Page 60 of The Demon Mark

His stores of magic were, as expected, in perfect shape. But that suggested that he had rested a very long time to get them back into that full state.

Blinking his eyes open, he stared at the ceiling of what was his bedroom.

Not Lilith’s, shockingly. The familiar carved scene of a great hunt as a group of humans road horses into the trap of waiting monsters in the trees. He’d always loved the piece, and had commissioned it time and time again until it was perfect.

Tilting his head to the side, he was shocked to find how difficult it was just to turn his head. But then his eyes caught on the glimmering gold creature who flitted around his room and he didn’t care about the pain anymore.

She was so pretty. Her marble white skin gleamed in the light of his room. Orphe must have said the spells to make it daylight, because all he could see was her beauty in the fake sunlight before his balcony. She stood in front of his stores of potions.

Each bottle held something very specific inside of it. They helped certain ailments, certain people, and other things that he wasn’t even sure of at this point. He’d gotten into potion making in one of his more... morose years of being an immortal. And the next century had been days on end of creating every potion known to mankind. Then he made his own, and it had gotten out of hand.

Considering how many bottles she pulled down, looked at, and then set back down, he knew it was a struggle for her to identify them.

Clearing his throat, he tried to speak through his dry mouth. “Left side.”

She spun around, her hair flinging in front of her face before she shoved it out of the way. And he got lost in her wide-eyed stare.

Damn it. He hadn’t realized just how far he’d fallen under her spell until this moment. It wasn’t just that she was changing him, or that he wanted her attention. It was quite literally that he liked the woman.

Envy liked the way she looked at him and smiled. He liked the way the light filtered through her hair and the strange way her eyes turned to stone when she was seeing prophecies. He liked that she even cared to tell people their prophecies. Envy himself would never have thought to give someone an answer that would prolong their lives. He’d always done everything, intending to serve himself. Never... others.

She made him want to be a different man. Perhaps a better man, and that was terrifying in itself.

Lilith came over to him, pressing the back of her hand to his forehead. “You’re awake.”

A black wing spread between them, and Orphe peered down into his line of sight. “You should not be awake.”

“Go get Sloth,” he wheezed.

“My lord, you are too ill to be awake. You should go back to sleep.”

“Find my brother and let him know what has happened. He will want to know that there is an uprising in my court. Perhaps he’ll be interested in getting out of his kingdom for a little while.”

As if that would ever happen. But all he wanted was for Orphe to leave so he could have a few minutes alone with his oracle. His spirit sighed, and Orphe shook her head at him before taking off. She flung herself out of the balcony and up into the open air of his kingdom. She would continue skyward until she escaped out of the smallest opening that he had left specifically for her.

But then they were alone, and he could feast his eyes on the beauty before him with no interruptions.

She looked down at him with a soft expression. “Maybe Orphe is right. Are you supposed to be awake right now?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re the one with all the healing background. Don’t you have magic you could use?”

He did, but he didn’t want to use magic right now. He wanted her to take care of him.

So he lied. “My magic will need to rest for a while yet or I’ll hurt myself even worse.”

She saw right through that lie. Her eyes narrowed, and for a moment, he thought she would call him out on that. Instead, she turned on her heel and started back toward the potions. “Left side, you said?”

Envy took his time easing himself upright. The headboard propped him up with all the pillows she’d piled around him as well. And then he imperiously gave her directions, giving her the wrong ones on purpose so he could watch her body move and stretch in every direction he wanted to see.

She really was beautiful. If a little small and perhaps scrawny, every bit of her still called out to him. Even with the pain in his body.

“Did Sloth give you the antidote?” he asked as she came back with the correct healing vial.

“No, actually. I used the tip of the chimera’s tail and boiled the goat head. Apparently, that’s how the antidote is made.” She shrugged, handing the vial over. “Orphe brought someone from the city below and I read their future. Luckily, they were also the one who had provided the chimera in the first place. One of their futures was that they were bitten themselves.”

He arched a brow and downed the minty flavored potion. “Is that so? Who would have guessed?”

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