She nudges me with her shoulder. “You’re biased.”
“Entirely.”
She smiles up at me, slow and warm, and for a moment the world shrinks to this kitchen—her dress brushing my legs, the faint sound of carolers drifting in from the street, the scent of cinnamon and winter and her. “Cillian?” she asks softly.
“Yes, love?”
Her eyes sparkle. “Will you come with me tomorrow? The new students want to show you their concert pieces. And the parents keep asking if the ‘mysterious patron’ actually exists.”
I groan. “God save me.”
She laughs, rising on her toes to kiss my jaw. “They’ll adore you.”
“No, they’ll fear me.”
“Same thing,” she teases.
“Not in the way you mean.”
She gives me that look—fond, knowing, a little exasperated. “You’re not half as frightening as you think.”
“If that were true,” I murmur, brushing my thumb along her cheek, “you wouldn’t run back to me every night the moment you lock the academy doors.”
“I run home because I love you,” she whispers. “Not because I’m afraid of you.”
I swallow hard. Christ.
There are moments—rare, sacred—when the Devil of Dublin feels like a man on his knees. This is one of them.
I rest my forehead against hers. “Ten days,” I say again, softly.
She smiles. “Ten days.”
Outside, the church bells ring the hour. Inside, Siobhán’s fingers trace a slow, absent heart over my chest. And standing here—her body warm against mine, her list abandoned on the counter, her humming drifting through the kitchen like the last carol of the night—I know something with absolute, bone-deep certainty:
The city can call me devil, king, tyrant, whatever it likes. But in ten days, I become something else entirely. Hers. Forever.
Istandatthealtar—Dublin’sDevil in a black suit and a green silk tie she chose, the only color allowed near my throat today—while the last of the December sun pours through the stained glass behind me. It ignites the air in gold and emerald, setting the dust motes spinning like slow-falling stars.
All Saints’ is quiet in that holy, breath-holding way that churches only manage right before something life-changing. The candles flicker along the aisle. Garlands of winter greenery line the pews—holly, spruce, and white roses she insisted on “because they make the cold feel like heaven.”
Family and friends fill every bench—hers, mine, ours. Faces from Dublin’s underbelly beside faces from her mother’s world of music and lace. Choir members. Children from her academy dressed in their little winter best, legs swinging as they try to sit still.
Behind the heavy wooden doors, the city waits. I can hear them—crowds gathered on the steps, spilling into the street, their breath fogging in the cold, waiting for a glimpse of their devil and his star. Waiting for the moment when Siobhán Kelleher becomes mine in the only way the world will recognize. My hands clasp in front of me, not in nerves—in awe.
Ten days. Ten days since she whispered she loved me because she chose to. Ten days since she looked at me in the kitchen, covered in ribbon and music notes, and said the words that still echo through my bones.
And now, here I stand. A king of nothing holy, in a house of saints, waiting for the only miracle I believe in.
The organist adjusts sheet music. Someone coughs quietly. A bridesmaid sniffles already. I glance toward the doors at the far end of the aisle. The world holds its breath with me.
She’s coming. And God help me—I’m ready to fall to my knees the moment I see her.
The first chord ofCanon in Dswells through the stone arches—soft at first, then filling every carved beam and stained-glass shadow like a benediction I have no right to receive. But I stand here anyway. Selfish bastard that I am. The late-afternoon sun slips through the rose window behind me, shattering into gold across the aisle runner. Dust motes drift like blessing or ash—God only knows which I deserve.
The church is packed. Old families. My men. Her musicians. Children from her academy with their little Sunday shoes dangling off pews. And outside—Christ, I can hear them—the crowds on the green roaring like Dublin itself has come to witness this. To claim its devil as something approaching redeemed. But all of it goes silent when the back doors open. And she steps in.
My breath vanishes so sharply I swear the church tilts. Siobhán. God above. She’s— No. Angel isn’t enough. Angels wish they looked like this.
