Page 110 of The Demon Crown

His guard grumbled, but she hauled her brother up by the armpits and helped him out of the room. Though his ankles kept twisting over each other, she did eventually close the door behind them.

If she was listening at the door, he didn’t care. He just wasn’t able to look her in the eyes while he admitted this to his brother.

Gluttony leaned forward, hands laced around his mug, those red eyes seeing far too much. “You’re troubled. Are you regretting finding that spirit and putting it inside her?”

He swallowed another gulp of whiskey to steel himself for the truth. “No. I don’t regret that in the slightest.”

“Then what’s the problem? You’ve spent the past couple of days in nirvana, so I don’t know why you’re upset.” Gluttony tilted his head to the side, clearly trying to see underneath his skin and get into the meat of the issue.

Greed hated that his brother always did that. Even when they were spirits, Gluttony hadn’t been picky about his food sources. At least Greed wanted to steal and take only objects. Gluttony? He would feed off whatever he could. Information, people, a gluttony for punishment or knowledge or power, no matter what he did.

Sighing, he rolled his eyes up to the ceiling and let the worries spill out of him. “I didn’t change.”

Only silence was his brother’s response.

“Lust did,” Greed ground out. “He’s off, defeating his own demons, becoming the better version of himself because he poured that spirit into his love, and now he’s something that none of us have ever achieved.”

“Which is?”

“You were the one that put this thought into my mind!” Greed slammed his fist down on the table, shaking the mugs and plates. “You were the one who said we were the demons, the monsters, the ones with something wrong with them. And here I was, believing everything was fine until you wriggled your way into my head, you fucking asshole!”

Gluttony leaned back against his chair, looking far too pleased with himself. “I just wanted one of my brothers to agree with me. I wanted you to see that there is something wrong with our lives. I never said we could change.”

“Lust proved that we can.”

Gluttony rolled his eyes. “Lust was always the fickle one. He was more likely to change than any of us. He never really wanted to be Lust, yeah? He wanted people to love him, to adore him, to follow him to his bed blindly. What better for a spirit like that than to turn to love?”

He wasn’t following. And apparently, the furrows on his brow gave him away.

Blowing out a long breath, Gluttony took another deep drink before he explained. “Lust and love go hand in hand. How many humans have you seen that spent time in each other’s bed, only to realize later on that they were rather destined for it? You and I aren’t like him. We aren’t Lust. It’s hard to fix Greed or Gluttony, or Envy for that matter. Lust can easily change. The rest of us? That’s a work in progress that might never be fixed.”

He didn’t want to hear that, though. Maybe he didn’t want to be the demon king who couldn’t control himself. Maybe he wanted to be a better person. For her. Because she wanted him to be someone else, and that wasn’t fair to him when he knew it would be almost impossible for him to change at all.

“Greed,” Gluttony said, leaning forward and shaking Greed’s almost empty mug. “Let go of this dream. You won’t change for her, because people don’t change for others. That’s not how it happens. We change for ourselves, and you are still yourself. Still greedy. Still putting a spirit inside her because that will keep her cleaved to you for all eternity. Still fucking her within an inch of her life while ignoring your kingdom because you want to. That is your vice, just as mine is to consume and devour and... Kill.”

He hissed the last word, muttering it underneath his breath with a darker tone than Greed had ever heard from his brother. Almost as though Gluttony didn’t want to do what he had done. Or continued to do.

“I suppose you’re right,” he muttered. “We all have our vices.”

“Indeed we do. And fixing those takes a lot more than a lucky woman who thinks it’s smart to waste her life with us.” Gluttony lifted his mug, waiting for Greed to cheers him. “What more could we ask for, brother, but a willing woman and a kingdom at our feet?”

Greed could ask for people who didn’t run from him in fear. He could ask for that woman to look at him with wide, prideful eyes. He could ask for once, just once in his life, to feel like a good person when all he’d done was take for himself.

Instead of saying any of that, Greed clinked their mugs together. Because he knew that Gluttony felt the same. The darkness that gathered in his brother was very similar to his own.

They both hated themselves. They both lived in that cesspool of their mind, berating their own actions as they became the monsters they claimed they weren’t.

Neither of them believed in themselves. And worse? Neither of them really wanted to.

They’d accepted the darkness a long time ago. And that meant that they were here, alone with each other. Still just as bitter and exhausted as ever.

Sighing into his cup, he slumped in the chair and stared at the table. Gluttony mimicked his posture, just as morose as he felt.

Greed wanted to be more for her. By all the kingdoms, he’d thought this would work. He’d thought they would awaken soon enough and he would feel different. That he would have changed into something newer, better, more for her. Because she made him want to be a better man.

But apparently, just as his brother had said, it didn’t work like that. He would not change for her, he had to change for himself.

Damn. He didn’t think he could do that. And deep in his heart, he feared he didn’t want to.

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