?"

I blinked, lowering my gaze toward the dusty floor. 

"You're not answering me, Pride."

"Do not presume answers from me, mage. I owe you nothing." 

"You owe me much, but I digress." Cage uncrossed his arms and used his good hand to pull the red quilt off the couch's back. He tossed it over Sara, arranging the end so it covered her dirty shoes, and spoke in a lowered voice. "You know you cannot stay." 

I snarled and the early spring warmth morphed into a freezing, arctic wind. Darkness slipped over the horizon and clad Evergreen Acres in its inky folds. It was still light in Verweald, but night came early to this dreary little suburb as I glowered at the black mage and dared him to tell me what to do again. 

Cage spoke with great care, not quite meeting my glare. "This has already occurred to you, Darius. You want to be angry with me, you want to blame your frustrations on the black mage, but if this hadn't occurred to you before, why bring me along? You knew. You knew you cannot stay, because it would not be fair to her. You brought me to ensure I would force you to leave."

The sound of my teeth coming together was audible in the stillness I'd wrought inside the house. My white-knuckled fists shook with the need to strike Cage, but with great reluctance I stood, and released my fury. Sunlight slowly returned to the quiet street, and went to the window. I couldn't stand to look at him.

I wished to deny Cage, to be selfish and arrogant, to demand my right to stay at Sara's side...but I could not. I was a Sin. I was not a mortal man, not any longer, and I did not have a simple, quiet life ahead of me. There would be death. There would be danger, and I'd fought until my last breath to save Sara from that particular variation of life. My pride insisted I could keep the unsavory aspects of my existence from her, but I...couldn't.

"There's beauty in love," the man intoned from behind me. "And there's redemption in knowing when you must let it go."

I was a Sin. That was a fact I could no more ignore than I could ignore her mortality, and I refused to be responsible for her second death. I didn't know if I'd survive it.

"Leave the room," I whispered, caging my breath in my aching ribs.

"What?"

"Leave the room!"

Cage raised his hands in surrender and strode into the hall. He shut himself in the bathroom, and after a brief pause, I heard the pipes groan as the shower was engaged.

I glared at the shut door for a long while before coming to stand at the couch's side again. As the mage had so impertinently pointed out, I had no reason to linger. I had assured my shadeborn's safety and her wellbeing, and though I longed to wait until she woke, just to hear her speak one more time, doing so would bring unnecessary hardship onto myself, and onto her. 

She was home. She was safe. I was not required. 

I would not remain—and yet I stayed, motionless, staring at the girl and wondering why I hadn't yet disappeared. 

A touch, a single touch. I could allow myself that much. It was all I wanted, all I needed.

I trailed a finger across her cheek, feeling the whispering pulse beneath her delicate flesh, and followed the line of her jaw upward until the black lashes folded beneath my fingertip. Inhaling, I imbibed the scent of orchids and copper—because blood yet lingered on our clothes and skin, painting our bodies in primal patterns of war.

In the stony silence of the cells in the temple below Netherina's palace, I'd toiled in anguish for decades, swallowing the fire of the Pit, tolerating the slow drag of the Baal's blade across my skin. All the while, in the most esoteric parts of my mind, I'd pleaded with fate to bring someone for me—anyone. I'd waited, and waited, and waited. I'd thought Cuxiel would try, but he hadn't. No one tried to save me or stand up for me. The years dwindled, and I came to think there was no one in all the wretched universe who would ever defend the Sin of Pride.

I was wrong, and happy to be so. She would defend me, stand up for me. If there was one final kindness I could give to her, it was this. I would spare Sara Gaspard my company. Misery was my shadow, and it would not envelope her.

"Live well, you impossible woman," I murmured. She stirred, and I removed my touch, stepping back. "Goodbye." 

The shadows greeted me like compatriots after a bloody war. Though heat spilled forth in the black flames released by the tear I opened through the void into the Realm, I felt no warmth. I felt only a grim, bitter contentedness, because for once I had done the right thing—and I hated myself for it.

I vanished from her house, her world, and with arduous resignation, I returned to my own.