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He knows.
This is far from heaven’s morals and high-minded paradise. He knows better. But fuck it, right Dad?
He’d like to say he was doing this to be selfless. That he wasn’t the absolute piece-of-shit the First Man had always pegged him for, even with all the apologetic smiles and careful compromises.
Maybe he could have pretended to be worthy of the halo, the mask, the robes, the title. But he kinda liked this mistake she was making — he had already kept a couple secrets for her, what was one more really?
Especially when he was fighting for air with her claws wrapped around his throat — he could almost forget his racing thoughts and terrifying responsibilities.
He felt his own golden blood sliding down his lip, the familiar taste almost a comfort as he choked out, “H-hey woah, chill out please, I —“
”Shut up.”
Her hiss made his veins run with ice and sent shivers through his spine in a fucked tango that made his head spin. He was tempted to beg her to keep going when her grip tightened briefly, then released. She shoved his head back and he bit his cheek as his skull cracked against the marble floor.
She swore under her breath and rocked back on her heels, sliding off his hips in a way that had him stifling a groan. She was impossibly beautiful, almost especially with her hatred burning a hole through his chest and her hair a wreck from when she had tackled him to the ground.
Abel’s insides shriveled and squirmed under her sole attention, disgusted by his own awful desires.
His heart rose to his throat and he stuttered around it, “I’m sorry Lute, I didn’t mean to — “
She shoved his chest hard enough to crack a rib if he had been alive, forcing a choking gasp from his throat and a wince of pain that followed, certain that he’d be sore and bruised tomorrow. Certain that he’d be enamored with the way his skin showed her touch three days later.
”You think you get to use my name because they gave you some fancy new robes and a mask you never earned? Drop dead. At least that’d make you useful.”
Her eyes set him ablaze like embers ignited from ash. He knew this was the closest he could get to her attention — he had spent days after the promotion getting ignored a foot away from her in his father’s office, well, his office.
He hated himself a little more for craving it, craving her.
A whisper escaped him before he could stop himself, “Why, did you have him moaning it?”
She jerked up to her feet and stumbled back, a wing flying out to try and catch herself. Her feathers reflected heaven’s prism in ashen tones that somehow made him want to touch them to make sure she was real.
Her cheeks flashed golden and she scoffed, a hollow sound that broke off too soon. She didn’t answer, offering only a feral snarl before shoving the papers off his desk and storming out.
He groaned in frustration at his own stupidity, his own sickening obsession with the one thing he would never have.
Bet you were just as obsessed, right Dad?