I lay on my bunk like someone had left me there and forgotten to come back. Two days passed since the hearing, but they might as well have been poured from the same hour. Nothing changed. Nothing shifted. The ceiling above me looked the same as it always did, its pale slabs collecting whatever weak light leaked in through the narrow window.
My body felt like it remembered how to breathe only out of habit.
The psychiatric session hadn't helped. I sat across from her in a room that smelled of disinfectant and paper, and she kept her voice soft, kept her posture open, as if she expected me to meet her halfway. She had kind eyes, warm in a way that unsettled me more than anything else these days. She looked at me as though I still lived in a world she believed could be repaired. I barely talked. She didn't push. That almost broke me more than interrogation ever did.
She scheduled another session. I nodded because I had nothing else to offer her. I didn't want to go. I didn't want to speak. I didn't want to sit in that chair again and look at someone who imagined I could be something other than this.
I closed my eyes. The dark behind them wasn't quiet. It carried the weight of everything I had tried not to think about.
I killed Eddie. I killed Cole. I didn't mean to kill either of them.
The realization pressed into my chest with a slow, crushing heaviness.
Poppy once mentioned that Cole dragged Eddie to those poker nights with his rich clients—said it would help him "network," get close to men who liked their entertainment expensive and illicit. And I burned that whole place down. I burned them while thinking I was burning an empty home on a quiet street.
I never wanted it to reach this point.
My breath tightened. I opened my eyes.
There was a raven standing on the floor near the edge of the bed.
My chest lurched. I blinked hard, squeezing my eyes shut until my skull throbbed.
Hallucination, I thought. Stress. Solitary. Sleep.
I opened my eyes again.
Corvian stood where the bird had been. No shift. No sound. Just presence—sudden and complete, like he stepped through the air and chose to be visible.
"Oh, fuck," I whispered.
He tilted his head. "You collapsed quickly."
My body didn't move. I stayed curled on my side, cheek against the thin pillow, the blanket tangled around my legs. I felt empty in a way that made movement pointless.
"I couldn't take it anymore," I said. "This was worse than when you dragged me into memories."
The corner of my mouth lifted before I realized it had. A small, brittle smile.
Corvian's eyes narrowed. "You're smiling?"
"Yes." My voice sounded worn, almost fragile. "Because you're finally here. I kept beating men up so they'd send me back to solitary, hoping you'd show up. But you never did."
He let out a breath that resembled frustration. "You missed me?"
"So fucking much."
"That's unhealthy."
"This is the healthiest thing in this shithole."
Corvian studied me with a stillness that made the room feel hotter. His shape held that quiet gravity he always carried, the kind that made the world fold a little around him without noise.
"You don't think I look hideous?" he asked.
I shook my head, still lying on my side, too tired to lift anything more than that.
He stepped closer, the floor responding to his weight in a subtle tremor that crawled up the metal frame of the bed.
"Do you want to come with me?" he asked.
A chill threaded through me. "Where?"
"Where I originally belong."
I swallowed, the dry weight catching in my throat. "Hell?"
"Something like that."
A quiet laugh escaped me — a tired, cracked sound, but still a laugh. "Say it as it is."
Corvian lowered himself a little, as if trying to find my line of sight without making me move. His presence warmed the corner of the cell. A strange kind of warmth, not comforting, but familiar enough to make my chest tighten.
And for the first time in days, maybe weeks, I didn't feel completely alone in my skin.
Corvian didn't answer immediately. He stood in the dim corner of the cell as if choosing his words required combing through centuries of what he had witnessed and what he had destroyed. His outline felt sharper in the half-light, a shape older than language, yet familiar in the way shadows are familiar when you've lived long enough in darkness.
"You say 'hell'," he began, "as though it is a single thing. A chamber. A pit. A punishment. Humans made it that way so they could draw maps of their fears."
His voice carried a low resonance that slipped across the concrete floor and climbed into the air above us, settling somewhere near the ceiling like heat rising.
"It isn't a place," he said. "Not the way you think of places. It is a state of being. A realm carved out of what was cast away — creation without grace, order without kindness. Imagine a world built from the remnants of every choice that led to ruin. A country shaped from echoes."
My throat tightened, though I didn't feel fear. Not like before.
Corvian stepped closer. His presence pressed into the cell, filling it with a subtle warmth that made my skin ache with relief. He moved with that quiet inevitability he always had, like he had been born out of stillness and never learned to break it.
"It is a kingdom of consequence," he continued. "Not fire. Fire is just a symbol because you fear it. It is… an accumulation. Fallen things gathering under the weight of what they lost. Souls, beings, remnants of angels, memories that refused to die properly."
He reached the side of the bunk.
Then, without warning, he lowered himself to sit beside me.
The mattress dipped under his weight. The shift drew a soft creak from the frame, and for the first time since I'd been locked in here, the bed felt like something more than a slab of metal and fabric. The warmth of him seeped through the thin blanket, reaching my back like a slow tide. My muscles loosened without my permission.
I hadn't realized how rigid my body had become until he was near enough to soften it.
"Hell," he said quietly, "is where creatures like me originate. Not born. Not created. Condensed. Forged out of the space that formed when the universe tried to reject what it couldn't bear."
He turned slightly, enough for me to sense his face angled toward mine even if I didn't lift my head from the pillow.
"It is cruel," he said. "Not by design. By nature. Everything there gnaws at everything else because nothing there is whole."
The silence between us thickened. I let my eyes close again. His voice was too close, too steady, too warm to resist.
"But," he added, "it is home."
My chest rose with a slow breath. "Why would you want to take me there?"
His answer came without hesitation.
"Because you've already begun to resemble us."
A chill traced my spine, but not unpleasantly. It felt like a truth I had known and refused to name.
He adjusted slightly on the bed. The metal frame shifted again, a soft groan of complaint. His knee brushed the blanket against my hip, not quite touching me, but close enough to outline the space between us.
I let the comfort settle. It felt wrong, but everything in this place felt wrong, and Corvian's presence was the only thing that didn't collapse me further into the floor.
"You're very calm," he murmured.
"I'm tired," I whispered. "And you're warm."
He huffed a quiet sound, almost amused. "That is not what I expected."
I opened my eyes a little, enough to see the outline of him sitting beside me — tall, still, broad-shouldered, shadowed by something ancient and unspoken.
"I didn't want to die alone," I said, the admission slipping out without effort. "Even if the place you're talking about isn't… safe."
"Safe," he repeated, tasting the word as if it didn't belong in his mouth. "You keep looking for safety in me."
"Because I don't have it anywhere else."
He didn't respond, but the air around him shifted, as though the cell itself leaned closer to listen.
And despite everything — the fire, the confession, Eddie, Cole, the sentence waiting for me in some cold courtroom I hadn't seen yet — I felt comforted.
Not saved. Not protected. Just… less alone.
His presence eased something in me I hadn't realized had been clenched for months.
For the first time in days, maybe longer, I let my body sink fully into the mattress.
"You shouldn't be here," I murmured.
"I know."
"But I'm glad you are."
Corvian didn't move. Didn't breathe in any way a human would. But something in the room softened, as though he allowed the space between us to mean something.
"Hugo," he said quietly, "if you come with me, you won't return."
A long, slow exhale left me.
"I didn't think I would return anyway."
Corvian stayed beside me, his presence warming the narrow bed in a way that made the whole cell feel smaller, yet somehow more bearable. I felt the mattress dip a little more as he shifted, and then his hand moved, quiet and sure, brushing a strand of hair from my forehead as though he had rehearsed the gesture centuries ago and only now remembered the shape of it.
His fingers glided from my temple to the curve behind my ear. The touch steadied something in me I hadn't known could still be steadied.
"You know," he said, his voice low enough that the walls kept it for themselves, "I made a mistake when the police arrived at your house. The first time. When we came back from that interview."
My eyes fluttered open, though I didn't lift my head. "What mistake?"
"I blurred their memory. It worked at first, long enough for us to enter the house. I thought the interference would hold. I sensed they were coming for you — instinct does that, even when reason doesn't follow." He paused, his hand resting against my cheek, warm, steady, almost human. "And all I could think about… was sleeping with you. I had no other thoughts in my head. Nothing rational. Nothing strategic. Only hunger."
The admission settled heavily between us.
"I could have let you run," he said. "You would have been free now. Not safe, but free. And instead of acting on that, instead of even considering it, I—" He shifted again, almost in frustration, "—I let instinct decide. I let desire decide."
A small breath escaped me, something between a laugh and a sigh.
"You're not supposed to be generous," I said softly. "I know your nature. You're not meant to be accommodating. You're not meant to be caring. Sometimes you slip. That's all."
His fingers paused against my face.
"Even if I had run," I added, "I would've stayed a fugitive. I would've fallen apart under the pressure anyway. My face was everywhere. I had no chance of disappearing. You didn't ruin anything that wasn't already ruined."
He stared at me for a long moment. "Are you trying to comfort me?"
"I don't know," I said. "Maybe. But I'm also just stating facts."
He exhaled, a sound that shifted the air around us. "Fine."
He withdrew his hand briefly, only to place it near my ribs, where the mark lived beneath the skin. The warmth of it made my breath tighten.
"Anyway," he said, almost grudgingly, "it wasn't just me. Harry canceled the blur."
"I figured it out in court," I murmured. "I already knew why they brought him. It was obvious. He's the counter-energy to mine. A vessel made of resistance."
Corvian nodded once. "Everything went wrong after that. Nothing aligned. Nothing worked. But it's fine. Nobody gets it right the first time. Humans never understand how to navigate bigger entities. They handle pacts the way children handle sharp glass."
His tone shifted, almost contemplative.
"I told you about the woman who tried praying over me," he said. "She believed she could redeem me. She imploded in front of her own altar. And the man who kept asking me for food — he was assigned to me by chance. He grew up starved, so he asked and asked and asked. He died of gluttony, drowning in excess he wasn't built to survive."
I kept listening, my cheek still pressed to the pillow, the steady presence of him anchoring me.
"Every human I've accompanied has been a different story," he continued. "A different set of flaws, fears, cravings. I never knew what to expect."
"And you decided I was going to be your last," I said quietly. "You marked me. And now you want to take me with you."
"Yes."
"How long have I been with you?" I asked.
"You?" His voice softened in a way I hadn't heard in months. "You're the longest I've ever stayed with someone. Six months, I believe. That's the record. Three thousand one hundred eighty-one years, and you lasted the longest."
My eyebrows lifted. "You're three thousand one hundred eighty-one years old?"
"Yes."
I blinked. "Damn."
A faint tug pulled at the corner of his mouth — a devil's version of amusement.
"Want to hear something else?" he asked.
"Sure."
"We share the same birth date," he said. "For you it's birth. For me it's creation. Dates mean nothing in my world, but we kept them around because humans insisted on giving meaning to cycles."
My eyes widened despite the exhaustion weighing them down.
"We share the same day?" "Yes."
"So my last birthday was also your birthday?"
"Pretty much," he said.
Something warm, absurd, and almost painful unfurled under my ribs. A strange tenderness. A strange comfort.
I kept staring at him, feeling the mattress cradle both our weights, feeling the mark pulse softly under his proximity, feeling the smallest slice of wonder cut through the exhaustion.
"Happy late birthday, then," I whispered.
His eyes sharpened — an ancient creature startled by a softness he never planned for.
And for the first time since the fire, I felt alive enough to mean it.
Corvian stayed close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from him through the thin blanket. He didn't move for a while, as if he were waiting for me to break the silence first. The air between us felt charged in a way that made my skin prickle, not with fear, but with something older, heavier, almost ceremonial.
My hand moved before I realized I intended it.
Not a dramatic gesture. Not a reach. Just the slow, uncertain lift of my fingers from the blanket. I let them hover near his wrist, barely brushing his skin. His warmth caught beneath my touch, and he went still, his breath pausing the same way shadows pause when the light flickers.
It was the first time I touched him without fear or desperation. The first time I reached for him willingly.
My fingertips traced the line of his wristbones, light enough that I wasn't even sure he'd feel it. But he did. His eyes lowered to my hand, then returned to my face with a focus that tightened something deep under my ribs.
"What happens," I asked, my voice hoarse, "if I say yes?"
Corvian didn't answer immediately. He let my touch linger where it was, neither drawing away nor moving closer. That stillness told me more about him than any words he had spoken today.
"What happens," he echoed, "depends on what you think you're agreeing to."
"You said you wanted to take me where you're from."
"I did."
"And if I say yes," I said, tightening my fingers around his wrist in a quiet, fragile hold, "what happens to me?"
His eyes darkened — not color, but depth. A shift, like witnessing an eclipse from inches away.
"You stop belonging to this world," he said. "That is the first thing."
The words slipped into the cell like a draft, cold and absolute.
"You stop being subject to its laws. Its gravity. Its judgment. Its time." He lowered his head slightly, not enough to feel like comfort, more like truth bending toward me. "You stop waiting for verdicts written by frightened mortals."
My throat tightened.
"And the second thing?" I whispered.
"You belong somewhere else," he said, voice low enough to blur against the walls. "To someone else."
My grip on his wrist faltered, then steadied.
"Someone else," I repeated. "You mean you."
He didn't deny it.
"That is the nature of the mark," he said quietly. "You were never meant to be a passing acquaintance. Not after I claimed you. But I did not expect you to survive this long. Humans… usually falter long before you."
He said it the way one might recount an ancient rule etched into stone.
"And if I go with you," I asked again, softer, "what becomes of me?"
He looked at me with a stillness so profound it felt like the room shrank to hold it.
"You become what the mark intended," he said. "Something no longer human. Something bound. Something that doesn't die the way humans die."
I inhaled sharply, though the air felt thin.
"You mean I'd be trapped."
He considered my words, then nodded once. "Yes. But not here."
A silence settled between us, thick and warm. My thumb drew a slow line across the inside of his wrist — a small gesture, but it felt like a confession.
He looked down at the touch again.
"You're doing that willingly," he said, almost to himself.
"I know."
"I didn't think you ever would."
"I didn't think you'd give me the chance."
He leaned slightly closer, enough that I could feel his presence wrap around me like a cloak.
"Hugo," he said, my name a quiet weight on his tongue, "if you say yes, I take you with me and you never return. Not to this cell. Not to this world. Not to anything that used to hurt you."
My breath trembled.
"And if I say no?"
He didn't hesitate.
"Then you die here."
He simply stated it, the way one states the weather.
I tightened my fingers around his wrist — a small, steady hold.
"Then tell me this," I whispered. "If I say yes… do I still get to be myself?"
He tilted his head, studying me as though the question itself carried gravity.
"You would be yourself," he said, "in the way a flame is still itself after it's taken a different shape."
Something in my chest pulled tight at the edges.
"And is that such a terrible thing?" he asked.
I didn't answer. I let my hand remain on him, my breath settling, my pulse slowing under the weight of the choice forming in the quiet.
He didn't push. He waited. And the waiting felt like the closest thing to kindness he had ever given me.
I shifted on the mattress, moving slowly because everything inside me felt thin, like paper left out in the rain. The blanket scraped softly as I turned onto my back, then onto my other side until I faced him completely. The metal frame of the bunk creaked in protest under the shift of my weight, but the sound didn't break the stillness. Corvian didn't move away. He watched every inch of the turn as if the decision to face him held its own meaning.
My head rested on the pillow, and the angle brought my face closer to his thigh, his shoulder, the column of his throat. He seemed larger from this position, the presence of him filling more of the cell than the walls could hold. I looked up at him and let myself breathe for what felt like the first time in days.
His eyes stayed on me, dark and steady, a gaze made of quiet storms and old hunger.
"You turned toward me," he said.
"I know."
"That is unusual for you."
"I know that too."
He waited, not urging me forward, not pulling the words out of me. Just waiting, in that way he had — still, watchful, patient the way only a being old enough to forget the taste of time could be.
I swallowed, feeling the dryness of my throat. "Corvian," I said, voice frayed at the edges, "can I tell you something without you twisting it into what you think it means?"
His head tilted a fraction. "I can try."
That was as close to a promise as his kind ever gave.
So I let the truth rise, slow and heavy.
"When you disappeared," I said, "when I stopped feeling you through the mark… I didn't know what to do with myself. Not because of magic. Not because I needed power. Not because of the things you gave me."
My fingers tightened in the blanket.
"It was the silence," I whispered. "Your silence. That's what broke me. I didn't understand how loud the world was until you weren't in it."
His eyes sharpened, but he said nothing.
I kept going.
"I'm tired of being alone. I've been alone my whole fucking life and didn't even realize how much it hurt until you left. And when you finally appeared again—here, in this place—I felt something I haven't felt in months."
"What was it?" he asked quietly.
"Relief."
The word cracked on the way out.
His posture stilled, as if the air tightened around him.
I reached up, slow and hesitant, and let my fingertips rest lightly on his forearm. Just a touch. Nothing more. But it felt like offering something I didn't have a name for. Something stripped bare. Something I'd never chosen to give anyone before him.
He looked at where my hand touched him, as if the contact unsettled him more deeply than any prayer, pact, or plea he'd heard in three thousand years.
"Hugo," he said softly, "this is not a feeling you should give to creatures like me."
"I don't have anyone else to give it to," I whispered. "That's the problem."
His jaw tightened, a faint ripple of emotion—frustration, longing, confusion—passing through him.
"And there's something else," I said.
His gaze returned to my face, sharper now.
"When you marked me… it didn't feel like possession. It felt like you wanted to keep me alive. Even if you won't admit that out loud."
A long pause stretched between us.
"That was not my intention," he murmured.
"I know. But it happened anyway."
I let my hand slide a little higher along his arm, resting near the bend of his elbow. He didn't pull away. He didn't move at all. He let me touch him, truly touch him, like something sacred or forbidden.
"I'm not asking for salvation," I said. "Or safety. I'm not asking for you to change what you are. I just… want honesty."
He breathed once — a slow exhale that felt like a tide pulling back.
"And what is your confession?" he asked.
"That I don't want to die here," I whispered, eyes burning. "Not like this. Not alone. Not forgotten. Not in this fucking cell."
The silence between us deepened, filled with a tension that felt ancient and heavy.
He lowered himself slightly, leaning closer without touching me. His face hovered just above mine, close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating from him, close enough that I could sense the shift of his breath.
"Hugo," he said, quiet as falling ash, "if you say yes to me, you won't die alone."
My breath stilled.
"And," he added, voice a low tide, "you won't be forgotten."
I stared up at him, my hand still on his arm, my pulse trembling beneath my skin. Something in his eyes changed—just slightly—but enough to make the world tilt around us.
I felt the decision breathing between us, hot and heavy, not yet spoken but circling closer with every second.
I didn't answer him. Not yet.
But I didn't let go of his arm either.
I kept my hand on his arm, feeling the warmth beneath his skin, heavier and more real than anything I had touched in months. His eyes held mine with a depth that made the air feel thicker around us.
The words formed slowly in my chest, gathering weight before they rose to my mouth.
"I'll come with you," I said.
His expression didn't change, but something shifted behind it, like watching a tide pull back before a storm.
"But," I continued, tightening my fingers slightly around his arm, "I want one last thing."
Corvian's head tilted, a gesture that carried curiosity and caution in equal measure. "What?"
I swallowed, the dryness scraping down my throat. "Before I ask… I need you to try to understand my request. Please. This would be my dying wish."
He let out a soft, sharp sound — not quite a sigh, not quite a laugh, something between exasperation and disbelief.
"A dying wish," he repeated. "Humans love dramatics."
"It matters to me," I whispered.
He scoffed, rolling his eyes upward as though consulting some invisible ledger of patience. "Fine," he said. "Just say it."
His voice settled into the small space between us like a spark waiting for ignition.