Demon Turned Lover [BxB]

Helping hands

I dragged the thin brown brush along the canvas, thoughts of Mammon painting my own. "There. It's nothing a little white paint can't fix."

Her hooded amber eyes glimmered as she admired the rejuvenated face. "Wow! It looks perfect now. The eye was really bothering me..."

Albeit she fixated her attention to drawing the eyes, it came out rather crooked—so I redid it for her. And I must say, it was difficult not to add more detail to it. The tawny eyes nurtured no slashes of dark brown, or pale pinkness around it, just an off-center white trapezium. I hadn't held a brush in centuries, yet my skills would rush back in when I did, like the old child of a parent. "You seem to really like painting. Why?"

It was nothing like what I used to paint. It was a portrait of an elfin woman with black hair framing her face—other women stood behind her, but the eye would discard them. She was eating a purple hyacinth for some odd reason, but blood surrounded her thin lips.

"My...mom used to paint a lot," Marie answered awkwardly. "I guess I do it to be close to her, even though her paintings always made me cry as a child."

My brows furrowed, and an aching bolt struck my core. I had heard of what happened to the victims vaguely. Some left their child at the threshold of a church, or simply an alley. Others kept them, but were still caught in his web, regardless of the comfort Ezekiel laid their core in. "They made you cry?...That's terrible. Art isn't something to be feared."

She laughed. "It's fine. It would have affected, um, a regular child, but I'm...no regular child."

"I'm sorry..." A golden band, ribbon-like in its movement, with widened eyes on it left my wrist and slithered to hers. No child deserved to feel such pain. Even as demons, they were still innocent.

The woman inhaled, and accompanying her breath came a happiness. She smiled at me as the band pulled away. "Besides, you haven't asked me what this painting means."

I gazed at her, as light from the window beside us brightened her eyes. "Well, what does it mean?"

Marie paused and her eyes flitted to the dark painting. She seemed unprepared, even though she wanted me to ask. "Eating your own pain."

Confusion sat heavily on my brows whilst she set the brush on the black teapoy. It added even more to the sinistrous sentence, like the sharp concluding note of a piano.

"You don't have anyone to share it with. And even the people you do, they'll spit it out-"

And say that it was disgusting. That you were disgusting. I looked towards the shady wooden floor. Even if they hadn't, you would still feel disgusting afterwards. I told Mammon everything. My life in Heaven. Mikkel. Kallista. My parents. The arrow of jealousy I felt seeing thrones in the first sphere. The boy. I spilled every odd, painful feeling in my being out to him. But now, he was the reason for all my pain. 

Was it the Lord's mercy? Was this the price I would pay, in return for an escape from him? I didn't know anymore.

"Um...Luka?"

I just wanted to go back to his grace.

"Luka!"

A flinch caught my wandering mind, and I saw the pity in the brunette's face. "I'm...sorry. I zoned-"

Marie sighed before giving me a knowing look. "You were thinking about him...weren't you?"

Listening to her say that made me feel pathetic. My mouth opened, craving to challenge it, to tell her something different, but it was the poignant truth. "Yeah."