Page 76 of The Demon Mark

Scratching the back of his neck, his brother became more and more uncomfortable. “Maybe. Yes? I don’t know. You see, she always... She made it seem as though that was to be expected from our kind. We were supposed to change. Spirits moved throughout the emotions and lived every life we might live. It was our reason for being.”

Envy hadn’t expected him to just come right out with it. After all that, Sloth had argued, he’d expected his brother to fight him a bit.

Instead, he walked over to his chair and settled in to listen. “She sounds like she knew a lot about our kind.”

“She did. She had seen spirits throughout all of her life. Seeing into this world and the next was sort of power for her. Like your oracle there, she knew how to bend the veil of the realms in her favor.” He sighed. “She was perhaps the most impressive woman I have ever met.”

“What happened to her?”

“The same as all humans. She fell in love. I fell in love with her as well.” Sloth tensed at the sound Envy made in his throat. “I know it’s hard to believe. But if you asked our other three brothers how they felt about their women, what would they say?”

“That they were more in love with them than they were with breath.”

He’d asked Gluttony before. Long after his brother had met his partner, and after Envy had healed her. There was a certain disbelief that came with any of their kind saying those words, though.

The demon kings were not talented at loving anything other than themselves. And frankly, most of them didn’t even do that. Envy knew what it meant to love. He’d seen humans throw those words around his entire life, not to mention that they’d believed them. But until now, he hadn’t thought it was a real emotion.

Until her.

“They fell in love later in our lives, though. When did you fall in love?” He narrowed his gaze on Sloth. “And the truth this time. No dancing around it. You know, I know, so you might as well give it all up.”

Sloth nodded. “This was many centuries ago. We were still early in our development. I was still... young. But she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, and she wasn’t afraid of me. Back then, most of the humans in my kingdom skirted around me. They were terrified that one look from me would set them ablaze or some other nonsense. But she walked right up to me, looked me over, and said it looked like I had a problem. She might be able to fix it.”

“How’d she do that?”

“Fucking. A lot of it,” Sloth replied with a chuckle. “And then a lot of talking. She fascinated me. Every bit of who she was, what she had seen, all the beauty of her very short life and how she didn’t fear the end of that life. It captivated me.”

Envy knew a bit of what that felt like. His obsession with Lilith ran deep, and that was perhaps a little terrifying, to say the least. He wasn’t sure how to help, though. Considering he knew where this story ended.

“What happened to her?” he asked, knowing that he was ripping at an old wound. “She’s not with us. You’re still Sloth.”

“I...” Sloth blinked a few times before looking away from him. “She wanted me to change. She’d seen many spirits like us shift in what and who they were. She’d just watched a spirit of virtue turn into one of degradation and she was feeling as though she had failed in helping it. She was so adamant that she would help me change into something else.”

“But?” Envy asked when his brother trailed off.

“I was young. I didn’t want to change who I was. Sloth is an emotion that is easy and comfortable to feel. There is no change that will happen if one does not want to change who they are. She couldn’t convince me to do it. I couldn’t convince her to let it go. We argued more and more, and I continued to tell her that if she didn’t stop arguing with me, that I would eventually resent her for it.” Sloth stared down at his fingers. “I never would have. I’d have kept her until her very last day, basking in her beauty and loving her for every inch of who she was.”

As heartbreaking as it was, it didn’t answer Envy’s question. “What happened to her, Sloth?”

“I let her go. She didn’t want to stay and in a fit of anger, I told her to do whatever she wanted. She could run, but wherever she went, I would find her and drag her back to my kingdom.” Sloth shook his head. “She found the only place where I couldn’t follow.”

Envy blew out a long, slow breath. “So she killed herself?”

“And said those exact words when I found her. She’d already slit her wrists straight up from the palm to her elbow. It was quicker than I even knew they could die, but she made sure she was still alive to tell me exactly what your oracle just said.” Sloth shook his head again, like a dog shaking off water. “You will spend the rest of your life searching for me, demon. Waste all your many years trying to replace me. I will not go to the land of the dead until your suffering is complete.”

The words hung between them. A summoning and an omen all at the same time. And yet again, the strange sensation of a ghost passing between them. But as Envy looked closer into the feeling and the ice that trailed down his back, he realized it wasn’t a ghost after all. It was the remains of a true curse. One that lingered even though the caster had been long dead.

Sloth chuckled, but the sound had no mirth to it. “Apparently, she refused to go to the land of the dead, and that means she’s back. I don’t know whether to waste all my time trying to find her again, or run as far from this fate as I can.”

Envy’s mind raced with all this information. He couldn’t ask his brother to help him now, not when he knew what was at stake. Sloth had so many more things to deal with right now than Envy’s troubles. And yet, he had to ask his brother to help him. Even though...

“I shouldn’t ask you to be here now,” he muttered. “Not after we know that she’s alive. That you could find her again.”

“No, it is good that I’m here.” Sloth seemed to hesitate on the words, before continuing. “She would have wanted me to help. Besides, there’s nothing you can do, Envy. If there is anyone who could help me, it’s Pride.”

They both shuddered at the name, but Envy hated it much more than his brother. “Are you certain? That seems drastic to ask the...”

“Fop?” Sloth interjected. “The asshat we all know and hate?”

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