Chapter 32: Affection's Alchemy
Parlor Geometry
Flora's fan carved the air into confessionals. "You dissect 'love' like a tax ledger," she chided, watching Tasiya trace the scar on her wrist—a relic from their childhood orchard fire. "Real affection isn't stoichiometry. It's... spilled wine on silk."
She recounted the suitor who'd dueled three lords for her honor, yet fled when she demanded their child bear the Vincent name. "Love and betrayal can share the same bed, little sister." Moonlight fractured through the fan's bone ribs, painting tiger stripes on the wall.
Kinesics Laboratory
"Has he touched you?" Flora's question hung like a scalpel. "Beyond blade practice?"
Memories surfaced: Nathaniel's fingers braiding her hair after the river ambush, his palm steadying her spine during the poison purge. Tasiya's thumb found her lower lip—a new habit since the wing-touching incident.
"Hypothetical." Flora's fan tapped her collarbone. "If he kissed you here—" the ivory tip slid upward, "—would your pulse race? Or remain as flat as your battlefield vitals?"
The archivist in Tasiya demanded control variables. "Would you have me test this?"
"Precisely." Flora's smile mirrored their mother's before she took the cyanide capsule. "Prove me wrong."
Experimental Protocol
Midnight found them in the barracks' throat—a stone archway swallowing moonlight. Nathaniel materialized with her upgraded uniform, its collar stitched with raven feathers that twitched like living things.
"Stay."
He froze as she stepped into his shadow. Their previous encounters flashed—his laughter when she'd pinned him during drills, the way he'd angled his wings to shield her from acid rain.
The kiss tasted of consequences.
Nathaniel's systems whined—overheating protocols, containment breaches. When she withdrew, his gloves smoked where they'd gripped the stone.
"Conclusion?" His voice crackled like overloaded circuitry.
"Affection confirmed." She wiped her mouth, the gesture undercut by trembling fingers. "Parameters require... further study."
Control Variables
Across the city, Flora reviewed the surveillance orb's recording. The kiss lasted precisely nine heartbeats—three longer than protocol dictated. She dipped her quill in nightshade ink, drafting the marriage law amendment with Nathaniel's biometrics encoded in the margins.
Her jasmine perfume couldn't mask the truth: this was no sisterly guidance, but a gambit to chain the demon to House Vincent before winter's coup frostbit their roots.
Chapter 33: The Weight of Choices
Tangled Threads
Autumn moonlight spilled through the arched windows as Tasiya leaned into Nathaniel's chest. His hands hovered above the gauzy fabric at her waist—too delicate to grasp, too dangerous to release.
"Why wait?" she asked, the silver hairpin he'd fastened that morning glinting like a trapped star.
His laugh was summer wind over ancient stone. "Because contracts forged in curiosity become cages." Gently, he removed each ornament from her hair, laying them on the table like dismantled armor. "Your sister wants you to taste the world's possibilities. But if you bind yourself to me…"
The unspoken truth hung between them—a millennium of silent devotion, his shadow always two steps behind her reincarnations.
"Then let me kiss you daily," she demanded, eyes bright with the fervor she usually reserved for combat drills. "I enjoy it."
Nathaniel's fingers twitched against the velvet chairback. "Not unless you're certain there'll never be another."
Whispers in the Choir
Morning revealed fresh fractures in Saint Corps' facade.
Annette's gaze burned holes in Tasiya's braided hair—matching Nathaniel's as always. "Pathetic," she hissed to her demon attendant. "Using domestic theatrics to secure power."
Across the hall, Yamo watched his former lover with hollow eyes. The memory of their ill-fated romance clung like cobwebs—her honeyed lies, his eager belief in redemption. When his mind-reading succubus Gima trembled at Nathaniel's passing shadow, Yamo finally approached the silver-haired demon.
"She's planning to break contracts," Yamo muttered, nodding toward Annette. "Including yours."
Nathaniel's expression remained serene. "Let her try."
Blades and Revelations
The armory steel smelled of ambition. While others marveled at enchanted weapons, Tasiya hefted her iron cross with familiar ease. Kunji observed her from the shadows, his twin serrated wheels catching the light like frozen screams.
Their nightly sparring sessions became rituals of discovery. On the fourth evening, Tasiya's kick sent Kunji sprawling into the sand, golden light flaring briefly around her leg.
"Fascinating," he coughed, grinning through bloodied lips. "You're a dormant lantern, Lady Tasiya—unaware of your own radiance."
The Empty Chair
Returning to dim quarters, Tasiya traced the cold space where Nathaniel's coat usually hung. Since her ill-advised proposal, he'd become a ghost—present yet distant, tending to her needs while erasing all traces of warmth.
The love manuals Flora recommended lay abandoned, their florid prose failing to decode Nathaniel's careful retreat. Tasiya pressed her forehead to his bedroom door.
"Are you punishing me," she whispered, "or yourself?"
Somewhere in the dark, a demon clenched his fists until blood pearled on his palms—the only answer she'd receive tonight.
Chapter 34: The Calculus of Hesitation
The door remained silent.
Between them, even the act of knocking had become ritual rather than necessity—wood grain cool beneath her knuckles, brass handle unyielding. Tasiya let her spine slide down the oak panel, linen skirt whispering against stone until she sat folded on the floor. Her knees pressed into the space where Nathaniel's shadow should have fallen.
He'd never made her wait before.
Even after grueling drills that left her trembling, he'd appear with rosemary-scented oil before her third knock. Now, with autumn's chill leaching through the corridor stones, she counted the cracks in the mortar—three jagged lines radiating from the spot where his blade had once bitten into floorboards during their first spar.
Three.
The oil lamp's glow beneath his door flickered.
Two.
A rustle of parchment. The creak of his chair.
One.
The latch clicked.
Nathaniel stood haloed in golden light, shirtless and disheveled, ink smudged along his collarbone. His gaze snagged on her crumpled form. "Why sit in the dark?"
She let him haul her up, fingers curling in the sweat-damp linen at his waist. "My muscles ache."
The lie hung between them, fragile as the cobwebs in the rafters.
Moonlight slipped through the curtains' gap, gilding the landscape of his torso as he turned. Tasiya's breath caught. Where Kunji's adolescent frame shouted raw power, Nathaniel's body spoke of violence refined—the subtle ridge of a scar above his hip (her blade's miscalculation in last winter's duel), the coiled tension in shoulders that had borne centuries of watching her die.
Her index finger found the notch above his collarbone. "Beautiful," she murmured, the word unfamiliar yet precise.
Nathaniel's pulse stuttered against her palm. He reached for the oil flask, its contents shimmering faintly like poisoned wine from their last diplomatic gala. "Turn around."
She didn't.
The linen strap slipped from her shoulder, revealing the bruise from yesterday's demon tackle drill. His thumb pressed into the mottled flesh, tension bleeding from her limbs.
"You're shaking," she observed.
"Am I?" His laugh tasted of rusted hinges.
Later, cross-legged on his bed with her hair unraveling between his fingers, Tasiya studied the room's curated chaos. Ribbons from last season's masquerade coiled like serpents across the desk. A half-stitched jacket draped over the chair—midnight velvet embroidered with raven feathers that mirrored the ones he'd sewn into her training gear.
"You're afraid I'll regret choosing you." The words dissolved the fragile quiet.
Nathaniel's hands stilled in her hair. Through the window, moonlight fractured on the pendulum clock's face—three hands overlapping at midnight.
"Girls your age should dream of poets," he said at last, braiding strands of onyx and silver together. "Not bind themselves to ancient creatures who can't distinguish devotion from obsession."
She turned, trapping his wrists. "What if I want both?"
His exhale stirred the hairs at her temple. "Demons don't love. We covet. We hoard. We—"
Tasiya's lips silenced him, salt and steel and the faintest tremor. When she pulled back, his gloves smoldered against the bedsheets.
"Then teach me to covet," she whispered.
Dawn found Annette pacing the eastern cloisters, her demon attendants scattering rose petals that wilted in their wake. "The contract?"
"Prepared, mistress." The tallest bowed, sulfurous eyes gleaming. "But breaking a bond with his rank..."
She crushed a petal beneath her slipper. "I don't want it broken." Her smile mirrored the stained glass martyrs overhead. "I want it transferred."
In the armory, Kunji balanced twin serrated wheels on his palms—blades that had once severed a demon prince's wings. His gaze followed Tasiya through the racks of cursed steel, noting the new lightness in her step, the silver braid woven through her hair.
"Careful," he murmured to the whetstone, "the most dangerous cages have velvet walls."
Chapter 35: Fractured Masks
The Unraveling
Annette's porcelain facade cracked the moment Yamo stormed into the research wing. The crown prince's boots echoed like war drums as he seized her wrist, his voice raw with betrayal. "What have you done? Do you realize you've destroyed Helen's entire future?"
The crowd froze. Helen—pale as parchment in the corner—clutched her unmarked collarbone where her demon's sigil once pulsed.
"Destroyed?" Annette laughed, a brittle sound that scattered like broken glass. "She'll still dine on silver plates and sleep beneath silk canopies. What more does a failed noble's daughter deserve?"
Yamo recoiled as though slapped. For years, he'd excused her cruelty as survival instinct, her manipulations as desperation. Now, watching her sneer at Helen's hollow-eyed despair, he saw the rot festering beneath gilded words.
"I've reported everything to the Grand Archbishop," he said, releasing her as one might discard venomous silk. "Even with your family's influence, they won't tolerate attacks on Saint Corps' top candidate."
The Spider's Last Web
Annette's tears fell on cue—crystalline drops timed to sway the murmuring crowd. "Would you have me starve in gutters?" Her whisper carried the practiced tremor of martyred saints. "Without status or wealth, how long before men come crawling?"
Female students shifted uncomfortably. Male observers leaned closer, nostrils flaring at her rosewater scent.
Yamo gagged on memories—her fingers tracing his jaw in shadowed alcoves, her lips murmuring devotion while planning to sabotage rivals. "Stop performing," he rasped. "You've never gone hungry a day in your life."
The Grand Archbishop's arrival silenced all. His scarred hands—still bearing claw marks from Chapter 8's demon uprising—tore Annette's ceremonial sash with a single tug.
"Saint Corps exists to protect humanity," he boomed, casting the embroidered cloth at her feet. "Not feed your vanity."
The Weight of Marks
Later, Nathaniel found Tasiya studying her reflection, fingers brushing behind her ear.
"Would it fade?" she asked without turning. "The contract mark, I mean."
His shadow merged with hers on the moonlit wall. "Only through death—yours or mine."
She tilted her head, olive eyes alight with tactical consideration. "Visible markings make one a target. But hidden ones…" Her thumb grazed the pulse point beneath her jaw. "...could be advantageous in close combat."
Nathaniel's breath hitched. Centuries of watching her reincarnations choose hearts, ribs, inner thighs—never this. Never a place where his lips might brush the sigil when whispering strategies into her hair.
"Ear's better," he blurted, then cursed his transparency. "For… tactical accessibility."
Dancing Shadows
The training grounds hummed with tension. Kunji's twin serrated wheels whirred through moonlight as Tasiya parried, her iron cross gleaming like a cursed relic.
"Focus!" he barked when her gaze drifted to his bare torso. "Your enemy won't pause for modesty!"
She lunged, suddenly recalling Annette's taunt about weight distribution. The cross swung low—a brutal arc Kunji barely dodged.
"Better." He grinned, sweat-slicked chest heaving. "Now stop eyeing my nonexistent contract mark."
Tasiya blinked. "How did you—"
"Your stare could pierce plate armor." He tossed her a water flask. "For the record? Mine's between my shoulder blades. Demons hate neck tattoos—too close to decapitation range."
The New Dawn
Chaos erupted near the east barracks—shouting acolytes, clanking chains. Kunji returned from scouting with a wolfish smirk.
"New Saint arrived," he reported, sharpening a blade on his leather bracer. "Rumor says she slaughtered three demon lords to get here."
Tasiya peered at the distant torchlight. "Will she join training?"
"Undoubtedly." His grin widened. "Heard she wields twin obsidian daggers and hates cowardice."
Nathaniel materialized beside them, silver hair blending with moonlight. "Trouble prefers company, it seems."
But Tasiya was already striding toward the commotion, iron cross slung over her shoulder. Potential allies mattered more than sleep. Potential threats even more so.