Page 69 of The Demon Mark

Sighing, she pressed her forehead to his shoulder and breathed out all the anxiety that filled her lungs. “I am afraid, Envy. Of so many things. But most of all, I’m afraid of you.”

“Why?”

“Because I cannot see your future. I do not know what you are going to do or why you’re going to do it. I cannot see what you have done or who you once were. All I can see is darkness.”

His lips pressed to her hair, his hand skating down her back. “Why is that, oracle?”

She didn’t want to tell him. But the words still flew free from her mouth, regardless. “I’m afraid that our futures are too intricately intertwined. I cannot see my future at all, just a darkness like I see in yours. I fear that our souls are so tangled that your future and my own are impossible to untangle.”

The words hung between them, a nail in the coffin to their safety. Without their future, she couldn’t predict what would happen or how she could save them. She had to sit and wait just like everyone else did. For her death? Perhaps.

Or his.

And she didn’t know what she’d do if she was the one who failed to keep them safe. After all that he had done for her, she wanted to be the person who actually did something right for once.

He sighed, then tugged her a little closer to him. “I’m going to meet with one of my brothers. Perhaps he will have something to tell us. Something that can help protect us both, but also help end this problem in our kingdom. Then we can focus on just the two of us. How does that sound?”

Terrifying. But she still nodded her head against his shoulder and stayed lingering in his warmth until he disappeared from her grip.

And just like that, she was alone again.

27

The last person he wanted to ask for advice was Sloth. His brother hadn’t been all that helpful the last time he asked him about this situation, but that meeting had haunted him.

Sloth wasn’t telling him everything, and that secret would burn a hole through Envy’s entire being. So he left a few of his tattoos in the castle to keep an eye on Lilith and stepped through the portal into Sloth’s home.

His brothers were all very different in the way that they lived. Envy liked to live in his underground kingdom with the perfection of all the marble sculptures keeping him company. Lust liked his flowers and beauty. Greed enjoyed the unbent wilderness of the desert that surrounded him. Even Gluttony allowed the swamps to grow out of control in his home and never touched their wildness.

Sloth, on the other hand, liked to bend everything he could to his will. His home was meant to be comfort personified. Though it was a desert kingdom, similar to Greed’s, it was significantly more easy to traverse. Sloth had taken his time with this kingdom in the beginning, making sure every single person knew who he was and that he wanted luxury.

His kingdom and subsequent castle then became a monument to that luxury. Instead of building a castle, he had transformed the desert into what he wanted. Red sheets created walls, flapping in the wind that never ceased blowing here. Pillows decorated the ground, next to thick woven rugs that kept all the sands out. Walking through these rooms was like listening to whispers all the time.

No one spoke loudly here. It was impossible to talk without assuming someone was listening to you. Of course, that was the point. Sloth didn’t trust a single person and, as such, he had spies in every corner.

A group of scantily clad women walked by him. More red spilled around their bodies, some of them in silk and others in nothing more than a sheer gauze that was beautiful, even though it revealed so much more of their body than any other fabric. They lingered in the corners of the strange halls, watching him with hungry eyes.

Because everyone here was hungry. Not for food, but for power. The people who knew the most in this kingdom were the ones who got closest to his brother. And in doing so, they were given more power and more ability to do whatever and whoever they wanted.

Brushing aside one of the sheets, he continued walking until he heard the trickling sound of water. Because, of course, in all of this strange labyrinth, his brother had also convinced the desert itself to give up its water.

Here there were actual pieces of buildings. The closer he got to Sloth’s inner sanctum, the more the floor turned into cobblestone pieces. There were pillars holding up the massive sheets that had turned from red closer to a violet. And there he found his brother on a hundred pillows with fifteen barely dressed women around him.

His brother was nude, and at second glance, so were most of the women. If this was Lust, Envy would have assumed that he had walked into an orgy. It wouldn’t have even been surprising back in the day when they had all been indulging their spirits a little too much.

But this was Sloth. His brother was too lazy to organize something like that, and he’d never been one to feed every bit of his desires. Instead, he just liked to look. To watch. Some of the women were stroking each other’s backs, but it wasn’t in a sexual way. Instead, they all seemed comfortable being nude around each other and languishing on the silken sheets that covered them all.

Sighing, he wished there was a sheet he could hold up to stop the sight of his brother’s naked form from being seared into his brain. Envy had known that the scales covered nearly half of Sloth’s body, but he really hadn’t wanted to know just how much of it was covered.

It had been nearly a hundred years since he’d seen Sloth naked, and he had been so close to forgetting what his brother looked like naked.

“You’re comfortable,” he announced, his voice carrying through the relative peace of the room.

A few of the women froze. They were likely newer to this conglomerate of creatures that Sloth surrounded himself with. Soon enough, they would realize that Sloth enjoyed putting them all on display. Pretty things were something all the demon kings indulged in. But Sloth most of all enjoyed his women.

His brother barely lifted his head from the cushion where he rested. “I’m always comfortable, Envy. What are you doing here?”

“You gave me advice before, and now I need more of it.”

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