Corvian, 3180
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The Morrison slept in pieces. Lobbies went quiet first, then corridors, then the terraces where the last glass was tipped and forgotten. The pool lingered awake longer than it should have. Water did not know how to rest.
I sat at the edge and let my ankles slip into the blue. The tile still remembered the day's warmth, but the water refused it; it closed around my skin and took heat like a tax. Chlorine rode the air with a clean bite. When I drew breath, I tasted it at the back of my tongue—a sterile tang that erased whatever the night had held before: cologne, charred lemon, the sweet trace of champagne someone spilled and didn't confess. Above, the sky stretched like a dark plate studded with city light instead of stars. Ebonreach exhaled. The ocean beyond the hotel gave a slow percussion that never learned a melody.
This had been expected. Akin, our archivist, said so, without ceremony. If the boy chose a stage, he would step into a congregation. That was the arithmetic of calling. Put one marked creature beneath enough chandeliers, and the others would come like moths who knew the flame could be taught to behave.
Hugo's bargain told me the rest. He had not summoned me for solitude. The ambition that bought me a room in his life bought me a seat at the tables where other companions sat in borrowed bodies and thin patience. We watched the same circles turn. We crossed by the coatrooms and kitchens and doors marked private, leaving no footprints, leaving everyone convinced they'd seen only handsome strangers with good posture.
I stirred the water with my toes. The ripples slipped outward, touched the opposite ledge, and returned to my skin with their small apology. Stone sweated lightly here at night; moisture gathered in the grout and cooled faster than the tile it divided. Far below, a taxi coughed, a woman laughed, then muffled it with her palm. Somewhere near the pool bar, A citrus peel dried itself into a twist and released one last bright sigh.
Kent, then.
He had worn innocence to the meeting like a jewel, careless and perfectly placed. Pale curls imperfect on purpose, eyes that threatened to sleep through whatever they did not want to name. The jester trappings were indulgence. The truth was in the way the room bent a little when he smiled. It was a ruinous kind of grace when a suit fit that easily.
He was a peculiar case. Rare, Akin called it. Not rare in the way mortals hoped for when they said rare, as if rarity conferred safety. Rare like a fault line, where the earth practiced its breaking and decided it liked the trick.
Most vessels were houses we entered after the tenant had been invited out. That was the work of marks—stroking a sigil into the soft of a wrist, the hollow beneath the shoulder blade, the back of the neck where habit hid. We did not create flesh. We accepted it. We inherited a readable architecture and taught it our movements. If done properly, the human soul was lifted from the frame and set aside, and what remained was space—a kind of vacancy that still smelled of living.
Kent was not that. He had been taken as he offered himself, and he offered poorly, which was to say bravely. The man made the mark for me without middlemen. He gave not just his body, but the deed to the whole house, and did it while still sitting in the foyer. There was no usher with patient hands. No washing of walls. He opened the door and stood in the way.
The result never pleased the theoreticians. When one of them gave himself, ninety parts in a hundred could be claimed. The rest refused to leave. A husk was simple; a remnant was not. Ten parts made a stain with a mind. They lodged in the corners of the body—behind the eyes, in the throat where the voice originated, in the fingers when they reached for heat or religion. They distorted the mirror just enough that the person looking began to ask wrong questions.
I had seen what the ten did. Words arrived with two shadows. A smile collected hesitation at one corner, then corrected itself too quickly. The pupils narrowed when we would have preferred they widen. Old prayers visited like stray dogs, unwanted and already loved. He would feel it most during quiet. Daylight, applause, pain large enough to drown in—those would keep the residue meek. But in the hour when the barstools were upside down and the carpet cleaner whined and no one needed anything, the ten percent would knock from the inside and ask to be fed.
I moved my foot deeper. The pool gave me the soft thrum of its filters and the whisper of the surface kissing the ankle bone. The night had the kind of chill that worked with meticulous hands, laying itself into the wrists, the neck, the back of the skull. I rested my palms against the tile. It had a powder to it from the day's dust and the damp, and it left a fine grit that caught the skin of my fingers when I lifted them.
Why was it sticky, when a man gave himself? Because a gift made with knowledge bound more tightly than theft. Because consent was a chain with no visible lock. The ownership was cleaner. The resistance was not. In a vessel offered by a third party, we moved with the long stride of trespassers whose crime was complete. In a vessel offered by its soul, we moved knowing that what we wore remembered choosing us. It would expect us to answer for things we never promised. Devotion did not dispense with need. It multiplied it.
We called it distortion to soothe the sciences among us, but what I tasted around Kent that night had not been error. It was a chord. The human remnant hummed in the bone. The companion hummed in the marrow. Together they made a third thing, and it carried well across crowded rooms. It was why the boy could not blur him. The ten percent was a hook that caught tricks on their way in. He had tried to fog a mirror that belonged to two faces. Fog chose one and revealed the other.
I rubbed my heel against the tile edge until the skin warmed. The body I wore was efficient at holding heat. It answered when called. It did not tremble unless I allowed it. Once, that precision satisfied me. Lately the precision performed a small theater of its own, and I permitted it without affection. The suit was handsome, obedient, a fine instrument—nothing more. I did not love a violin because it was in tune.
The boy thought otherwise. He stared at my mouth when I smoked and asked what kind of shape the true form would take. He thought if he were brave enough to look, he would be given an answer. I told him the truth that fit his appetite. He did not believe it. He wanted the unmaking that looked like revelation. He wanted to see me so completely that he no longer saw himself. That was one kind of prayer. I preferred him as he was, every line of him refusing and still kneeling. The posture of hunger had always been useful.
Water licked my shins again. I watched the surface offer me a version of my face. The pool gave back what it could, bending the jaw, elongating the eye, gilding the iris with hotel light caught like a coin. Reflection was courteous that way. It flattered what it feared.
Akin had warned about this precise tangle. When a man signs himself over, he said, you will meet not just the companion, but the signature. He spoke with his usual patience, the tone you reserved for an animal that would bite you because it was tired of being kind. Do not confuse the residue for rebellion. It is love that does not know where to sleep. I remembered looking away as he said it, not from reluctance but from a respect as old as my banishment. He was almost always right. He never expected gratitude for being so.
There was strength in the offered body. The strongest bonds were born when the soul was not merely displaced but knelt. The binding wrote itself on both of us. Ninety and ten became math we used, not a cage we feared. If the residue worshiped, the companion feasted. If the residue resisted, the companion learned to listen or to starve. Kent had been fed. I had tasted fullness in the way his wrist settled when he touched the boy's jaw—an economy of motion that could not be counterfeited. An empty suit mimicked affection. A shared house invented it.
I was not given to envy. It wasted the mind's teeth. Yet something in that shared chord irritated like a grain beneath the eyelid. I preferred clear arrangements. I preferred a vessel I could cleanly defend, break, or bless as needed, with no choir in the rafters singing dissonance. With Kent there would always be a second breath inside the first. A slow inhale the companion could not claim. That was not weakness. It was the old world refusing to die.
Footsteps crossed the deck behind me and stopped when they saw my posture, the quiet that insisted on itself. I did not move. From the bar came the soft clack of a bottle set down, then the patient slide of a cloth. The attendant left soon after. They asked if I required anything. I did not.
I drew my feet out of the water and let the night touch them clean. The skin tightened with the cold, then smoothed as the air warmed it again. Droplets gathered at the edge of my heel, swelled, and resigned themselves to gravity. My toes left small commas on the tile. The pool settled its surface as if embarrassed for having spoken.
There would be more of them before autumn. The Fall Ball would call them up like tide. Suits already selected, signatures drying beneath the skin. Some with their houses swept empty. Some who had made the mark themselves and now slept in the attic while the downstairs threw a party in their name. We would nod to one another at the thresholds. We would exchange nothing that could be used.
The chlorine lingered in my throat. I swallowed and tasted the clean again, bright, almost medicinal. It effaced the memory of wine, of breath, of whatever human warmth had touched my mouth earlier. The pool had been honest, at least, in its cruelty. It burned so nothing grew. It kept the water safe for those who did not know what they swam beside.
I rested my palms once more on the tile, and the body remembered the room we had come from, the boy who had fallen asleep in daylight and then woken to argue, to plead, to study, to glow. Ninety percent was more than authority. It was caretaking with teeth. The remaining ten was a low music in the walls, and it would not stop. Kent lived with a choir. I lived with a single instrument, tuned to my hand. Each had its price.
The city sighed again, the ocean kept its slow pulse, and the pool held its breath as if something holy had passed above it and chosen not to look down. I lifted my head and opened my eyes to the dark glass of the sky. The lights blinked and did not confess who they belonged to. That was fine. I knew.
The night had deepened until the Morrison's pool looked like a vein of light cut open in the dark. The city had gone quiet beneath it, all its noise folded into distance. I was tracing circles in the water with my foot when I heard the shuffle of sneakers against tile. The rhythm was unhurried, deliberate.
Kent.
He appeared in the low amber of the terrace lights, a silhouette loosened by the night breeze. His curls caught the light in uneven golds. He said nothing at first—only crouched, setting a half-empty glass of wine beside him, then bent to untie his shoes. His fingers worked with lazy precision, pulling the laces free, rolling his socks and tucking them inside the sneakers. He let them rest in a neat pair beside the chair before lowering himself onto the edge. His feet entered the pool with a quiet shiver that rippled through the mirrored surface toward me.
"Fancy seeing you here," he said, his voice carrying that careless charm it always had, the one that softened the sting in his words. "It's been a while, Corvian."
"It has," I said. My tone was still as the water, indifferent on purpose.
He reached for the wine, swirled it once, then passed it to me. "Here. I brought this for the both of us."
I took the glass but didn't drink. "Did you put anything in it?"
Kent laughed, low and throaty. "That's just some old shit. I don't do that anymore."
"Oh, wow," I said, tilting the rim toward him. "You've grown up."
"Yeah," he said, smiling in that unbothered way that always made him look younger than he was. "I was childish. I gotta admit. But I have a different life now. One I love enough not to chase anything else."
The water settled between us, the small waves from his entry folding into stillness. The air carried the faint perfume of cut grass from the gardens below. The silence hung, wide and old, like something that had seen us in every century we'd worn faces in.
Then he asked, "Are you still upset about the competitions we used to make?"
I turned the stem of the glass between my fingers. The liquid caught the light like old blood. "That was decades ago," I said. "What—eighteen hundreds, I think?"
Kent smirked. "Yeah, but it stretched into the nineties too. from salons to nightclubs, same wager, different lighting. I just hoped you don't hold grudges. You don't hold grudges, do you?"
A quiet laugh escaped me, more breath than sound. "Don't hold grudges? Tell me, is that the human part of you talking, or am I speaking to Kent himself?"
He leaned back on his palms, tilting his head. "Nah, that's me. The human heart in me's getting weaker by the time."
I studied him. "This is so lame," I said after a pause. "I don't believe the human in you is getting weaker. You forget—I was there when he marked himself. He wanted immortality. That kind of desire doesn't decay. Your soul doesn't grow stronger; it just refuses to die. You've been tied to Igor for what—twenty years now? No, longer. The human soul would never fade. If it were going to, it would've done so ages ago."
Kent gave a small shrug. "You should thank Igor, though. He's the reason I stopped chasing competitions. He worships me. Isn't that enough?"
I swirled the wine, watching it climb the edge of the glass before it fell back. "Does he really worship you," I asked, "or is that what you tell yourself? Because at this point, I'm not sure which of who you're trying to convince."
His smile faltered just slightly. "Your human isn't that bright either."
A trace of amusement touched my mouth. "Is he not? I find him very bright. Street smart. He knows how to survive." I let the smile widen, slow and deliberate. "And about those competitions—if we must measure, I traded more names than you ever learned to pronounce, I've left you trailing far behind. So let's not talk about competitions, Kent. I'm not petty enough for that."
He gave a laugh, soft and strangely genuine. "You never change."
"Nor do you," I said.
For a moment, neither of us spoke. The pool reflected the city's pulse back at us, each light breaking into trembling gold. Kent's reflection wavered beside mine, two distortions drawn close together, one too bright, one too still. The night pressed close, warm against the skin yet heavy, as if listening.
Kent lifted his foot slightly, letting the water slip off it like glass. "You know," he murmured, "I missed this kind of quiet."
I said nothing. Quiet had always been his confession, not mine.
He looked at me, half-smiling. "Still think the human in me is strong, do you?"
"I think he's stubborn," I said. "Which is not the same thing as strength."
Kent chuckled again, low and hoarse. "You'd know about stubbornness, wouldn't you?"
"Better than you ever did."
He leaned back further, letting his hands rest behind him. His fingers brushed the tile, and for a second, his reflection split apart in the water—a shimmer, a tremor, a glimpse of something unearthly beneath. Then it steadied.
The glass in my hand had warmed from the heat of my skin, its contents dulled to a quiet red.
We sat there, side by side, like two ghosts sharing the same silence for the first time in centuries. The water carried our reflections as though deciding which of us it preferred to keep.
Kent's laughter softened into a hum that died somewhere in his throat. He turned toward me, water touching the hem of his trousers, and said quietly, "I suggest we make a truce."
He said it the way a man confesses something to a priest—calm, but already guilty. "Because if both of our humans are going to be working together, then I guess both of us need to behave. No need for extra action, no need for show-off. Let's just be calm and delinquent and treat each other like we're civilized devils."
I looked at him, the way one studies a creature that has forgotten what it used to be. The word lingered between us. Civilized. It left an aftertaste.
Then I laughed, quiet and cruel enough to draw his attention back to me. "You paused," I said. "You were going to say civilized human beings."
Kent blinked, eyes narrowing with amusement, but I didn't give him time to answer. "You are desperate to be one of them," I went on. "Very desperate. The way you talk, the way you present yourself, the way you act. You're desperate, Kent. You always have been."
Something in him shifted—his shoulders tensed, the easy smirk wavered. "Weren't they the fucking reason we were dropped off?" he said, voice rising, cracking on the edge of anger. "Fallen angels, they say? We used to be called angels, for fuck's sake. This is depressing, don't you think?"
I tilted my head. "Depressing?" My voice came quieter, colder. "You should take pride in what you are. You're made of something much stronger than them. You have control that they could never comprehend, yet you bow, you bend, you perform humility as if it earns you grace."
He said nothing. The water moved softly around our ankles, pale reflections trembling across our faces. I leaned closer until our reflections merged into one distorted thing.
"Tell me, Kent," I whispered. "Does he give it to you good? Do you enjoy Igor that much? Or is there something else? Do you give it to him?" I let my eyes drop, studying him with a thin smile. "I can't read the power in that arrangement. From the way you wear that body, you look like a man practiced at yielding." I held the pause deliberately. "So I'm not sure."
Kent's expression didn't break, but his brows lifted, slow, deliberate. "I mean," he said, voice low, "I nearly had your boy—and I wasn't going to be taking it from him. So I guess that tells you a lot about the power dynamic."
I took a sip of the wine, though I'd already grown tired of its taste. It was warm now, stale, but it gave my tongue something to do while I watched him. Then I clicked my tongue once, softly. "I think the Russian strength is something else," I said. "Something he would enjoy. He liked being dragged, anyway. I remember when you were talking about how the human loved getting his hair pulled, and then you inherited it, figured it was nice." I leaned back, setting the glass between us. "But now I don't think the human was the one who liked it. It was you. Kinky as hell. Damn."
His eyes hardened, but he said nothing. The silence pressed close again.
I rose, the water breaking from my legs in narrow trails that ran down to my feet. The air cooled the skin as quickly as the droplets formed. I set the glass on the edge of the pool and looked down at him.
"Let me tell you something for the last time," I said. My tone didn't rise; it didn't need to. "Because the last time I told you this, you didn't register it. The more you keep bowing down, the more your back's going to remember the shape. So stop lowering yourself for humans. It's disgusting. You're a shame to our entire population."
He looked up at me with that same small smile—half arrogance, half exhaustion—but said nothing.
"Good night, Kent," I said. "Hope to never see you again. But unfortunately, I have to. Still, I can hope."
I turned away before he could answer. The sound of water followed me—his feet moving, the soft clap of ripples against tile. I didn't look back. The air beyond the terrace smelled of sea and stone, and my steps echoed as I left him there, two feet still in the pool, his reflection breaking and reforming with every movement, as if it couldn't decide which face it wanted to keep.
The corridors of the Morrison were hollow by the time I returned. The air carried the trace of chlorinated wind from the pool, touched faintly with the sweetness of night flowers growing by the marble railings. I walked in silence, the sound of my shoes dying into the carpet, the echo of Kent's voice still lodged somewhere behind my ribs. His laughter, his arrogance, the way he masked decay as charm.
When I entered the room, the sound of water reached me first. The shower was running—steady, rhythmic, human. I sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress dipped slightly, exhaled heat. The city light cut a long, blue shape across the sheets, slicing through the dark. I watched it crawl toward me as I thought of Kent.
He would not rest now. That much I knew. He had been the kind of creature who turned jealousy into fuel—one of those devils who believed that to fall was only another kind of ascent. Back then, we had measured strength in souls collected, in the number of signatures we could drag into hell's ledger. Kent had taken the lead early. He was relentless, gleeful in his cruelty, and had nearly touched a record until he discovered the exquisite disease of human life.
He had not been chosen for Igor. That part always fascinated me. When the Russian made his pact, Kent volunteered. As if mercy were an indulgence he wished to try once, just to see what it tasted like. It ruined him. Or perhaps it revealed him. Devils do not fall twice—we simply remember the motion.
The water stopped.
Steam drifted out from the bathroom door when it opened. Hugo stepped into the dim light, hair damp, the white robe loose around his shoulders. He was startled when he saw me.
"Christ—Corvian." His hand went to his chest. "You scared me."
I didn't move. "We need to talk."
He frowned, his voice softening into that quick defensiveness humans always have before they even know the charge. "What's going on? I didn't do anything this time."
"It's not about you," I said. "It's about Kent. And Igor."
Hugo crossed his arms. The robe shifted at his collar, exposing the hollow of his throat. "When were you going to tell me that Kent is Igor's companion?"
"I was hoping he wasn't anymore," I answered. "But turns out he still is. I saw him at Patrick Swanson's party. He was alone then. Igor was touring."
"Don't you get intel on such things?"
I looked up at him, a slow amusement rising despite myself. "What the fuck do you think this is, Hugo? You think we work in a corporate office? This is the underworld. There's no ledger, no chain of command. Still, you haven't grasped what devils are."
"No," he snapped, his voice rough with exhaustion, "I fucking haven't."
I sighed. "Listen. Kent is powerful, yes. But so am I—more so. His weakness is pride. And ego. He carries a self-hatred that festers, a sickness he feeds with worship. He feels small even in eternity, and he makes Igor feel the same. That's the thread he weaves—make them need him, then shame them for it."
Hugo leaned against the wall, the light catching on a drop of water that clung to his jaw. "So what you're saying is, he's powerful, but we can hit where it hurts."
I smiled faintly. "Exactly. I knew you were smart."
He scoffed. "You didn't really say much."
"Shut up." The word came out more fond than I intended. "I have a feeling—and I am rarely wrong—that this is a setup. Igor is luring you in. The show you're meant to perform together? It's not a collaboration. It's a trap."
He straightened, eyes sharpening. "A setup?"
"Yes. He'll want to break you on stage, humiliate you. He's Kent's mirror—everything Kent loves, and everything Kent wants to destroy. You need more power than you have."
Hugo looked at me, and I saw the realization forming before he spoke. "You want to mark me, don't you?"
"You might need it."
"I have to think about it." His tone faltered, but it wasn't refusal. "We still have time until the performance, right?"
I tilted my head. "You don't mind?"
He exhaled, running a hand through his damp hair. "I don't know. Of course I want to be stronger than fucking Igor. I want to put his head in the mud and suffocate him to death." His voice darkened, trembling at the edge of something fierce and raw. "I do want that. But—was Igor marked by Kent?"
"No." I hesitated. "Igor would never let Kent do that, because—"
He studied me with a grin that didn't reach his eyes. "Because he's what—smarter than me?"
"Not necessarily," I said.
The silence stretched between us. The scent of soap still lingered in the air, sharp and clean, almost holy. His breath came steady now, though his fingers twitched against the robe's tie. I could see his mind working, trying to measure trust against fear, curiosity against pride.
He would ask more questions. He always did. But not tonight. Tonight, I let him keep the illusion of choice.
Because the truth was simple and merciless: when the time came, he would not think about it. He would beg for it.