The Duke’s Demon by Iris Foxglove

Chapter 2

Once, when Devon was young, an unseasonable string of summer storms came to the Chastain estate.

They came at once, without warning, a line of black clouds crawling across the sky like a blanket being drawn over the world. The wind howled at the windows for two weeks, rain pelting the roof and trickling in through the chimneys, tree branches crashing and whipping about like a host of wild dancers in the distance. To Devon, who was still too young to leave the nursery, he thought the storms might never end, and that his home was trapped in a globe of wind and rain forever.

The storms did pass, though, and the blue skies returned to look over the ruin of the dairy barn and the pine forest, but Devon couldn’t sleep. Without the rain to pound on the roof and the wind to howl along the walls, rattling the windows, Devon was left jolting awake in his bed, wide-eyed and certain that something had shifted in the night.

Now, lying curled in on himself in the home of the mad duke, Devon felt it again, the absence of noise. The rage that had seen him through his adolescence and into adulthood was still, muted, muffled like the world under a heavy blanket of snow. He could feel it somewhere in the distance, but it was small and formless, shifting under his grasp.

Duke d'Hiver stood, his cane clicking on the stone, and Devon ducked his head, closing his eyes tight. It was a nightmare. A story told in the dark, to children who needed a reason not to wander too close to the abbey.

I heard the duke d'Hiverstole Lord Chastain’s second son, and picked at his soul like a carrion bird picks at bones.

“Excuse me. Boy.”

Devon pressed his hands to the stone, slowly pushing himself to his knees. A woman stood there, maybe ten years older than him, with long, silky black hair and the kind of face Devon had seen in a printing of Kallistoi paintings, once, the ones full of women lounging on chaises with leopards. She nudged him with her foot, and Devon drew back, searching for the duke behind her. He was gone, vanished into the dark like the demon he was, waiting.

“I’m not a boy,” Devon said. “I’m Lord—” He stopped. He couldn’t give his family name, not anymore, not with the king hunting him down. “I’m…”

“Decide when you want to,” the woman said. “His Grace sent me. Said you need a room. There’s a clean one down the hall, if you don’t mind sleeping in the library. It’s what we call it,” she added, when Devon narrowed his eyes. “You’ll see.”

She held out a hand to him, and Devon flinched away, pulling himself up on his own.

“I’m not helpless,” he said, sharply. She raised her perfect brows.

“His grace’s guests usually are. Come on, boy.”

“I’m not—I’m not a guest,” Devon hissed, staggering after her as she breezed into the hallway, her grey gown sweeping the floors. “I’m a captive.”

“And I’m being diplomatic,” the woman said.

“You’re fine with this?” Devon asked. His hands were shaking— he shoved them in his pockets, forced himself to clench his fists. “He becomes that…thing, and he says he cuts people, whatever that means, and you’re just…here?”

“Yes,” she said. She walked a little faster as they passed a pair of heavy black doors, smooth and featureless, set into the stone. “I’m here.”

“Did he do it to you, then,” Devon asked.

“No.”

Devon could feel it at the corner of his mind, the frustration coming back, patching over the terror of being left helpless, frozen, unable to resist as his soul was dislodged and held by a demon.

“And the king kills his wife while he lets that thing live?”

The woman paused, just for a breath, at a small door at the end of the hall. Then she turned a key— they have the keys, a small, panicked, useless voice in Devon’s mind whispered, they can come in at any time—and pushed the door open to more yawning blackness.

“I’ll light a fire,” she said. Devon stood by the door as she rustled about in the dark, and then there was the flare of a match, the slow flicker of glass wall sconces, the light of flames crawling up a pile of wood and paper in the fireplace.

The room was a library, in a sense. There were bookshelves on every wall, some too high to reach, some jammed in alcoves, and the smell of old paper and leather permeated the room, stronger even than the fire. A bed was jammed in the corner, and there was a chest of drawers in the other, surrounded by books.

“The clothes in here won’t suit you,” said the woman, who Devon was starting to suspect was a demon herself, for all that she cut him a sharp, pointed glare no servant would dare give a noble. “I’ll bring some up, as the duke ordered.”

“Hold on,” Devon said, as she turned to go. “Wait, you can’t just—”

The door shut, and Devon looked down at the robe twisted around his waist, d'Hiver’s robe, and ripped it off as though it burned him. He dragged the sheets of the bed back and wrapped them around his shoulders, and pulled the whole tangled mess of them down before the fire. The light fell over him, but it didn't fill him, didn’t warm him, the way he needed. It just fell into the empty places d'Hiver and his demon had dislodged, going down, down, deeper towards the twisted heart of him, held in a tight fist where no light could reach.

He woke before the hearth the next morning, well after dawn. Sunlight rolled over the empty, gutted bed and slid across the floor, where another low tray of food was sitting, covered by a worn silver dome.

Devon lifted it, half expecting something horrible, but it was only bread and eggs, herbs and butter scraped over toast.

There were clothes next to the door, as well, men’s clothes roughly his size, and only the coat was too large when Devon swung it on.

He waited for a while, watching the door, but the demon didn’t come.

No one stopped him when he stepped outside. The hall was still dark, even with squares of sunlight on the stone, and Devon found himself hugging the wall as he skirted around the two black doors in the middle.

He ran into a servant on the stairs; a quiet, older man with dark hair, who gave Devon a blank look and continued walking without a word.

“Maybe I’m going mad,” Devon said, pushing open the front doors to the open courtyard. The arches framing the courtyard were still there, open, little pictures of a pastoral winter beyond. Devon could walk past them, steal a horse from the village, and be on a ship to Diabolos by the next day.

There was a boy in the stables when Devon checked them, seeing to the beast the duke rode from the Chastain estate. He blinked wide eyes up at Devon, and his round face, framed by perfect curls, twisted in a scowl of pure suspicion.

“Hey,” he said. “What are you doing messing around the stables?”

Devon drew himself up to snap at the boy for disrespecting a noble, but stopped when he realized, a little belatedly, that the boy probably didn’t even know he was one.

“Nothing,” Devon said. He backed out of the stables. The horse tilted their head at him, and he could almost see the echo of the unnatural skull flickering over black fur, eyeless and grim. “I was just passing through.”

“Yeah, well, keep going,” the boy said. He lunged for the pitchfork leaning by the loft, but Devon was already out the door, staggering through the archways to the hill beyond.

The hill sloping down to the village was being grazed by a herd of sheep, which were watched over by two children sitting in a gnarled tree by the path. They stared in silence as Devon passed, their feet swinging off the branches, and Devon kept his distance. He never did know how to speak to children. The only children on the Chastain estate had been Devon and Marius. The servants sent theirs off to the city, presumably to keep them from being underfoot.

Or to keep them from…other influences. No. Devon tamped down on his thoughts, which were already starting to spiral, and focused on keeping a steady pace as he trudged down the hill. He couldn’t run. Running was suspicious, and the villagers would talk. He had to wait until he was out of sight of the Abbey, first.

He was nearly half a league from the village when he felt a tremor in the earth. Devon turned, and cursed at the sight of the duke on his horse, riding down the slope with the dark silhouette of the Abbey rising up behind them.

He barely made it off the path. The horse bore down on him like the breaking of a summer storm, sudden and terrible, and the duke grabbed him by the collar as he swung down, dragging them both onto the grass. Devon gasped as the wind was knocked out of him, and the duke kept a hand on his shirt, holding him still.

“We told you not to leave,” d'Hiver said, in a bland, quiet voice that held no frustration, no anger, nothing but the relentless, toneless certainty of a demon. Devon remembered the press of that inhuman mouth on his, the pull at his chest, his rage draining from him like a light in a tunnel, and struggled to suppress the way it knocked something loose inside him, something he’d rather not touch. He tried to surge up to strike him, but the duke kept him pressed on his back, pinned to the grass.

“You can’t just keep me here,” Devon said. “I’m a, a peer of the realm—”

“No, you aren’t.” Devon ground his teeth, jaw clicking. “Not properly. Your father was, before he was hanged. Your brother would be, if he weren’t a traitor.”

“He was hanged,” Devon said. “How would you know?”

“Heralds,” d'Hiver said. “And I can…feel it, at times. His terror was familiar.”

“He was afraid.” Devon couldn’t bring himself to try and kick the duke away, not yet. Not until he knew. “You’re sure of it. Oscar Chastain hasn’t felt terror in his entire life. He only knows what it looks like in other people.”

“That would be untrue, then,” d'Hiver said. He rose to his feet, drawing Devon up with him. “Because it was very much real. We felt it, when he was caught, when the sentence was laid down. But your fury was stronger.” He tilted his head, and there was something…not quite human, about the way he did it.

Devon had no choice but to stagger back to the Abbey. He wrenched out of the duke’s grip after a few paces—better to walk on his own, he supposed, than be dragged like a beast for the slaughter—and tried not to shake with indignation as they crossed the shadow of the Abbey.

“There’s fear there,” the duke said, as Devon stopped under the archway, hands fisted. “In your heart. But the anger overwhelms it. How curious.”

Devon took a sharp breath as d'Hiver came closer, like a cat stalking a mote of light across the room. “My father was just executed,” Devon said. “I’m trapped in a cursed estate with a demon and its pet. Of course I’m angry. Why wouldn’t I be?”

D'Hiver stopped before him, too close, and Devon’s pulse started to race, his breath going harsh and broken.

“You are,” he said, “but not all for the reasons you give.”

“You don’t— don’t have the right—” Devon closed his eyes rather than look into d'Hiver’s, into whatever they’d become. “Tell your creature not to look into other people’s—not to pry where it isn’t wanted.” He opened his eyes again, and stared into d'Hiver’s. “You can drag me back here all you want, and I guess I can’t stop you. You can kill me, and I can’t stop you from doing that, either. But I don’t care what you are, you don’t get to pull me open and take my soul. Not like this. This is mine.”

* * *

Sebastien had thought,when he’d brought Devon here, that he would sulk in the library, or hide away somewhere, letting his rage build and build until the demon needed to take it, to feed again.

He did not think it would take less than a day.

“You are a strange man,” Sebastien said, studying him. “I have seen grown men and women break under the truth of what I am. How is it, then, that you seek to control it?” Did Devon think he was a dominant?

Yes, a voice whispered. How interesting. He was nothing of the sort.

“What you do not understand is that I can do anything I want, here. And do you want to speak to it, the demon? It is awake. It may answer you.”

“What would I want to ask it?” Devon stared into the distance, at the village beyond.

“I do not know. But it would speak to you, and it does not do that, often.” He glanced over at Devon. “Just because I want to feed on your anger does not mean I intend you to be miserable, here.”

“You won’t let me leave and said if I wasn’t angry enough, you’d skin me alive,” Devon said, eyes narrowed.

“Yes. Do you want to leave? If you do as I ask, you won’t die. You don’t want to die, do you? If you do, and you ask me, I will see to it that you do.”

“No, I—I have things I need to do. People who need to suffer—stop smiling at me,” Devon hissed, but there was a noticeable lack of his usual heat.

“It will be easier, next time. You will know what to expect. Maybe you will like it,” Sebastien said. “You did, I think, before.”

“Can it read my thoughts?”

Sebastien blinked, frowned at the interruption, then focused inward on the demon.

No. The words are unknown. I only know the way the soul burns.

“It knows how you feel,” Sebastien said, squinting, for he didn’t think he’d ever had to explain it, before. “Not the specifics of your thoughts. It knows mine, and if I knew yours, then it would also know them.”

“How is this a thing that is allowed,” Devon asked. “To have a demon. Why is it here?”

“Long ago, Mislians came here from across the sea to summon their demons. They were heretics, before the archmage took over and drove out the light-bringers, like the whore who became a lord and saved the life of the man you thought you killed.” He smiled at the flare of anger, muted though it was, at reminding Devon of that. “They trapped the demon and left it to wither there, until a boy whose family was massacred came to it in the dark.”

Devon looked out toward the village. “How long until you kill me.”

Sebastien rarely bothered to lie, so he didn’t start now. “I couldn’t say. When your rage is gone, perhaps then, it will want you under the knife.”

“So you’ll keep me angry until you murder me,” Devon said.

“That would be what it wants, yes,” Sebastien said. He studied Devon, the way he accepted so easily what would be a terrifying end to his life. Perhaps it was still the muted response after the demon fed. Hopefully so. Despair and a lack of interest in his own life would take the rage Sebastien wanted, and leave him an empty shell of a man, a husk. “But if you would rather hang for the king, then I suppose I could send a message to the palace, have them come and take you.”

The spike of fear there was sharper, but the flare of anger was bright like a beacon. “Come with me. If you rattle around like a ghost, you will fade like the others.” He turned on his heel. “We will do something else. You were a noble, I am certain you studied the blade, yes?”

Devon muttered something behind him, but there was a sullen, “Yes,” and that’s all Sebastien wanted to know.

“Then we will do that. Let your blood heat, it will help dispel the fog you are under.” Sebastien took him to the fencing room, at the back of the Abbey. It was bright, all windows save for one wall made entirely of mirrors, with a mat on the ground and a variety of swords polished and gleaming on racks. “I do not often have the pleasure of a partner.”

“You want me to put myself in front of you with a sword? Has that creature of yours taken your brain and your soul?”

“No, only the soul, but I rather think it shares my mind.” Sebastien took his favorite epee, and turned to Devon. “Is this all right, or would you prefer another type of sword? Sabres?”

“No.” Devon snarled, and grabbed the first blade he could find. “What if I kill you with this.”

Sebastien said, “These are fencing blades, my flame. Not a blade meant to kill.”

Sebastien took off his coat and went to the edge of the ring, waiting. Devon faced him with wide, shadowed gold eyes and a look so full of murder that Sebastien smiled to see it. “You are welcome to come at me as if you mean me harm, though. Go ahead and burn for us, if you like.”

Devon muttered something and lunged. He would, Sebastien thought as he fought him back, have been passable at fencing if he were cool-headed enough to think through his strategy. Sebastien scored a touch, then stepped back to his ready stance. “You are not without some skill. It would go easier if you controlled your temper.”

“I thought that’s what you wanted.” Devon was glaring, but breathing hard, and it was clear the physical activity was doing him good.

“The anger will come. Right now, I would appreciate a decent match. En garde.” He lifted his sword, bowed, surprised at the truth of it. He had not, in fact, sparred with anyone in some time. Most days he fought the memory of others, thinking about his father teaching him, his brother Etienne, their wooden swords hitting in the bright afternoon light, his mother bringing them tea and fresh cookies.

It was one of the few places where he remembered that they existed. That he was one of them, once.

Devon got better as they continued to spar. He seemed to find the physical escape of the exercise a comfort, and his skin went flushed, sweat on his brow, his eyes bright and clear. And Sebastien did not mind it, here in the only place he felt any real connection to the boy he’d been before the men came, before the demon opened the doors and the darkness took him.

“Good,” he praised, when Devon came close to scoring a touch. He, too, was breathing a bit harder and the demon was quiet, watching. Interested. “You were not poorly taught.”

“I’m a noble,” Devon said, catching his breath.

“You were,” Sebastien agreed. “You are not, now.”

“Now, I’m food for a demon,” Devon said, straightening. “A calf to be fatted, milked, and slaughtered for meat.”

Sebastien tilted his head. “Do you want me to apologize for bringing you here?”

Devon laughed. It was bitter, edged with something close to hysteria. “The things I want, d'Hiver, no one can give me. Are we doing this, or…”

Sebastien sparred him until he scored three touches in a row, and Devon was clearly too out practice, winded from the ordeal of the last week, to keep up. But he was staring oddly at Sebastien while he wiped his face with a towel, drank the cold water left there for him. “You look different. Now.”

Sebastien turned toward the mirrored wall, and walked toward it. He looked the same as he always did, the same pale face, colorless eyes, though his icy-white hair had come loose from his low queue. “Do I.”

“Yes.” Devon, behind him, flushed still from exertion. “Less like a statue.”

“They do say exercise gets the blood going, don’t they?”

“Do you even have any?” Devon asked. “Blood, I mean.”

Sebastien nodded. “Yes.” He didn’t elaborate how he knew that, merely walked over and stood by Devon, studying him. “Are you going to try and kill me, to see for yourself? I have no Mislian here to bring me back from death. Perhaps it would work. If you are better with a sword than a pistol.”

“My shot was true,” Devon said, the anger beginning to rise, again.

“You shot a man in the back,” Sebastien said, eyes going distant as the demon stirred. “A rather hard shot to miss.”

“Shut up.” Devon turned to leave. “I’m going to take my chances in the village, find my brother.”

“Will you shoot him, then, too?” Sebastien noticed immediately the reaction that got and pressed on, using his words as skillfully as he had beaten Devon back with his blade. “Would you like me to give him to you?”

“What?” Devon whirled around, tense, angry, hands fisted at his sides. “Why would you do that? You brought me here to kill.”

“I continually explain what I brought you here for, showed you, and still you jump to the end of things.” Sebastien sighed. “I suppose it is understandable, humans fear death.”

“You’re a human, and if you can bleed, you can die,” Devon snapped, but he was looking at Sebastien with something closer to interest than fear, for once. “Could you do that? Could your creature find my brother?”

“I will ask, if you like,” Sebastien said. “It sleeps when it is well fed, but it will answer.” He reached out, almost touching Devon’s shoulder but not quite. “Move back against the wall. I will see if I can rouse it.”

“No, you—wait, I don’t, don’t do it again.” Devon swallowed hard, the fear returning.

Sebastien sighed, putting the dominance back in his voice since it had worked before. “Against the wall, my flame. I dislike repeating myself.”

Devon leaned against the window. He was frightened. The demon sent flashes of thoughts to him, Devon strung up in the octagon room, the knife. Sebastien shook his head, slightly. “Put your hands against the windows, there, yes, palms flat. Try not to be so afraid.”

“You’re fucked in the head if you think—” Devon made a noise when Sebastien leaned in, too much like a whimper.

“I’m not going to hurt you, and the demon is full enough for the moment. But it likes fear as a child likes candy, not a necessity but still a delight.” Sebastien paused. “I am going to touch you. Do try and contain your terror, it will be over in a moment.”

“Not helping,” Devon hissed, and closed his eyes tight. “I’m not interested in seeing that—thing, again.”

“You won’t, did you not listen? I told you. It is asleep. But you are still too afraid, hmm, this won’t do. What do you like, what makes you go under?”

Devon’s eyes flew open at that. “What?”

“That is what it is called, isn’t it? I hear the gardener, with the servant woman, you met her. She kneels for him, he puts her under. We’ve watched them together. It was curious, you see, about lust. It had no interest when it wasn’t the same as the man who came here with her, seeking shelter from a storm. I put him under the knife and my gardener put her under.”

“I am—I’m no submissive, d'Hiver, you have me confused with my brother and that worthless prince. I’m a dominant.”

Oh, dear. He really believed that. Sebastien would save that for later, another truth to be given to pull forth the rage he wanted, when his demon wished to feed. “But you must like something. A hand on you?”

“Don’t touch me,” Devon said, low and angry. “Not. Not like. No.”

This was taking longer than it should. Sebastien grabbed his hair and pulled his head back, exposing his throat. Then he leaned in, close enough that he could, if he wished, press his mouth to Devon’s racing pulse. He put all his natural dominance in his voice, but it was soft, almost coaxing. “Quiet, now. You want to know if we can find your brother. Think of him, as you last saw him.”

The surge of anger made him shiver, but he breathed in the sweat-slick scent of Devon’s skin and summoned his demon. It unfurled like a bat, roused by his attentions, and clicked, hissed in its strange language that somehow Sebastien understood. It had to be strong, to use words, but he’d learned over the years what it meant when it spoke thus.

Devon was trying to move, so Sebastien, trying to concentrate, put his hands on his shoulders and pushed him against the window, holding him there. “Stop fighting me, shhh, be still, there, yes,” he said, against Devon’s skin. His pulse was racing, still, but the fear was leaving.

There was something different about this. Something Devon liked. Not having Sebastien so close, he didn’t think, but….

The demon clicked, again.

It was the restraint. Sebastien slid his hands down so he was holding Devon’s wrists, and he felt the shuddering breath as much as he heard it. “There, good,” Sebastien breathed. “Breathe slower, that’s it. You are so at the mercy of your emotions, my flame. It is distracting, delicious, but I need you to be quiet.”

Sebastien pinned him against the wall, and fell into the dark for a moment as the creature within spread its wings in welcome, gazed at him with its hellfire eyes, endless like stars, beautiful, beloved.

It told him what he wanted to know, and in the midst of it, it whispered in its voice like smoke, Host.You feel his body.

Yes, Sebastien thought. I do.

You do not feel their body, when they are for the knife.

Before he could ask what that meant, it pulled away, folded its wings and sank back inside of him. Sebastien blinked his eyes open. He was pinning Devon against the wall, mouth pressed to his pulse, fingers tight on Devon’s wrists as he held him there, still, unmoving.

“I will go into the dark room, and let it come forth from me. It will speak to the things there. Those things will go out, seek your brother.” Sebastien paused, feeling the heat of Devon’s body against his own. “You’re very warm.”

“You’re fucking freezing.” Devon’s voice was different. Drowsy. Knotted with tension, but it wasn’t anger. And there was a hardness pressed against Sebastien’s hip, which...oh.

“So this is what you like.” Sebastien pulled back to look at him. Devon’s eyes were lidded and his pupils blown, and the way he was breathing, it felt like fear but it wasn’t. He made his fingers tighter around Devon’s wrists. It was oddly pleasing, having him obey, go quiet, do as Sebastien wanted. “Well? I asked you a question.”

“I—” Devon closed his eyes. He wasn’t moving, or trying to fight. “Why would you say that.”

“You’re hard, and you’re not moving, and you aren’t afraid.” Sebastien clicked his tongue. “What else would it mean?”

“That I am more fucked up than a killer duke with a demon in his head,” Devon said.

Sebastien rubbed his thumb over the bone of Devon’s wrist. “How strange that I don’t want to flay you alive.” With that, he stepped away and looked hard at Devon, who stared back wild-eyed, his hands still pressed against the glass.

Sebastien tugged his gloves. “You said you did not want my hand on you, so if you need to take care of that, do so. Later, if you like, I will show you the hall of portraits and the gardens. You are free to go about where you like, as long as you do not try and leave the Abbey, which you will not be able to do. I would enjoy sparring with you again. When the demon wants someone to scream, maybe I will bring someone else into the room that isn’t you.” He smiled. “You are interesting, Devon. It has been some time, since we’ve found someone to be so.”

Devon shuddered but said nothing, and Sebastien left him there, trembling against the mirror with the sun bright behind him.

* * *

So this is what you like.

Devon fled the bright, mirrored fencing room, holding his wrist in one hand. He could still feel d'Hiver’s touch, firm but not unyielding, the press of his lips to Devon’s throat, the change in the air as the thing inside him shifted, speaking to him in the silence. He hadn’t been…held, like that, before. Not properly. The closest he had come was that horrible moment the night before, when whatever that creature was hooked its spectral claws around his soul and held it, gently, like an apple plucked from the tree.

“There’s something wrong with me,” Devon whispered. He pushed into the baths and frantically turned the taps, drowning the stone room with the sound of water on porcelain. Then he sank to his knees on the stone, pressed his forehead to the side of the tub, and pushed down his trousers to free his hard, aching cock.

He always knew he was fucked up. Ever since he started talking back, started pushing up against his father’s dominance, making things difficult, he was…wrong, somehow. Not polite and submissive like Marius, who called everyone sport and sir and believed it, besides, but jagged, thorny, too much trouble for anything but a rough hand and a disappointed scowl. He’d stood in disgrace in his father’s office often enough to prove it, reading out the rules of etiquette for a proper second son of a noble house, which were right there next to the rules for submissives, a lesser honor in the Chastain line.

He thought of d'Hiver, holding him against the mirror while the demon that devoured him brushed against the edges of Devon’s soul, and groaned as he wrapped his hand around his cock. The water drowned it out, as it did at home, masked the weak, broken panting steaming the side of the tub as he thought of d'Hiver with a sword, d'Hiver holding his head back by the hair, the weight of him pinning Devon to the mirror.

Water spilled over the edge of the bath as Devon came, half sobbing his relief into the porcelain. He fumbled for the taps, breathless as he always was, after, and only just remembered to take off his shoes before climbing, fully clothed, into the bath.

D'Hiver was mad. Maybe Devon was, too, or falling into it by proxy, influenced by the creature sharing d'Hiver’s mind. He’d just asked a demon to find Marius. Marius, who would probably just, oh, charm or bewilder d'Hiver into letting him go, too pleasant and cheerful to be of any use to a demon that ate fear.

Devon laughed hollowly. “Maybe I’m used to it,” he said, sitting in a steaming bath in his clothes. “Demons. Fear. I’m already becoming one, just like.”

No. Not the same. He wasn’t the same. He would never—

But Devon had hired Sabre, another cheerful, pleasant submissive finally brought low, in the House of Onyx. Beaten him. Whipped him, the way a dominant was supposed to, but all Devon had felt was sick, even as Sabre moaned under the treatment. If that’s what a submissive was, if they…if they enjoyed it, then d'Hiver had to be wrong, before. Devon was a dominant. He was just broken, somehow, his desires twisted, turned in on himself.

“Fuck,” Devon said, softly. “I’m a mess.”

He got out of the bath. He stripped out of his sodden clothes, stopped himself from grabbing his wrist again, seeking out the pressure of a hand there, and dragged out another towel. The hall beyond was sunnier, now, the windows opened all the way, and his bedroom was still warm from the dying fire. He changed, brushed his hair, and ran his fingers along the books on the walls. They were mostly novels, some old enough to be hand-written, from back when scribes used to paint illustrations in the letters at the head of the page.

Devon headed up the stairs this time, when he left. The third floor was all empty bedrooms and drawing rooms, most of the furniture covered in sheets, and Devon wondered, as he peered inside and saw motifs of birds or trees on the walls, if they’d belonged to d'Hiver’s family, once. If he ever bothered to open the doors.

There was one room Devon would have chosen for himself, if he could, nearly at the end of the hall. The windows were wide and sunken, low enough for children to pull up a cushion and watch the snow fall outside, and there were paintings that, when Devon pulled back the sheets, looked like they were Kallistoi in origin. There was one of a girl playing piano to a little dog and a boy on the rug, laughing, dark hair pinned and curled. The boy was smiling softly, a hand on the dogs back.

All the paintings were like that. Bright. Beautiful, but mundane, paintings of people laughing in a kitchen or scowling at a child trying to hide a horse in a ballroom. None of them belonged in a house with a demon.

There were couches made with soft, pale linen and worn marks on the rug, and when Devon pulled back the cloth over a massive table, he actually laughed at the sight of the kind of children’s piano he used to have, at the Chastain estate. It must have been made by the same person—too small for a proper noble party, but serviceable, with pedals that a child could reach. Perfect for a noble boy begging to take lessons in the nursery.

“It must be terribly out of tune,” Devon said, lifting the back of it. “Or it unleashes flying rats that dispense a plague.” He set the lid down again and pulled out the short, narrow stool some poor child probably had to sit on while their tutor despaired.

“Do you like music?” Devon asked the air. “Ah, no, screaming doesn’t count, I suppose.”

He was probably having some sort of hysterical episode.

It had been years since Devon touched a piano. He used to play all the time, even when he started his difficult years. Maybe it started out of some misplaced attempt to prove he was still noble enough to be worth something, but the truth was, Devon enjoyed it. Figuring out a new song was a comfort, one he fled to when he had nowhere else to go. But too much interest in the piano was considered unseemly for a second son, and the piano had been locked and put away into storage, with young Devon prowling the halls like a restless cat for weeks.

He tried out a few chords—yes, it was slightly out of tune—and settled into the notes of a classic, one of his favorite scores. The musician had written it to be played outside, when the winds of autumn came, and it was full of swelling movements and little, intricate melodies. It was a puzzle of a song, the kind of song Devon could get lost in, and he didn’t even stop and scowl like he would have before, when his fingers slipped on a key.

It was a little like how it felt after the demon had held him, the night before, but lighter, less of an absence and more of a burden being quietly set aside.

He finished the song with a flourish, which he always added just for himself, and broke into the chorus of another song, one of the ones they played at dances in the country. Everyone knew them—they were meant to be danced in a line, in ballrooms or in barns, fields and drawing rooms, repetitious and far too catchy.

“Ah, damn, I don’t know the words to this one,” Devon said to the empty air. “A girl goes to the market and comes back with a baby a year later, probably.”

“I wouldn’t know, either,” said a soft voice behind him, and Devon’s fingers slipped on the keys, banging out a discordant note.

Sebastien d'Hiver was standing at the door. He looked almost lost, like he wasn’t quite sure what to make of the room, or the piano, or possibly Devon, and he was holding his cane in both hands.

“It’s just a country song,” Devon said. “They’re all like that. Did it upset your…demon? Was it too loud?”

“Oh, no. We heard it downstairs,” d'Hiver said. “We haven’t heard…ah, my demon hasn’t heard it before. I forgot the piano was there.”

“If you don’t want me to play,” Devon said, glancing behind d'Hiver as though the demon would emerge from his shadow, winged and snarling.

D'Hiver gave him another one of his slow, curious looks. “Can you play another? Like the first one?”

“I don’t remember that many,” Devon said. He played the first notes of a song he’d learned as a child, with his tutor playing one side of the piano while he played the next. It was simple enough, but d'Hiver seemed to go still, his shoulders straightening as though trying to accommodate for the wings he claimed to have, his eyes bright, pale hair lighter still in the sun. He closed his eyes, and Devon wondered if that thing was listening, wearing him like a coat, drinking in the music like it had drained Devon’s anger.

When he was done, d'Hiver sighed, softly, and tilted his head like a cat seeking the sound of a mouse in the walls.

“Do you want another?” Devon asked, curious despite himself. d'Hiver looked almost pleased, almost peaceful, even as the air seemed to charge about him like a storm.

“Yes,” d'Hiver said, and his voice, now, did not entirely feel like his own.

Devon lay his hands on the keys, took a long, steady breath, and began to play.