"Maybe they weren't looking close enough."
"Or maybe you're seeing things that aren't there because you felt my pain for fifteen minutes, and it broke something in you." His thumb traces my jaw. "Pity isn't the same as understanding, Raven."
"I don't pity you." I catch his wrist, hold his hand against my face. "I understand you. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
"Yes." I turn my head, press a kiss to his palm. His breath catches. "Pity is feeling sorry for someone from a distance. Understanding is feeling their pain and choosing to stay anyway."
He goes very still. A statue carved from want. A breath held too long. A dam about to break.
"You're choosing to stay," he says slowly. "Not because of the contract. Not because I own your time. But because you want to."
"Yes." The word is simple. True. Terrifying.
"Why?"
I think about the greed. About drowning in thousands of years of hunger. About the loneliness of having everything and feeling nothing. About being a black hole that devours itself.
"Because you've been alone too long," I say. "You've been suffering and hiding it and pretending you're fine when you're falling apart. I felt what you feel, and it was the most horrible thing I've ever experienced, and you've lived with it for so manyyears, and you're still here. Still fighting. Still trying to exist even when existence is agony."
My voice cracks. "And because when you look at me, the hunger quiets. Just for a moment. And if I can give you that, if I can be the thing that makes your curse bearable even for a few seconds, then I want to. I choose to. At least for now."
He's staring at me like I've said something in a language he doesn't speak. Like I'm a puzzle he can't solve. Like I'm the first truly incomprehensible thing he's encountered in millennia.
"You're going to destroy me," he whispers.
"What?"
"You're going to make me want things I can't have. Hope for things that aren't possible. Feel things I haven't felt since before the fall." His hand slides into my hair, cradling my head. "And when you leave, when your year is up and you go to the next house, it's going to destroy me."
"Then don't let me leave."
The words slip out before I can stop them. They hang in the air between us like a confession. Like a promise. Like a door opening onto something that should stay locked.
"You don't mean that," he says.
"Don't I?"
"You have a life outside this house. A sister. Friends. A world that doesn't involve angels and sins and trapped souls." His forehead touches mine. "You're supposed to survive this year and move on. To serve the other houses and eventually go back to being human. To being normal."
"I stopped being normal the day my grandmother died and her debt passed to me." I close my eyes. "Maybe before that. Maybe the moment I was born with angel blood in my veins. Maybe I was never meant for normal."
"Raven..."
"I felt your curse, Croesus. I know what you are. What you're trapped in. And I want to help you."
"There is no help. There's only endurance."
"What if there isn't?" I pull back enough to look at him. "What if there's a way to break the curse? To free you from the greed?"
His expression shutters. "There isn't."
"How do you know?"
"Because I've been looking for thousands of years." His voice goes flat. "I've consulted oracles and witches and demons and gods. I've read every text, tried every ritual, bargained with every power that exists. There is no escape from this. The greed is what I am. Taking it away would be like taking away gravity. Like asking water to stop being wet. It's fundamental. Unchangeable."
"Everything can change."
