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Chapter Text

When Carmilla Carmine first meets Zestial, she’s recently deceased and still naïve—shiny, silver, and new.

Her arrival to Heaven is swift and abrupt. One moment, she is throwing her arms, shielding her daughters from her husband’s knife—pain, then nothing—and the next, she finds herself before the pearly gates.

An angel with golden hair introduces himself as St. Peter. “Welcome, Carmilla Carmine. Heaven has been expecting you,” he greets her, as though she’s simply arrived for an appointment.

She blinks. “I’m dead?”

Her hands fly to her chest, searching for the wound her husband had left, but her body is whole. She turns, scanning the line of glowing souls behind her, but her daughters Clara and Odette are nowhere to be found. Her mouth goes dry.

“And what of my daughters? Where are they?”

St. Peter’s expression flickers, but his voice remains gentle. “I would tell you if I could. But Heaven cannot reveal the state of the mortal realm. Rules are rules.”

“Then can you send me back?” All she can remember is her husband standing above her. Did her daughters escape? Are they safe? Or did he get them too? Her nails are digging crescents into her palms. “I don’t belong here without them!”

His smile never falters. “That’s… not possible. Welcome to Heaven!” St. Peter raises a hand, and light drags her forward before she can protest.

Heaven is supposed to be a paradise. That’s what the stories said.

To Carmilla, it is nothing but a golden cage.

She tries her best to assimilate to the routine and rules of Heaven—she really, really does. Carmilla joins the forge to craft angelic weapons to try to create some sense of normalcy. It is a pale imitation of what she did while alive, but it is better than resigning her afterlife to the slew of tedious planned activities. She’d rather play a trio with the forge and anvil than perform a duet with painting or sculpting classes or book clubs or endless empty happiness.

“It’s better to forget,” her colleagues tell her cheerfully. “Enjoy paradise! Do whatever brings you joy.”

But she can’t.

Her daughters were—are the light of her life. Without them, this golden world has lost its luster.

After enough begging and pleading, Carmilla manages to get C.H.E.R.U.B. to send a cherub to check on her daughters. She expects good news, but the sheep-cherub the nonprofit had sent appears at her door, head bowed and remorseful.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Carmine,” the sheep-cherub says. “I couldn't find them anywhere.”

“Thank you for trying,” she murmurs. The exchange continues, but she is numb to it, merely an automaton going through mechanical motions and pre-programmed responses. Only when she is alone once again does she allow herself to collapse and be human.

She can’t stop herself from sobbing, clutching herself in a mockery of comfort, as tears fall uncontrollably from her face. Her daughters had been the best of her and deserved an eternity in paradise.

How can this be Heaven if her daughters aren’t here?

Heaven is suffocating in its happiness and she is drowning, treading through this endless eternity with canned responses and forced smiles. It’s easier to let herself swim down.

The forge is her only refuge. Here, the world feels almost real: the hiss of steam, the rhythm of hammer against angelic steel, the sparks scattering like fireflies. The metal sings beneath her hands, and for a few moments, she can pretend to be happy. Here, she can pretend to forget.

But she can’t.

Carmilla is haunted by the thought that they are still out there, somewhere, suffering because she failed to protect them. When she closes her eyes, all she sees are their ghosts-they’re desperately reaching for her, and she cannot reach back.

She needs to see them again. Weakness may have killed her in life, but in death, she will become the kind of woman who gets what she wants.

That thought definitely brings her joy.

It’s her desire to see her daughters that drives her forward and fills her aimless soul with purpose. She copies the portal magic from careless cherubs, manages to scavenge some stray brimstone, and tinkers until the forge hums with something forbidden, an unassuming bracelet tuned to open a portal between Hell and Heaven.

Taking a deep breath, Carmilla activates the portal bracelet.

The bracelet sparks to life, a golden tear splitting open to reveal a world of red skies and jagged horizons, the air thick with the smell of brimstone. She can hear the shrieks of the damned in the distance.

It is madness. No one sane would do this.  

She jumps.

—

—

Hell is vaster than she imagined, an endless sprawl of debauchery and sheer chaos. Sinners swarm the streets, performing all acts of unbridled depravity and wanton violence. She’s terrified her daughters are condemned to this type of suffering; they deserve Heaven’s light, not eternal night.

Carmilla keeps to the shadows, slipping through crooked alleys, unnoticed among the pandemonium. Her cloak hides her halo, her wings safely concealed and tucked away, but paranoia seeps into her bones with every aside glance from another. She keeps her gaze down, careful never to meet anyone’s eyes.

And then a voice, smooth as velvet, curls out of the dark behind her, “Hath any told thee thou art beauty’s queen? No fairer sight mine eyes have ever seen.”

Carmilla spins, hand already reaching for the blade at her hip.

A sinister spider demon slowly materializes from the shadows, his hands raised peacefully. He’s tall, much taller than she is, with a worn top hat and a glowing green smile and eyes that seem to smirk in the darkness.

She scowls. “Choke on your poetry. I’m not here for the theater.”

His mouth twitches in amusement. “Critique my diction if thou must, but thy presence here is far greater folly.” He leans forward, his head tilting, a touch too close to her to be appropriate. “A dove does not belong among wolves, especially one of angelic make.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she snaps, eyes narrowing. Her wings and halo are definitely not showing last she checked. He shouldn’t know.

He chuckles, laughter tinged with the voice of a legion. “I am most joyous to partake in this trifling jest of thine.” Stepping back into a more polite distance, his eyes gleam with amusement. “Prithee, wilt thou share a cup of tea? Naught more—lest I prove the most discourteous knave to let a dove wander Hell unescorted.”

She says no. Politely. More than once. He only laughs harder.

The next thing she knows, she’s in his sitting room with a steaming pot of chamomile.

Did he drug her or hypnotize her? She really doesn’t know how he managed to charm her to his home.

“They do name me Zestial,” he says, handing her a cup.

Carmilla sets it aside, untouched.

“And thou?” he presses.

Names have power, especially here. For a fleeting second, she considers lying, but thinks otherwise upon noticing the peculiar glint in his eyes. “Carmilla Carmine.”

“Carmilla,” he purrs, letting her name roll experimentally off his tongue. His deep baritone sends a shiver down her spine. Zestial seems to be a demon par excellence, for he sounds like sin, with a mesmerizing voice full of temptation.

Carmilla feels herself flushing golden.

She knows better than to listen to honeyed words and delightful charms, especially from a demon. Her husband in life was the perfect example of everything she doesn’t need.

She’d be remiss in blighting her afterlife with that nonsense again.

He breaks the moment with a flourish, sliding a plate of sandwiches toward her. “Eat, Carmilla. Thou dost appear most famished.”

Her mouth flattens to what she hopes is a severe straight line. “I’m not hungry.”

Her stomach—the traitor—betrays her, growling ravenously.

“If I meant to kill thee, bread would not be my weapon of choice. A knife is quicker.” His chuckle is maddeningly smug. Zestial’s green eyes sparkle with mirth. “Nor shalt thou be shackled to Hell, as Persephone, for a single bite.”

Rolling her eyes, she reluctantly plucks a sandwich from the tray. There are no grotesque horrors or bugs or severed limbs, just freshly baked bread, crisp vegetables, herbs, and sauce. She takes a tentative bite—and nearly groans.

“This is delicious.” Carmilla may have eaten the food in Heaven, but this is nothing short of divine. This may be the best thing she’s eaten since dying.

“Marry, that doth please mine ear.” He takes a careful sip of his tea. “Ah, a hymn at last. Truly, my cooking doth earn celestial approval.”

“Don’t get too cocky.”

“Perchance I am guilty.” His smirk softens, though his gaze doesn’t. “But methinks thy hunger is not solely of the stomach. Tell me, little dove—what hath brought thee here?”

She’s already in the frying pan; she may as well jump into the proverbial fire. “My daughters.”

“Oh?” He arches an elegant eyebrow. “Did Heaven not lay claim to their souls?”

“They weren’t there, and the cherubs said that they weren’t in the mortal realm. If they’re not there, they must be here.”

He holds up a hand, snapping his fingers to summon a mirror that rapidly flashes through various locations. Frowning, he dismisses the mirror with yet another snap. “Thy daughters are not present here.”

“Where could they be then?” Mortal souls either went to Hell or Heaven. That had been Heaven’s ordainment and rules are rules, as every angel seemed to love reminding her.

“Fret thee not, madam. I shall seek thy daughters in thy place. A week is all I require.”

“Why would you do that?” She stares at him suspiciously. “What do you want?”

“I would ask for nothing graver than entertainment—though methinks thy feathers bristle at even that.” The shadows around him seem to lengthen as his glowing eyes smile at her in darkness. “For a century of years have I dwelled and grown weary of it all. This doth serve as welcome sport.”

On the surface, it sounds like a great deal for her—but Carmilla isn’t a complete idiot.

According to the texts and basic common knowledge in Heaven, sinners, let alone demons, aren’t meant to be trusted. The damned are condemned for a reason, after all. Zestial alone seems like he’s the kind of demon who relishes the shrieks of the condemned and builds a throne on their corpses—even if he’s nothing but the perfect gentleman at the moment.

The texts had all warned her that demons always have an angle, but she can’t quite place what his is. Even though he is all jagged straightforward lines, she still finds him curved in question marks.

(He is the devil looking through the keyhole, and she’s terrified of the small part of her that wants to open the door and invite him in.)

He smirks, his glowing eyes glittering with an emotion she can’t quite read. “Doth that sit well with thee?”

—

She tells herself that Zestial being the only option is the sole reason she agrees in the first place.

—

—

When she returns to Heaven, no one seems to have noticed her absence. Her life returns to its usual routine: wake up, design weapons, forge angelic steel, sleep, rinse, and repeat.

It’s monotonous and familiar. There’s nothing wrong with it per se. Carmilla is content with the life she has been given. (Or at least she tells herself, sounding less and less convincing each time.)

She drowns the bubbling hope of seeing her daughters again.

—

Demons always lie, after all. It’s their nature.

—

—

—

In her dreams, those glowing green eyes smirk at her in the darkness. “Carmilla,” it whispers, voice dark and full of temptation.

“You’re not wanted,” she mutters back. “Begone.”

—

—

Chapter Text

Carmilla spends a week convincing herself not to return and fails spectacularly in spite of her best efforts. She pesters C.H.E.R.U.B. again. Maybe the rookie cherub had made a mistake.

The nonprofit is less than helpful. The frazzled receptionist can only wring his hands and apologize. The organization is swamped from the latest war in the mortal realm. Heaven has been a madhouse with the constant influx of new souls and the other angels are more concerned with the present rather than the past.

The demon is truly her only option.

When she returns to Hell again, she now has a destination for the portal. She steps from Heaven into Zestial’s garden, and is greeted with rows upon rows of fruits and vegetables, meticulously ordered, more functional than beautiful. It feels less like a garden and more like a soldier’s armory disguised in green.

“Carmilla.” He appears from the shadows, his green eyes gleaming. “Thou art fairer still than memory alloweth.”

“Zestial.” Carmilla tilts her head. “You’re looking unreasonably smug for a gardener.”

He laughs. “Might I entice thee with a cup of tea?”

She waves off the offer politely. Still, before she knows it, his garden fades, and Carmilla finds herself seated in his parlor with a cup of hot tea in her hands.

“Rejoice, Carmilla.” Zestial sets down the pot of tea with a gentle tap. “Your daughters yet tread the mortal coil.”

She freezes, her breath catching in her throat. “They’re still alive?” Carmilla manages to croak. The hope she had sunk comes rising back up to the surface, raising its yearning head.

“Verily, I did confirm it but a week past in the mortal realm.” He raises a hand and a mirror appears in front of her with an image of her girls.

She sees them and her heart aches. Clara and Odette are sitting in a tearoom, laughing together over some coffee and cakes.

Clara breaks off a piece of butter cake. “Remember how mom would never let us have the coffee?”

“No coffee for you, mijas! It’ll stunt your growth!” Odette says, a perfect imitation of Carmilla down to her wagging finger.

Their laughter fades, leaving only the clink of Odette’s spoon against porcelain.

Odette pensively stirs her coffee. “I miss her.”

“Me too.”

Carmilla feels a surge of relief—that her daughters are safe, happy, and together. That she hadn’t died for nothing. She wishes that she could hold them, to apologize for leaving them far too soon. (And beneath the surface festers guilt—that she hadn’t been strong enough to leave their father sooner.)

The mirror fades. Carmilla blinks, throat tight. Zestial presses a black handkerchief into her palm. Only then does she realize her cheeks are already wet.

“I’ll make more tea,” he says, vanishing into the shadows.

When she’s alone, Carmilla allows herself to truly weep.

—

By the time Zestial brings back a pot of jasmine tea, Carmilla’s tears have long since dried. Shame lingers on her cheeks, like lingering bruises, punishment for such weakness. (Her husband’s voice cracks out from memory, a phantom fist behind it. “What an unbecoming display, Carmilla.”)

She forces her shoulders straight, unwilling to let him see her small again.

Zestial’s idle chatter is a small mercy.

“The cherub did not perceive their movement from Europe.” Zestial remarks as he places a plate of scones on the table. “Cherubs. Useless, the lot of them.”

She gratefully takes a scone; grief left her famished. “You say that like you’ve dealt with them often.”

“Oft enough,” he replies smoothly, before tilting his head. “But cherubs are not half so interesting as thee. I encountered thy remarkable work. A shame it bore another’s name.”

She stiffens, heat prickling her neck. The scone, once warm with butter and sweet with jam, turns to ash on her tongue. “I had little choice in the matter.” What choice did a woman in her position have? No one would have taken her seriously if her designs hadn’t been published underneath her husband’s name. The alternative was to let her daughters go hungry.

“I do hope thou hast more liberty in Heaven's halls. I ween thou art crafting the most exquisite arms there.”

“You could say that.” If hammering out the same swords and shields counts as ‘exquisite,’ then perhaps, she thinks with a frown.

Zestial conjures a book from the shadows and extends it toward her. “I did discover this within the mortal realm. Methinks this might tickle thy fancy. Thou shalt find more benefit in this than I.”

Carmilla half-expects some vapid romance novella, as was the fashion these days. Instead, she discovers it’s the very latest inventions from the mortal realm, from rifle designs to revolvers.

She devours them, fingertips tracing diagrams. The creativity in her bones flares awake, blazing beneath her skin, aching to bring these designs to life. For a moment, she almost hears her husband’s whisper of “You’re not good enough, Carmilla,” but it’s drowned out when she sees something reflected in Zestial’s eyes that life and the afterlife had denied her: understanding.

Heaven had hollowed her, stripped her down until she was nothing but a mother without her children, a craftsman without purpose. But this fills some of the cracks. It reminds her of who she used to be, the woman who could easily shape steel to her will.

She knows that this is wrong, the apple from the tree, but she is starving for this—to feel useful, to feel more than a ghost gilded in gold.

“Can I borrow this?” Carmilla looks up from the pages hopefully. “I can give it back.”

“It is thine to hold and have.”

Her wings give a betraying flutter before she forces them still.

—

—

“Thou art ever welcome to call upon me for a visit, especially to behold thy daughters,” he says as he sees her off. “Verily, I take great pleasure in our parleys.”

The selfish part of her wants to return. (That part of her is punished by being unceremoniously forgotten.)

She spreads her wings. “I’ll think about it.”

Even in Heaven, his laughter still rings in her ear.

—

—

—

She forces herself to remain in Heaven. Her daughters are safe and happy and alive. Any blasphemous notions of returning to Hell are metaphorically burned at the stake.

(Joan of Arc had burned too, she reminds herself, smoke strangling her but not her vision.)

Carmilla throws herself back into her work in the vain hope that she can drown out memories of his darkness in the light of the forge. From sunup to sundown she swings her hammer, trying to pound out the memory of his glowing eyes with every strike of angelic steel.

It doesn’t work.

She fills sketchbooks of prototypes and designs under the cover of night.

Carmilla knows what she is supposed to do. She is just another angel as part of the cog in the machine designed to ensure Heaven’s happiness. That’s her duty, nothing more, nothing less.

Still, those glowing green eyes whisper in her dreams, softly, almost insistently, “But what of thy happiness, Carmilla?”

She can’t answer him.

—

—

She’s given a new title—forgemaster. They call it a promotion, but all it means is higher quotas and still few liberties.

She tries talking about it to other forgemasters, but they don’t quite understand.

“It’s Heaven, Carmilla,” they laugh merrily. “You don’t need to keep wanting for more.”

She presents a prototype rifle to her boss to try to convince him to expand their designs beyond the Medieval ages. His face pales. He immediately seizes the gun, unceremoniously dropping it into the forge, reducing months of work to molten slag.

“Carmilla, you are the most talented forgemaster I’ve seen.” His stern expression never shifts. “But talent without discipline is useless. You know as well as I do that forbidden designs have no place here. Rules are rules.”

She bows her head, fighting back tears threatening to spill over. “Understood, sir.”

—

The next chance she gets, she slips back to Hell.

“Zestial?” she calls out, her grip tight around the newly forged gun.

“Carmilla, a most delightful surprise!” He materializes as if conjured by her thought alone, his green eyes glittering. “I had supposed mine own presence did weary thee.”

“Hardly. I was just busy making this prototype.” She hefts the gun with a small smile. “Want to play target practice with me? Or are you afraid you’ll embarrass yourself?”

His eyes flare, amused. “Embarrass myself? Dove, I have slain kings with naught but thread and poison. Methinks I can manage thy little contraption.”

A snap of his fingers sets up targets a hundred and fifty yards away from them.

“Big talk for someone who’s never handled a firearm like this.” Carmilla tosses him a sly glance as she shoulders the weapon. “Watch closely. You might learn something.”

She loads the cartridge, chambers a round, and lets the rifle roar. The first shot tears through steel targets like paper. The second follows just as seamlessly. She unloads the entire magazine in a perfect grouping over the heart. Carmilla can’t help smiling. It’s even better than she expected. The recoil is steady, the feed flawless. After a slight adjustment to the balance, it would be perfect.

In Heaven, they melted her work back into nothing. In Hell, it sang.

“Want a try?” she asks, tilting the rifle toward him. “Don’t worry, the recoil won’t bite that much.”

His earlier cockiness has dissipated. Zestial stares at the weapon uncertainly. “I have ne'er handled such a firearm,” he admits, almost bashful. “Prithee, instruct me?”

“Only because you asked so nicely.” Carmilla steps close, showing him how to correctly fire a lever action rifle. “You need to cycle the lever or else you won’t eject your spent cartridge.”

He looks absolutely flummoxed. “So, you don't need to use a match?”

“Rifles outgrew that firing mechanism ages ago, Zestial.” Carmilla laughs, a real one. It’s the first time she’s felt this light since dying. “Do try to keep up.”

“Thou mockest me as though I were a relic.”

“If the shoe fits, Zestial. Let me show you how to properly shoot so you don't throw your back out.” She guides his stance with practiced ease, her hands adjusting his shoulders, steadying his grip, nudging the barrel toward the target. “Line the sights here. Brace for the recoil. Let the weapon do half the work.”

His first few shots barely nick the target. 

Carmilla can’t resist teasing. “Kingslaying skills aren’t helping you much now, are they?”

“Patience, dove,” Zestial mutters, adjusting his grip, his eyes narrowing. The next volley starts creeping toward the edges of the target. What he lacks in skill, he makes up with sheer determination. By his fifth cartridge, every shot hits clean through the center area, a tight, lethal volley.

“Look at you, Zestial.” She flashes him a playful smile. “You might slay kings with a rifle yet.”

He lowers the rifle with a smirk, the green in his eyes gleaming brighter. “It helps that I have a teacher of incomparable skill.”

“Sweet talking me won’t improve your aim,” Carmilla snorts.

Zestial chuckles, chambering another round. “Nay, but it may keep thee from mocking me when I miss.”

—

She is loath to admit it, but this is the most fun she’d had since dying.

—

—

For the first time, she almost feels at ease. The metal sings to her, and the fire of the forge feels brand new. Carmilla can’t stop with inspiration burning her fingers and bidding her run to do impossible things.

The forge is closed on Sundays, so Carmilla uses those days to see him—when the fickle cherub magic lets her. Some months, the bracelet fails, and the waiting eats her alive.

It’s a delight to find a kindred spirit who delights in the forefront of innovation and respects her work. Zestial fetches her so many books and models from the mortal realm for her to dissect and modify that at one point she has to tell him to stop because she can’t make prototypes fast enough. He trades her firearms lessons for magic ones, teaching her how to imbue magic into weapons in a way Heaven would never allow. Carmilla relishes the crack of open admiration slipping past his unflappable mask as she shows off her newest creation.

She’s given up the notion that he is a demon hellbent on her soul. He’s no longer the monster hiding under her bed; he is Zestial, an Overlord and (as reluctant as she is to admit it aloud) her friend, who’s quickly become the highlight of her afterlife.

Carmilla swings by so often that she eventually learns she can forge angelic steel even in Hell. When a prototype snaps, she borrows his forge for a quick repair—only to discover, to both their surprise, that the spare metal she produces is very much angelic steel. The forge, it seems, will follow its master no matter the location.

It makes her look forward to seeing him even more.

Here in Hell, she finally has the freedom she longs for in Heaven.

Freedom, however, has its limits. She understands the unrelenting nature of steel and fire, yet magic slips through her grasp like water. Copying from cherubs is one thing; creating and improving magic is quite another.

Carmilla huffs over yet another tome in the library. She’s been reworking the portal bracelet so it won’t take ages to recharge, with little success. She turns to her companion quietly reading beside her. “How do you get to the mortal realm, Zestial? It has to be a lot of magical energy. How do you conserve it?”

“Thou dost ask, methinks, as one who'd quiz a humble-bee how it doth take flight.” He gives her a sheepish shrug. “'Tis its nature, and so it doth.”

Carmilla groans. The sigils are blurring together in her head. “Well, Mr. Bee, can you help me understand this? I’m trying to compress the energy output or make the channel more efficient, so I can visit more often.”

He obligingly sets down his book and slides over, scanning her notes, chin in hand.  “Ah—thou hast need of this same for either of those matters.” Another book emerges from his shadows and flips to a specific page with a very complex looking magic circle. “Thou must guide it with light, and not with darkness. Thou shalt exchange those selfsame sigils within the circle.”

She’s already dreading the weeks of painstaking work it will take to etch the new circle into the bracelet. “Got it.”

Zestial holds out a hand. “If I may?”

Carmilla despises letting anyone handle her unfinished work, but she still hands it over.

His shadows envelop the bracelet briefly and peel back, leaving the magic circle perfectly etched in the metal. Zestial places the bracelet gently into her palm.

Her lips soften to a smile. “Thanks, show-off.”

—

—

It works perfectly.

(Of course, it does, she thinks fondly.)

Her monthly visits become weekly.

—

—

—

Heaven liked to pretend there were no hard days. Today proved otherwise. The First Man had kept hitting on her as she worked in the forge, no matter how often she denied him. Every ‘no’ of hers was swallowed up by his laughter, his much larger form hovering over her.

She had tried to desperately complete his custom order for an inane guitar weapon as quickly as possible. 

“Come on, sweet cheeks.” Adam’s hand landed heavy on her shoulder, pinning her in place as if she were part of the forge itself. She flinched, every muscle screaming to recoil. “I’ve got another instrument for you to play.”

“No, thank you.” Carmilla had tried to signal her boss for help, but he’d been deliberately avoiding eye-contact this entire time. Her other forgemasters had retreated to the breakroom. She'd fallen overboard, and everyone else had left her to drown.

He towered over her, smothering her forge in shadow until even the forge’s fire seemed to dim. “Aw come on, babe!” Adam’s very presence caused her skin to crawl with goosebumps. (Her husband hissed in her ear, “You’ve only been good for one thing, Carmilla…” as his hands wrapped around her throat.)

“Please leave me alone.” She wanted nothing more than to curl in on herself and disappear. Carmilla tried to ignore how her hands were shaking as she continued to hammer out the metal.

Finish the commission and he’ll leave. Finish. He’ll leave. The mantra kept her hammer moving, each strike a desperate beat to drown him out.

Adam did leave, as loudly as he’d come in. “Thanks, babe. This shit’s fucking gorgeous. I’m going to rock out on this.” His smirk widened. He leaned down until she felt his breath scorch her cheek. “You’ll come around, hot stuff. They always do.” Then, just as suddenly, he was gone, laughter rattling the forge behind him.

Her lungs refused to expand, as if the forge itself had shrunk around them. Her hammer felt unwieldly in her grasp. The forge, once her sanctuary, now pressed on her like a coffin. The air tasted stale, the fire no longer warmed but smothered.

Heaven preached purity, yet left her to men like him.

Carmilla finds herself hoping he dies during the next Extermination.

She flees to Zestial’s, desperate for air, and his is the only place that still felt wide enough to breathe. But everything is still wrong, wrong, wrong. The steel is screeching under her touch, her hammer clumsily slipping. She can’t outrun the echo of Adam’s laughter and his touch on her skin.

“Methinks thou art in need of respite.” Zestial sets a warm hand on her shoulder, his touch featherlight, his presence comforting. His shadows seem to make the forge burn even brighter. “Thou art vexed.”

Carmilla lets out a frustrated sigh as she discards the warped metal in the scrap heap. She almost refuses, but knows that he'll somehow manage to convince her anyway as per usual. “Any ideas?”

“Thou hast not yet viewed the town's delights. Wilt thou fare about with me? A most villainous host I would be, did I not conduct thee about.”

It’s only fair, she supposes, since she’s always showing off her creations. He ought to have a chance to display his.

On the surface, his domain is bordering on a Hellish cliché, with walls decorated with rotting heads on spikes and the classic screams of the suffering. A few blocks in, however, there is a barrier that most sinners cannot breach, let alone see. Most sinners merely walk through the barrier to go to the other side, without noticing the space in between.

Inside his domain proper, Hell has faded away to be replaced with a sleepy mortal town. There’s a teashop on the corner, a library down the lane, shops and cafés dotting the cobblestones, and sinners wandering about as if depravity were against zoning laws.

“Fear doth serve as the finest deterrent,” he says simply, as he shows her around. “Fiends and angels do oft make it a grievous task to raise fair structures that shall endure.”

“It’s lovely.” Carmilla soaks in the sight, from the paved streets, the wrought iron lampposts, and the colors, vivid even underneath the crimson sky. “I wish Heaven took notes from you.”

“Alas, I fear they be laggard scholars.”

“Good thing I’m a quick learner.”

They share a smile.

They wander around aimlessly. At her insistence, they grab pastries from one stall; Zestial insists that she has to try some fresh honey—and it’s so sweet, Carmilla thinks this must be what ambrosia tastes like. They slip down random alleys and side streets, discovering random trinkets ranging from magical instruments to delicate pieces of jewelry to books. Each turn loosens the coffin-lid grip Heaven had left on her chest.

Part of her wishes that they could have met on earth like this.

This can’t last forever, she knows, but that doesn’t mean, she can’t try.

For the briefest, sweetest of moments, she allows herself to dream of a future.

“When they arrive, I’d like to bring Odette and Clara here,” Carmilla says, her heart pounding in her chest, like a hammer on steel. “I think they would enjoy it.”

“Nothing would delight me more.” She can’t quite place the emotions in his eyes, but his steps sound a little lighter as they continue on.

—

—

“I’m glad to see you’re settling into Heaven nicely, Ms. Carmine!” St. Peter says when he visits the forge. “I was a little worried you’d struggle with the adjustment.”

Her smiling mask never slips. “Yes, I suppose it just took some time.”

—

—

She’s already counting down to Sunday.

—

—

Chapter Text

Carmilla knows him well enough to hear the agitation in his voice. “The prototype must tarry.” With a sweep of his hand, Zestial ushers her inside his house. “We must first attend to a matter of greater import.”

“What can be more important than—”

The words die in her throat.

At Zestial’s dining table, two figures sit bound in shadow. She knows those faces anywhere.

Her daughters look exactly as they had in life, save for their red sclera and black horns adorning their heads.

“Clara? Odette?”

She hears Zestial’s voice distantly, as though submerged. Apologies and explanations drift past, that they’d nearly bartered their souls to an Overlord and that he’d bound them against their will to avoid yesterday’s Extermination. Each word dissolves like seafoam before it can reach her. None of it matters.

Her daughters are here.

They were teenagers when she last saw them; now they’re fully grown.

“Mother?” Odette stares at her as if she’s seen a ghost. 

Clara, who had been straining valiantly against her bonds, freezes. “Mom?”

“What are you doing here? Why are you here?” Carmilla stumbles forward, her body instinctively moving before her mind can fully process. Her hands tug uselessly against the shadows holding them fast. “Zestial, please let them go!”

He obliges without hesitation. A single snap and the shadows dissolve.

She clutches them both to her chest. They smell like sinners, brimstone clinging to them like a second skin. Odette’s lip trembles; Clara blinks rapidly, fighting tears. After years of waiting, Carmilla finally feels whole with her daughters in her arms, even if the reunion tastes bittersweet on her tongue.

“What happened to you, mijas?” she murmurs. “Why are you here? You’re not supposed to be in Hell.”

Odette has Carmilla in a vice grip, as if she doesn’t hold her tight, Carmilla will disappear yet again. “We got caught in a freak accident and woke up here.”

“We didn’t do anything bad,” Clara insists, face muffled as she buries her face into her mother’s chest. Her youngest’s tears leave a damp patch on Carmilla’s shirt. “At least we don’t think we did? We only stole a loaf of bread when we first got to America. We were starving.”

“We paid it back later,” Odette whispers.

Her heart breaks.

This is all her fault. If she had been stronger, better, braver—if she had left their father sooner and lived—they would never be here in the first place.

For a brief moment, Carmilla entertains the thought of begging Heaven to take them. She sees St. Peter’s cheerful smile. Her boss’ cold disapproval. The forgemasters’ happy indifference. Their voices rise in a choir in her head.

Rules are rules.

Rules are rules.

Rulesarerulesarerulesarerulesarerules—

Then to Hell with rules.

If Heaven will not answer a mother’s prayer, she will forge one.

“I’m just happy to see you again,” Carmilla whispers into their hair, pressing kisses to their temples, anchoring them to her. She had abandoned her daughters once before; she wasn’t ever going to do that again.

But Hell is a brutal pit filled with wolves. If she doesn’t act, it will devour her daughters whole. Though Heaven’s gates are closed to them, Zestial’s have always been open for her.

“Zestial…” Still clutching her daughters, Carmilla steals a glance at him. “Help me stay. Help me keep them safe here.”

Clara jerks away, eyes wide with utter horror. “Mom—no!”

“We’ll be fine in Hell, Mother.” Odette untangles herself quickly too, as though burned. “You should go back to Heaven, where you belong.”

“We’re not children anymore.” Clara snaps. “We can take care of ourselves now!”

Odette murmurs, “You deserve to finally be happy…”

“I won’t be happy without the two of you.” Carmilla pulls them back into her arms. She can feel them shaking. They’re adults, yet in her arms, they’re still the little girls who once clung to her skirts, hair smelling faintly of soap and lavender. “Heaven has nothing for me, if you’re not there.”

“Please don’t sell your soul to stay with us,” Clara begs.

Odette’s voice cracks, her lip trembling dangerously. “Please… I can’t watch you get hurt again. Not because of us.”

Her chest aches. “I failed you once. I’m not leaving you again.” She burns the moment into memory, a votive flame to guide her through the cold and dark. “This time, I will do whatever it takes to keep you safe.”

Clara chokes on a sob. “I should have been stronger.”

Odette shakes her head, sniffling. “No, I should have protected you more.”

“Hush. This isn’t your burden to bear.” She cups their faces, gently wiping away their tears with trembling hands. “It’s mine. I’m choosing you two, and I’ll choose you every time.”

She forces a smile before gently releasing them. Carmilla lifts her gaze to the spider demon. “Zestial?”

He inclines his head. “You need only ask, old friend.” Zestial’s glowing eyes burn brighter, crimson irises flaring. “But a demon needs more than mere entertainment this time.”

Carmilla’s fists clench. “What’s the price, Zestial? My soul?”

“Heavens no, dove.” His lips curl, as though insulted by the very suggestion. “I crave not thy soul. I desire thy aptitude. Thou art a forgemaster, Carmilla. Hell doth lack a craftsman of thine ilk. If thou dost desire to bide in Hell's domain, I would have thee become an Overlord—with mine own patronage.”

She blinks. “Why?” Carmilla is no fool. Every deal has an angle, but she can’t quite see his yet.

His smile has a dangerous edge. “Shouldst thou forge weapons, others shall covet thy wares, and hither they shall come. And mark my words, they shall not be as gentle as I. Thou shalt need strength to guard thyself and thy daughters fair.”

“What’s in it for you this time?” she presses.

“Sundry matters might appertain. A stalwart ally. Access unto celestial arms. Amusement.” His voice dips as he leans close, crooning in Carmilla’s ear, a whisper only meant for her. “But what I really want is to behold what thou canst achieve with wings unclipped, to fashion what thy heart doth crave. How high wilt thou soar, Carmilla?”

Her breath steadies. Heaven had smothered her fire, reducing her to ash in a golden cage. Here, the flame is hers to wield. “As high as I need to protect them.”

His grin only widens.

For a long moment, they study each other—not as demon and angel, nor Overlord and forgemaster, but simply Zestial and Carmilla. She sees him clearly now, beyond the dangerous smile and glowing eyes, a lonely figure wandering in endless darkness. And she knows he sees her, not as a pawn or a fragile dove, but an equal deserving of his respect.

Carmilla thrusts out a steady hand, not to an Overlord, but the only friend she has made in death. “Promise me you’ll do everything in your power to protect my daughters, and in exchange, I’ll do as you ask.”

Zestial accepts it, bowing over her hand and pressing a kiss to the back of it. “Then 'tis a bargain struck.”

Shadows coil around their intertwined hands. She braces for pain, but warmth floods her palm instead, wrapping around her in a tender embrace.

His glowing eyes gleam, green threaded with blazing crimson. “Let’s begin.”

—

—

The next day, Carmilla turns in her resignation and vacates her heavenly quarters.

She never looks back.

—

—

True to his word, Zestial prepares all the necessary items to help her pass as a sinner. She can hide her halo and wings just fine, but Carmilla needs his support to look like a demon. Glamoured gloves bulk her forearms and sharpen her nails into claws. Contacts redden her sclera and fade her angelic markings to a gray mask. A pair of earrings carries additional spells should anything fail.

Looking at herself in the mirror, she sees less of a forgemaster and more of a fallen soul. “How do I look, Zestial?”

“Beautiful.” The word slips from his lips so softly that she almost misses it. Instead of hearing a multitude of voices within his every word, this time she hears only one, a softer tone, as light and delicate as an angel’s caress.

For a moment, she sees a flicker of him as he once was—before Hell—a handsome, raven-haired man with brilliant emerald eyes and a surprisingly gentle smile.

Zestial catches himself, and the vision vanishes. His next words carry the voices of a legion, the man swallowed by the shadows. “’Tis the visage of conquest, Carmilla. Shall I draft Hell’s articles of surrender?”

Carmilla scoffs, pretending to adjust an earring, its magic warm against her skin. “Flattery will get you nowhere, Zestial.”

“Lay not blame upon the herald for uttering what is truth,” he chuckles. Zestial claps his hands together. “Now that thou dost resemble a fiend, let me instruct thee how to fight as one. Thou art a wolf now, not a dove.”

“Is this a beginner’s guide to kingslaying?” she ribs him.

“Perchance, ‘tis more apt to say demon-slaying.”

“I can’t just use my firearms?” Carmilla asks hopefully. They both know that she is an excellent sharpshooter, and that should be enough to protect her and her daughters from most threats.

“Perchance thy powder shall fail. Mayhap thou shalt not reload. Thou art the most perilous and trusty weapon.” Zestial leads her to a training room with weapons lining the walls. “I gather thou hadst no martial schooling?”

“No, but I danced,” she offers. Carmilla had been an excellent ballerina before she got married. That feels like lifetimes ago.

“Then let us turn thy dance into battle.” Zestial hums as he carefully hands her a knife from the wall before taking one himself. “Art thou prepared to waltz with death?”

He vanishes, a blur of black and green. She pivots sharply, recalling old ballet drills, and lashes out with a kick, her blade forgotten. Zestial slips around her like water. Before she can recover, her arm is hooked, her balance stolen, and she crashes to the floor. Steel pauses a breath away from her collarbone, the dagger’s edge angled toward him, not her; his body is close but not yet touching.

She braces for the familiar pain that never comes. He has already stepped back, hand outstretched. Carmilla takes it, and he draws her up easily.

“Thou art graceful, but grace alone killeth no king.” His hand hovers at her waist, guiding her turn. “Spin, and let thy heel become the blade.”

Carmilla obeys, spinning into a sharp kick that slices the air just shy of his ribs.

“Better,” Zestial murmurs, catching her ankle mid-motion. His eyes glint with approval. “I do long to see thee make the battlefield thy stage.”

—

—

In another life, she had dreamed of standing on a stage, golden applause and adulation of the crowd filling her ears. But she had always been silver, never quite worthy of gold.

She had let those dreams melt so long ago, but in Hell, they can be reforged anew.

The next session, she walks in with newly forged silver angelic steel pointe shoes.

Zestial’s grin spreads across his face. “You are a marvel, Carmilla Carmine.”

(Perhaps, she thinks, this is all the applause she needs.)

And the dance begins again.

—

—

—

—

Carmilla tells herself that the weapons she forges are inherently neutral—not good or evil—but based on the intent of the wielder. Her angelic weapons in Heaven surely went to the Exterminations that slaughtered sinners in Hell. Her guns in Hell go to sinners who could just as easily be defending their friends as murdering their rivals.

Becoming a weapons dealer in Hell has been going well on her own merits. Her daughters are eager to help her, and together, they’d carved out a small territory of their own. She’d already won a few turf wars—sometimes with words, sometimes with her pointe shoes and bullets.

The fantasy shatters when she receives a ransom letter for her daughters.

“It should be fine,” she reassures Zestial when he asks to join her. “It’s nothing I can’t handle.” They look like small-time sinners at most, and she’s been able to fend off worse odds before. Carmilla doesn’t need his presence to create rumors that her weapons are being backed by the oldest Overlord in Hell, not when she is determined to make this on her own.

She storms into the warehouse, seething. Her anger, white-hot, freezes when she sees the demon waiting, a face dredged straight from her nightmares.

It is not fine.

“Carmilla… I’m surprised to see you down here.” Her husband laughs, high and cruel as ever, flanked by twenty or so sinners. Out of the corner of her eye, Carmilla sees Odette and Clara bound and gagged. “I thought you’d be in Heaven.”

“Let my daughters go,” she snaps, forcing her trembling hands into fists.

“Our daughters are safe and would be better off under my protection.” He stalks closer and closer with each measured step. “We both know you’re not strong enough to do the job.”

“Things are different now.”

“Are they?”

He jerks forward, and she instinctively (and shamefully) recoils.

“I think it’s still the same.” His breath tickles her cheek. “I was hoping we’d come to the same agreement we had, just like the old days.”

(She can feel his weight pressing her down in the bed, his lips brushing her ear. “No one’s going to hear you scream, Carmilla.”)

Her feet are frozen to the ground. Her hands are trembling. She can’t breathe.

(“Useless as always.” He towers over her, massaging his fist ruefully. She’s lying on the floor, praying that he’ll stop and the girls don’t come home until his temper has run its course. “Get dinner ready.”)

Her husband’s hand rises to touch her cheek, only to be unceremoniously smacked away by familiar shadows. The air chills as Zestial’s presence unfurls into the room, seeping into every corner, his fury palpable, his bloodlust unmistakable. His shadows quickly whisk Clara and Odette away.

By her side, Zestial’s touch is nothing but gentle. A hand rests on her shoulder, grounding her.

“May I, Carmilla?” he whispers gently in her ear.

Zestial may be the blade, but she is its wielder. He may spill blood, but the stain will be on her hands.

If she’s going to survive in Hell, she needs to do this.

“Go ahead and kill them.”

“As you wish.” The shadows gleefully pour from him in an unbroken tide. Zestial ceases to be a man and becomes darkness itself—a vast writhing mass of shadow with a thousand eyes opening all at once, each one gleaming a hungry green.

The sinners scream as the eyes fix on them. The shadows devour them, dragging them into the abyss. One by one, their screams are cut short.

Inky-black tendrils wrap around her husband’s arms, forcing him to kneel before her.

“Carmilla, please…” he begs, eyes wide in terror. His voice cracks. “You don’t have to kill me. Please… You loved me once…”

This is murder, a small voice whispers in her head. He’s defenseless.

For now. The glowing eyes frown in the darkness. What will he do if you allow him to live? To you? To your daughters?

Carmilla takes a steadying breath. The doubt burns away, leaving only two truths. The man she once loved died long ago; what kneels before her is a stranger wearing his face. Carmilla isn’t the same woman who had barely managed to leave before, but has been reforged into something stronger.

With practiced precision, she loads her latest prototype. How fitting that it’s inspired by the first design he once stole.

Her hands no longer tremble. Carmilla meets his eyes.

She fires.

—

A stranger dies; her daughters live.

It’s a fair trade, she decides. It’s a deal she’ll make again and again.

—

—

—

“I’m glad you two are okay.” Carmilla gathers her daughters the moment she sees them. Rope burns ring their wrists, skin angry and raw. But they’re here. They’re safe. “I was so worried.”

Clara starts, “Is he—”

“Yes.” The air still tastes of gunpowder, acrid on her tongue. “He can’t hurt you ever again.”

“I’m glad he’s gone,” Odette says fiercely, pulling Carmilla closer.

“Good riddance.” Clara mutters, “He deserved it.”

Zestial keeps to the doorway, giving them space. His green eyes find hers, and a new, unbidden fear uncoils. If she can’t forge angelic steel, is she still of use? Will the deal hold—or did that single shot jeopardize everything? Will she have to leave her daughters once again?

Her hands won’t stop shaking.

Her daughters feel it immediately. “Just breathe, Mother.” Odette murmurs, “Go to the forge.”

Clara grins, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “We’ll be fine.”

“I shall keep watch o'er them.” Zestial says, “Naught shall come near whilst I keep ward.”

“I’ll be back soon.” She kisses their temples and forces herself to let go.

In the forge she fumbles the tinder twice before the spark takes.

“Saint Eligius, guide my hand,” Carmilla murmurs a quiet prayer. Her hammer is heavy at the haft, slick in her palm. Each strike rings the anvil like a bell tolling. The metal hisses furiously in reply.

The waiting is the worst part. Doubt creeps in. The endless darkness looms ahead. And she can’t drown out the thoughts in her head.

As the heat dies, the ingot blooms to that familiar sheen—angelic steel, a quiet benediction. Tears prickle her eyes. Perhaps this is proof that God still thinks she’s worthy of Heaven, even if her hands are now stained red with blood.

When she returns, Zestial’s shadows are still circling the compound. She doesn’t expect him to linger, yet Carmilla finds him in her kitchen with a steaming pot of tea on the table, two cups set out.

She folds soot-streaked forearms across her ribs. “I can still forge angelic steel, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I was not.” His eyes never leave her face. His voice is quiet, for it’s only him that’s speaking.

Carmilla needs to keep moving. She’s terrified of what will happen if she stops. The thoughts keep smoldering in her head. If she pauses, they’ll flare into an uncontrollable blaze. “You didn’t have to help today.”

“Perhaps not.”

“Why did you?” She doesn’t feel safe in her home. Her breath hitches; her heart races, the constant what-ifs drowning her in a cacophony of self-loathing. “Didn’t want him to deprive you of entertainment or angelic steel?”

“Because you’re my friend.” Zestial closes the distance between them, pulling her into a warm embrace. “I won’t stand by and see your wings clipped.”

Demons always have an angle, the texts had said, and she knows his right now—and it's to protect her. Anchored in his arms, she can only hear his steady heartbeat; the doubts fall silent.

She buries her face in the safety of his chest and finally allows herself to cry.

—

—

Chapter Text

Carmilla rises to the rank of Overlord with startling speed. It helps when her reign wears a velvet glove over an angelic steel fist.

Zestial happily fronts the capital for her to set up the machines and factories. His magic allows her to contract souls through him in a complicated process she nor Odette nor Clara can quite understand when he explains it—but they all know that it at least works.

She builds her empire, and throughout it all, he is her faithful shadow.

The longer she spends in Hell, the more Carmilla notices Zestial’s erratic habits—vanishing for stretches, then reappearing as though no time has passed. His absences are always tied to Lucifer’s summons, and the King of Hell seems determined to run him ragged.

She can always tell when Lucifer has another dangerous errand waiting for him because Zestial’s commissions surge. His orders are never consistent, ranging from daggers, shields, swords, axes, and even armor. For his requests, Carmilla reaches for angelic steel she forges herself, never the scavenged scraps from Extermination Day.

She is swamped with orders, but Carmilla still makes a point to personally deliver his commissions.

If anyone asks, it isn’t because she enjoys his company. It’s quality control. Nothing more.

Today is no different.

Zestial inspects the dagger, twirling it deftly in his hands. This commission had been a curious one—an ancient blade of his, reforged and reborn under her hammer. The metal had seemed to sing with every strike in the forge, and when she was finished, the weapon carried both the blessing of the High Heavens and the storm’s own fury, lightning bound to steel.

He twirls the dagger once more, then lets it rest flat across his palm as his gaze lifts to her. “Verily, this be thy most exquisite work as of yet wrought.”

“High praise coming from you.” Her lips curve into a pleased smile.

He vanishes the dagger with a snap of his fingers, then studies her a moment longer than necessary. “Hast thou eaten?”

“I should get going.” Carmilla frowns apologetically. “I’m behind schedule already.”

Those glowing eyes that once haunted her dreams glitter fondly. “Prithee, take this hence with thee.”

A basket materializes in her hands. She checks inside and discovers empanadas, enough for her and the girls. Of course he’d thought of them too. Her throat tightens, though her voice is measured and steady. “Thank you, Zestial.”

She’s far too busy to focus on anything but the business, Carmilla reminds herself.

But then he smiles at her and it makes her want to break all the rules anyway.

(She doesn’t.)

—

—

—

—

Carmilla had never expected to set foot in the Wrath Ring, let alone Satan’s palace, but there are firsts for everything.

Zestial had invited her to this party, pitching it as exposure for Carmine Industries. “Lucifer doth crave fellowship to endure it,” Zestial had said. “This revel shall be thick with nobles eager to cast an eye upon thy weaponry.”

It had been too good of an opportunity to pass up, given the recent upheaval and chaos when multiple Overlords had fallen during the last Extermination.

Logically, this is a prime business opportunity. She ignores the small whisper that this may or may not be a date. This is business, she insists. Strictly business.

(Business partners don’t buy colleagues custom Asmodean gowns, a sneaky little voice reminds her. She’d seen the invoice and counted the very long line of zeros. Zestial had waved it off as mission-critical business expense.)

It amuses her to see Zestial in his apparent element. He navigates them throughout the ballroom, arms linked, and guides her with practiced ease. She, a trained dancer, feels off-balance and clings to his side for dear life. Zestial has a lord’s courtesy as he happily introduces her as Hell’s premier weapons dealer while trading pleasantries with old friends.

Between conversations, he leans down to whisper the gossip in her ear—petty scandals, power grabs, and betrayals dressed up as etiquette. The people-watching is excellent, and Zestial is all too happy to fill in missing details, his breath ghosting against her skin.

He nods toward a marquis, who had bankrupted his family by commissioning an opera entirely about himself. “The critics endured two acts,” Zestial adds dryly, “before begging for Extermination Day, a kinder end than the finale.”

Carmilla hides her smirk behind her glass. The space between them has been shrinking all evening. She tells herself it’s for convenience; close proximity makes it easier to hear him over the music. Yet, his hand has found its way to her shoulder, and she somehow finds herself leaning into his touch. Her excuses are sounding weaker with every passing second.

He straightens, offering his hand. Carmilla gladly takes it. Zestial guides them to the dance floor just as the orchestra strikes up a slower song. His hand settles at her hip, her palm finds his shoulder, and their fingers intertwine. Her pulse hammers traitorously fast, the music fading to a dull thrum beneath the sound of her own heartbeat.

And then the Queen of Hell herself materializes between them, shattering the moment like glass.

“Drop off Carmilla with my husband, Zestial.” Lilith ushers them both to a small seated area, where the King of Hell is hiding. “I need your help to get this bill through.”

“But—”

“That’s an order from the Queen of Hell.” Lilith’s tone brooks no argument.

Zestial exhales softly, shoulders slumping for just a moment, before squaring back into his graceful mask. “I am most sorry, Carmilla.”

“It’s fine.” She waves him off. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

Beside her, the King of Hell exclaims, “Go get ‘em, dear!”

The moment Zestial and Lilith disappear, the golden angel’s smile fades and he slumps on the seat.

“You look like you’re having fun,” Carmilla remarks dryly as she joins him a polite distance away on the couch.

“I’m not one for parties, but Lilith insisted.” Lucifer sighs, swirling his beelzejuice glumly. His red eyes gleam a little brighter as they fix Carmilla with a knowing stare. “Still, it’s worth suffering through this to finally meet you, Carmilla Carmine.”

“How flattering that the King of Hell knows who I am.”

“Oh please! I know all about you.” Lucifer snags another drink from a passing imp with a flourish. He flashes her a crooked, guilty smile. “It’s not every day Zestial asks me for a plus one—the first time, actually. Sorry if Lilith crashed your evening together or whatever passes for courtship these days.”

“This isn’t a date.” Or at least, last she checked, he certainly hadn’t framed it as one. “It’s strictly business. Carmine Industries could use the exposure to a different clientele.”

She should be grateful for the opportunity, Carmilla reminds herself. Throughout the night, Zestial had been introducing her and showing off her weapons to demon royalty. They’d been drooling over her latest models—and she hadn’t even shown the blessed versions.

From a business perspective, this night is a smashing success. From a personal view, however…

She is not jealous as she follows his latest conversation, where he’s whispering something that makes a Goetian princess flush crimson and slap his chest with a squeal of “You dog!”

Carmilla is too far away to hear his quiet rejoinder, but it makes the princess’s hand linger on his cheek, staking her claim.

Zestial’s allowed to pursue other people romantically. That’s fine. Perfectly fine. Carmilla has no claim to him. They’re just friends—old friends, but just friends. Nothing more. She shoves down the instinctive urge to empty a clip of blessing-tipped rounds into something every time he leans in with that flirtatious smile.

Lucifer follows her gaze, and Carmilla quickly focuses her attention to the drink in front of her.

“I’ve seen your work. Absolutely exquisite.” Lucifer’s eyes glint. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear a forgemaster made them.”

Carmilla’s expression never shifts. “That sounds like a compliment. Should I be flattered?”

Lucifer laughs. “I can see why Zestial won’t stop talking about you.”

“Zestial is a gossip,” she scoffs, her voice a little sharper than she means to. “He talks about everybody.”

Lucifer, of course, pounces on it. “True, true, but not like this.” He grins. “I knew him when he was the worst little shit stain Hell had to offer. Back then, he wouldn’t lift a finger for anyone. Now? He’s practically glowing when he sings your praises.”

“He always glows.”

Lucifer arches an eyebrow.

“His eyes… His spider pin accessory…” Carmilla scowls, folding her arms tight. “The man’s a walking lamp.”

Lucifer chuckles, leaning toward her conspiratorially. “Well, if the lamp had the option, he’d be plugged in right here with you. Let him have a dance before you shove him into the dog house.”

“We’ll see.”

—

—

They never do get that dance.

Zestial and Lilith only return to their side as the crowds begin to disperse. Zestial is all suave grace, but Carmilla can see the fatigue etched underneath the perfect façade. That exhaustion vanishes when his eyes find hers, his green eyes glowing just slightly brighter.

“Was Lucifer bothering you, Carmilla? I’m sorry for leaving you with him this entire evening.” For Zestial to outright abandon Shakespearean English, he must be more than a little upset. He leans down to brush a stray lock of hair out of her face, his touch lingering a moment too long. “You look a little flushed.”

She waves off his concern. “It’s just the beelzejuice,” Carmilla mumbles into her drink.

“You’re wounding me, Zestial,” Lucifer protests. “I’m the perfect gentleman!”

“Except when it comes to Adam, of course.”

“Touché. But you’re not one to talk, Zestial. Dumping poor Carmilla here to go off and gallivant.” Lucifer wags his finger playfully. “Terribly rude of you to invite a woman to a ball and not dance with her. Where are your manners?”

Zestial’s eye twitches. “My manners were commandeered by Lilith. You said this was going to be a social gathering, not a political campaign.”

Lucifer flashes Zestial a lopsided grin, equal parts sheepish and guilty, then tips his glass in a silent apology toast before turning deferentially to his wife.

“Sorry, Carmilla. My bad, Zestial.” Lilith pats the spider demon on the back, managing the decency to look faintly guilty. “I needed you to lock down the Goetian block. Plus, you know Mammon hates me and we really, really need his support.”

Zestial lets out a long-suffering sigh. “Then after tonight’s efforts, I hope your campaign succeeds.” His voice softens, abandoning the legion in favor of his own. “Forgive me, Carmilla, for proving such a cad this evening. Will you grant me the honor of escorting you home? Please?”

Carmilla decides to throw him a lifeline. She hides the faintest curl of her lip behind her glass. “Let’s head back—before you get dragged into another scheme.”

—

—

Ever the silver-tongued demon, Zestial has managed to charm his way into a nightcap at her home. She’s given up any sense of propriety and downs the whiskey straight from the bottle. At this point, she may or may not be a little tipsy.

“You seemed practiced out there,” Carmilla notes, trying to keep her voice even.

“I did this all the time when I was alive.” Zestial shrugs nonchalantly. “I dealt in secrets and souls.”

The whiskey blurs her better judgment. “And flirting?”

He hesitates. “If that was required for success.” Zestial reaches out to gingerly remove the whiskey bottle from her hands. “I would have preferred your company.”

“I bet you say that to all the ladies,” she mutters darkly.

His lips twitch into the ghost of a smile. “Only the ones that matter.” He presses a gentle kiss to her forehead. “Good night, Carmilla.” And before she can respond, he’s gone, slipping away into the shadows.

Carmilla flushes scarlet, whiskey warm in her veins, and for once, she has no words at all.

—

—

The glowing eyes watch over Carmilla in her dreams. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you have a crush,” they tease.

She flushes, snaps her mouth shut, and refuses to answer.

—

—

Chapter Text

When Carmilla realizes she is in love with him, it isn’t a shocking revelation that strikes her like lightning.

She realizes on what is a very normal Tuesday.

The only thing out of the ordinary is the spider demon in her kitchen basting chicken, while Clara and Odette prep salads. They’re chattering on about Hell’s latest gossip—Viktor’s latest experiment running amuck, Rosie and Franklin getting together in Cannibal Town, and the entire gamut of Asmodeus’ recent conquests.

Carmilla lingers in the doorway, frowning. Their usual dinners are on Sundays, a tradition from their first meeting. Zestial is a creature of habit—except when he expects a long absence.

It smells like spring from the thyme sprigs freshly picked from his garden. Without looking, his shadows reach into the right cabinets and set out four plates. He slices one breast into thin strips for Odette, cuts another into chunks for Clara, and leaves one whole for her, tilting the pan to drown it in sauce the way she likes it.

The air is suddenly suffocating, her throat too tight. She tells herself it’s the thyme making her eyes sting. He belongs here, with them, not gallivanting doing Lord knows what with Lucifer.

Carmilla wants nothing more than to tell him to stay. Instead, she asks, “Does Lucifer need another favor?”

He barely glances up from plating his own meal—a whole breast with a dab of lemon. “I shouldn’t be too long this time.”

“Be careful.” Carmilla adds, “Try not to die.”

His smile is wry. “It’s the least I can do.”

The memory of last time makes her stomach turn. He had staggered to her doorstep half-dead, shadows barely holding him upright, crimson blood soaking into her floorboards. She’d dragged him in, patched him up with shaking hands, and stood vigil by him the entire night, listening to his shallow breathing, terrified he wasn’t going to last until dawn. 

When he’d woken up the next morning perfectly fine, as if last night had just been a nightmare, she’d seen red. “Next time, go die on someone else’s doorstep, estúpido!” she’d sobbed into his chest.

“You don’t have the greatest track record of trying the hardest,” Carmilla mutters resentfully.

He has the courtesy to look remorseful. “Of that, I am indeed culpable.”

“I’m sure you’ll do a better job of it this time, Zestial.” Clara throws a knowing smirk in Zestial’s direction as she carries the salad to the dining room.

Odette adjusts her glasses before she picks up Clara’s and her plate. “If he doesn’t, we always have new guns for target practice.”

Zestial laughs. “Fear not; I shall do mine utmost.”

“For all of our sakes, please do.” Carmilla quickly adds, her eyes intent on the splash of sauce on the counter, “I don’t want to deal with another Paimon rush order without my favorite partner-in-crime.”

His expression softens. “Thou shalt not need to, I swear it.”

Her throat tightens. For better or worse, Zestial always keeps his promises.

Before Carmilla can reply, Clara’s voice calls from the dining room, “Hurry up, mom and Zestial! Dinner’s going to get cold.”

“I suppose we should go join them.” Carmilla forces a smile, grabbing their plates from the counter.

“As you wish.” Silverware in tow, Zestial brushes past her, close enough that she can feel the warmth still clinging to him. For a foolish moment, she wants to catch his sleeve and keep him there.

Dinner is a quiet, but ordinary affair. To Carmilla, it might as well be the Last Supper. Clara and Odette do most of the talking, discussing the latest trends in Hell and the update to some romantic novel series half of Hell seems to be obsessed with. Zestial listens, amused, offering small comments that make them laugh. The smell of thyme lingers, and the candlelight softens his sharp edges.

It’s the type of quiet domesticity she had longed for while she was alive and thought impossible in the afterlife. Every stolen minute sharpens her yearning until it hurts.

Carmilla pulls him aside before he can depart.

She has no right to him, she understands. There are too many risks involved in entangling their alliance in anything romantic.

That doesn’t ease the ache in her chest, thick bands constricting her lungs so every breath hurts. She knows him—both the terrifying Overlord that indulges in sadistic delights and the man underneath—and she still wants it all.

This is the same man whose hands can easily strangle sinners and play the piano so beautifully, in spite of it being invented long after he died. She’s learned he prefers tea to coffee, and takes both black, except for hibiscus tea, where he adds an indulgent amount of milk and honey. He prefers mead to wine, and wine to brandy, though he’ll drink all three if courtesy requires it. His workspace is as exacting as the man himself, tools and blades aligned with military precision, yet his books betray him, cluttered with pressed flowers tucked between pages. Even though he’ll talk her ear off about Hell’s rumors and history, the man dislikes ever discussing himself.

He hums melodies no one else remembers while in the kitchen, little ghosts of songs that outlived the world that made them. He still records his recipes in cipher out of habit until her girls harangued him into writing them out properly. He’s fastidious in his appearance, in spite of his insistence on an antiquated style that has long gone out of fashion. And yet with all his discipline, he is still a creature of contradiction: a meticulous strategist in war, but a performer with magic, all instinct and artistry, shaping chaos into spectacle.

Only the most careful observer would catch these little things: the unguarded curve of his smile when her girls tease him, or how his gaze lingers on her a moment longer than he needs to. She notices—of course she notices. And every time, she reminds herself she’d be better off blind to such things. In Hell, noticing is as dangerous as wanting—and she does both, no matter how hard she tries not to.

So she tells herself—again—that this is enough.

Standing on her tiptoes, Carmilla presses a quick kiss to his cheek. “For luck,” she claims, heat flooding her face.

Zestial’s hand settles on her shoulder, something inscrutable in his eyes. “Then I must requite thy favour when I do return.”

—

—

When he returns unharmed a month later, she exhales a sigh she hadn’t realized she was holding.

Relief turns to embarrassment when he catches her hand, leans in, and presses a kiss to her cheek in kind, lingering for a heartbeat too long. “For thy favour.”

Her ears burn scarlet.

—

—

—

—

She knows he’s fond of her, but fondness is not the same as being in love with her.

(She’s made that mistake once—and that was more than enough.)

“Zestial…” Carmilla does a double-take when she looks up from her work to look at him. His customary top hat has been replaced by an awful red bowler—and for a moment, she almost doesn’t recognize him. “Where’s your hat?”

In all the years they’ve known each other, Carmilla has never once seen him without it. Her daughters had called it a “ridiculous relic” for years, and he never once showed the slightest inclination to part with it.

“Destroyed,” he says simply—too simply, as if the word costs him more than he’ll admit.

“Can’t your magic fix it?” she asks. Carmilla has certainly seen him perform enough impressive displays of power that fixing a hat should be child’s play.

Zestial shakes his head. “Mine art doth ruin, not restore.”

Carmilla sets down her hammer, frowning. There’s a quiet melancholy in his eyes. He doesn’t care about many material things, she knows, but he definitely cared about the hat—as oversized and out-of-fashion as it may be.

“Let me see it.”

A snap of his fingers, and the tattered remains emerge from his shadows. The crown is torn through, the structure half-collapsed.

He mutters, “Tis no matter.”

“We’re fixing this,” she says matter-of-factly. Their current plans for the day can wait.

“But—”

“Not buts.” She folds her arms. Carmilla has repaired clothes before and makes the most cutting-edge weapons in Hell. She can figure out how to repair a top hat. “I can’t have you unrecognizable without your usual hat—and you look dreadful in a bowler.”

Before he can protest, she’s already marching him down the street to her district’s nearest fabric shop. Unfortunately, there’s nothing that quite matches the original. After some debate, he settles on a grey fabric that complements the top of his cloak.

“Let it be mended, not masked.” He twirls the cloth in hands, pensive. “Truth sits better on the brow.”

“Whatever you want, Zestial.” She grins, reaching up to touch his shoulder. “It’s your hat.”

Finding appropriate thread is a greater challenge. None of the black or greys are quite what they’re looking for. He almost resigns himself to a dreadful white or purple spools, but Carmilla knows that color combination will eat him alive on the inside.

She digs through boxes of spools until she finds a green thread to match his eyes.

They quickly return to her home. She reshapes the crown with hidden stays, a scaffold beneath the cloth, the way temper holds steel together after heat.

“Where did you get this hat?” Carmilla asks, as she begins to sew the patches on with delicate precision.

“A mentor,” he answers softly. “He died.”

“I’m sorry.”

Zestial snorts. “It’s a ridiculous hat. Impractical. Unfashionable. I never understood why he wore things like this, even while he was alive.”

Yet, he still kept it, down to the last scrap.

Perhaps, she thinks, this is why he still presses flowers into books—to preserve the memory of fleeting things that he pretends not to care about.

“What was your mentor like?” she prompts again. Truth may sit better on the brow, but Zestial loathes speaking it.

“Demanding. Paranoid. Stubborn.”

She hums. “Sounds like someone I know.” Carmilla gives him a pointed look.

Zestial harumphs. “Hardly.”

For a man who loves to gossip and stir chaos in Overlord meetings, Zestial seems to despise talking about himself. He’s lived longer as a demon than as a man, but still that tenth of his life made him the man and monster he is today.

Carmilla persists anyway, patient and deft, unraveling him thread by thread.

It takes half an hour before she learns his mentor’s name—Sir Walsingham—and another before he admits he’d been orphaned young, scraping by on wit and will. He speaks haltingly at first, voice rough, as though the memories themselves have rusted from disuse, but his expression softens as he describes the wild violets his mother would pick for him, a rare reward given for a job well-done.

Piece by piece, she begins to sew together the man he once was: proud, clever, impossibly stubborn. A man bidden to go on out of duty and with a burning, indomitable will. A shadow with nothing truly to call his own, always wanting, but never having.

When at last the hat is restored to its former glory, Carmilla smooths the final seam and sets it atop his head. She can’t help but smile. As ridiculous as that hat had been, he had looked even more ludicrous without it.

Carmilla flicks the brim so it dips over his eyes. “It may have been your mentor’s hat once, but it’s very you now.”

His voice is rough, unsteady, his green eyes gentle. “Thank you, Carmilla.”

Without realizing it, the shadows around him still and fade; the spider’s visage slips away, and for a heartbeat he stands before her a man, his green eyes sparkling.

He steps closer, hand lifting to her cheek. The warmth of his touch makes her breath catch; his expression is gentler than she’s ever seen it—vulnerable and so very human.

“I’m home!” Clara announces cheerfully from the foyer.

Zestial jerks back as if burned, retreating to a polite distance. The man vanishes as the Overlord reasserts himself, a demon once more.

Carmilla exhales slowly, willing her heart to steady.

—

—

She prays he’s never looked at anyone like that before.

—

—

—

In her dreams, his glowing green eyes smirk at her in the darkness.

She tilts her head, grinning. “Drag me down, king.”

His eyes seem to glimmer with forlorn longing. “Perhaps, Persephone.”

—

—

—

She’s running behind schedule. The recent turf war with a rival weapons dealer had taken longer than she expected, and Carmilla is struggling with backfill. By the time she returns from another grueling meeting, the last thing she expects to find is a small vase of purple violets waiting on her desk.

Her secretary Summer sets another stack of documents before her, carefully avoiding the bouquet.

“Who left flowers, Summer?” Carmilla asks, brow furrowing.

“Lord Zestial stopped by and asked that you receive them,” Summer replies. Her voice is even; only the tight line of her mouth and the way her tail coils betray her nerves.

Carmilla suppresses a sigh. His reputation continues to precede him—and despite their years of association, he still terrifies her staff.

“Thank you, Summer.”

“Ms. Carmine.” Summer inclines her head and slips from the office, closing the door behind her.

Alone, Carmilla turns her attention to the bouquet. He must have grown them himself—they’re the same purple hue as her eyes beneath the crimson glamour. The violets are freshly picked, filling her office with a soft, fleeting sweetness.

Flowers rarely survive Hell without corrupting, twisting into demonic forms to mirror the sinful land that bore them. But these are perfect, as beautiful and mundane as they would be on earth. He must have tended them by hand, coaxing each fragile stem until it remembered what it felt to be beautiful.

She plucks the small card tucked between the stems and reads the message in his familiar scrawl: For a job well done.

Her lips curve into a small smile.

Her daughters sweep in with lunch a few moments later. Odette parks Carmilla’s takeout a safe distance from the vase and she and Clara both settle in their usual chairs across from Carmilla’s desk.

“Did Zestial give those to you?” Odette asks, all faux innocence.

Carmilla doesn’t look up from her stack of paperwork. “He did.”

“Violets mean faithfulness,” Clara remarks slyly.

“And everlasting love,” Odette adds without missing a beat.

“In the language of flowers…” Clara leans in conspiratorially, “Purple violets mean my thoughts are occupied with love.”

Carmilla buries the flicker of hope rising in her chest. “I’m sure he made a mistake—or it was simply the only variety that bloomed properly.”

“This office smells like denial, mom,” Clara sings.

“And violets—with just a hint of wishful thinking.” Odette grins.

“Enough teasing, you two.”

Carmilla twirls a flower between her fingers, its petals brushing her knuckles, and deliberately ignores the warmth blooming in her chest.

She’ll ask him about it later—after she returns from this weapons drop-off.

Hell is forever, after all. They have all the time in the world to sort this out.

—

—

—

When Carmilla comes to, she feels a dull throbbing in her side. The memories come rushing back—the failed ambush during a weapons drop-off in the Doomsday District, the resulting shootout, and then the shadows rushing in.

She winces as she tries to sit up. A sinner had gotten a lucky shot to nearly collapse the entire building on her. Carmilla had been lucky to only have been nicked by debris in the side and not buried alive.

Who would have thought that stone was the solution to defeating angels? she thinks incredulously. Heaven should be grateful few sinners had potent magic, let alone physical magic of that caliber—or else, who knows? Hell may finally have a fighting chance next Extermination.

“Easy, Carmilla.” A familiar pair of hands gently pushes her back down on the bed. “You’re still recovering.”

She obliges him. “I must look really bad if you’re forgoing the Shakespearean English, Zestial,” Carmilla quips.

Zestial gives her a wry smile. “You’ve certainly seen fairer days.”

Her daughters are beside themselves with worry as they fuss over her. Their father may be dead twice over, but the ghost of his actions still haunts them. Carmilla gathers them into her arms, and the dam finally breaks.

“Mom… we already lost you once,” Clara sobs into Carmilla’s chest, voice breaking. “We can’t... We won’t go through that again!”

Odette’s grip tightens against her back. “Mother, you’re not allowed to die on us again.”

“I’m sorry…” Her voice trembles as tears slip silently down her cheeks. She clutches her daughters tighter, desperate to never let them go again. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Her daughters only release her after Zestial promises to continue to keep watch over her. They know as well as she does that the business still needs running and obligations must be met.

“You’re not allowed to overdo it, Mother,” Odette says pointedly. She glances at Zestial. “Zestial, you’ll make sure she rests?”

“Of course,” he says, amusement flickering in his eyes.

Clara smirks. “If anyone can convince her, it’s you, old man.”

“What—” Carmilla starts, flustered, but Clara is already laughing as she tugs her sister toward the door.

“See you later, Mom! Bye Zestial!”

—

—

Zestial is happy to play nurse as she recovers. He and his shadows obligingly aid her daughters, ensuring the well-oiled machine of Carmine Industries continues to run in her absence. He has his own duties, she knows, yet, he still stays faithfully by her side over the next few days, entrusting his familiars and subordinates to fulfill any outstanding obligations.

Carmilla wakes up one morning to the smell of violets. Turning, she discovers a new bouquet of violets on her nightstand. There is no note this time.

Carmilla reaches out, skimming a purple petal with her bandaged fingers. She wants this to mean exactly what she thinks it means—and her daughters were right.

When Zestial returns to keep her company, she swallows the question perched on her tongue. Carmilla murmurs, “Don’t you have places you need to be?”

His hand finds hers, giving it a gentle squeeze. “None more important than here.”

Carmilla knows she shouldn’t be blighting her afterlife with this nonsense again—but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to. She’s spent years patiently waiting. She doesn’t want to wait anymore.

Eternity means nothing if he isn’t by her side.

“Zestial.”

“Yes?”

“I—" His glowing green eyes glitter with so much devotion that words fail her. She wants to tell him how much he means to her, but the emotions catch in her throat and she can only stare helplessly.

Summoning the last spark of bravery flickering in her soul, Carmilla seizes his lapel and pulls him down into a kiss.

For a heartbeat, he stiffens in her grasp, and her heart feels like it’s going to burst out of her chest. The moment seems to stretch into an eternity. Terror claws at her. She is waiting for the inevitable—that he’ll push her away, or worse, offer her only pity.

To her relief, Zestial deepens the kiss with a ravenous fervor—not as a demon, but as a man starved for her very touch. Carmilla finally succumbs to his temptation and allows herself to be wholly, irrevocably his.

—

—

—

—

The doctor returns the next morning, examining Carmilla’s wound with a disapproving tut. “You’re looking better, but you need to be more careful, dearie. Your stitches came undone. Knowing you, you were probably trying to get out and about.” The doctor sighs heavily, quickly packing up her briefcase before turning to Zestial. “Zestial, make sure she doesn’t move from the bed and rests.”

“That shall I do, and gladly,” Zestial replies, a brazen smirk curling onto his lips.

Carmilla flushes scarlet at his tone. The doctor huffs, muttering about stubborn patients, and hurries out.

The door has barely clicked shut before Carmilla smacks his chest lightly, scowling. “Behave when there are other people around.”

“As thou dost desire, mine own dearest.” Zestial tilts his head. “When others are not nigh?” His long fingers trace her collarbone before dipping lower to trace a line down her ribcage. His whisper is dark and inviting in her ear. “Art thou tempted to relive last night’s delight?”

Desire crashes over her in spite of her better judgment. Carmilla is quickly discovering that although Zestial is a gentleman on the streets, he’s a demon in the sheets.

“I wouldn’t mind an encore,” she admits coyly.

He lets out a purr of absolute delight. With a careless flick, he plucks off his hat and tosses it onto the chair across from the bed, its green-stitched seams catching the lamplight. Zestial snaps his fingers. The door’s lock clicks shut.

His hand slides lower—only for hers to catch it.

“Mind the stitches,” she warns.

He kisses the pulse point on her neck, causing her to groan. “Of course, beloved.”

—

True to his word, Zestial keeps her in bed all day.

Carmilla suspects if the doctor had known how he’d interpret “rest,” she might have chosen her phrasing more carefully.

—

—

Chapter Text

The scent of browned butter greets her as she enters the kitchen. Carmilla fights back a smile; he only makes pancakes when he’s particularly content.

She finds Zestial at the stove, coffee brewed, teapot full, breakfast already waiting for her and her daughters. Humming a jaunty tune, he’s wearing the awful pink apron that Clara and Odette had insisted on buying him one Christmas.

It’s a familiar sight, yet it still feels brand-new.

He’s been her oldest, most loyal friend for years. Now, she isn’t quite sure what to call him. Paramour? Lover? Partner? None of them feel quite right.

(“Yours,” a small voice murmurs. For once, Carmilla doesn’t dispute it.)

“Zestial.” Carmilla can’t help but smile at the sight.

“Up with the dawn, Carmilla?” Where he once would simply smile at her, Zestial leans down to press a light kiss to her cheek. It’s brief, sweet, and sends a flutter through her chest. “I had thought thee bound to thy pillow still.”

Carmilla slips behind him, her fingertips tentatively brushing the small of his back. “I’ve rested long enough.” She adds, “A knife grows dull in its sheath.”

His green eyes narrow at her, clearly unamused. “A few more days’ rest will not slay thee, sweetling.”

“A week’s rest is plenty.” Carmilla ignores the twinge in her side as she reaches up in the cabinet for powdered sugar and maple syrup, wincing as her stitches pull. Pain be damned, she fully intends to return to work—whether Zestial, her girls, or the doctor likes it or not. “You worry too much.”

“I call it prudence.”

“Fussing,” she corrects, tapping his arm. When he turns, she ambushes him with a dusting of powdered sugar. “Now you match breakfast,” she teases, grinning. “If I can sneak up on you, I can go back to work.”

His lips curl in amusement. “Thou didst not sneak up on me, sweetling.”

She juts her chin out teasingly. “I think I did.”

Before she can react, he leans down to steal a kiss from her. It tastes like tea and sugar, soft and sweet. Her hands slide up to his shoulders, his thumb tracing gentle circles at her hip, and for a moment there's nothing but this—

“YES! I KNEW IT!”

Carmilla jerks back, the movement sending pain lancing through her side. Zestial’s hands instinctively steady her. They freeze.

In the doorway, Clara has the most triumphant smile on her face and Odette can’t suppress a grin.

Carmilla flushes. “We were making breakfast.”

“Is that what we’re calling it now, mom?” Clara looks like the cat that got the proverbial cream.

Odette folds her arms, an eyebrow raised. “While we’re happy for you, do keep things family friendly. We eat here.”

Zestial clears his throat pointedly. His hands retreat politely from Carmilla’s hips, leaving enough room between them for decency to squeeze by. “The pancakes grow cold whilst thou dost stare.”

“Changing the subject won’t save you, old man,” Clara counters, even though she’s already grabbing plates and utensils. “Glad you finally gave her flowers properly.”

Odette pours the two of them coffee. “We saw the card. ‘For a job well done.’” She gives Zestial a sidelong, appraising glance. “Was that the best you could do?”

Carmilla groans, rubbing her temples at the migraine she can already feel coming. “Really, mijas?”

“It was on your desk!” Clara bats her eyes innocently. “Can you blame us?”

“If anything, you should be thanking us.” Odette sniffs. She begins pouring an absurd amount of maple syrup on her pancakes before passing it to Clara, who does the same. “Horatio and the two of us got Zestial to give you flowers in the first place.”

“It’s his fault for being more of a Mr. Darcy than a Casanova.” Clara nods sagely.

Odette smirks. “At least when it comes to you, Mother.”

Carmilla glances at him, surprised, and Zestial looks the tiniest bit embarrassed. “Of that, I am most certainly guilty,” he admits, his grey cheeks darkening.

“We know.” Odette says, between bites of pancakes, “We had to watch you two orbit each other for over a decade. It was painful to watch.”

Clara takes a sip of coffee. “Pretty sure your portrait’s under ‘awkward’ in the dictionary, Zestial.”

Zestial lets out a long-suffering sigh. “’Tis comforting to know my reputation endures.”

“Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with us.” Clara playfully nudges him from across the counter. “You’re stuck with us now.”

Carmilla hums. “I seem to remember the two of you not wanting him around at first.”

Clara shrugs. “We had to give in to the inevitable.”

“Besides, you deserve to be happy, Mother.” Odette smiles softly. “You too, Zestial.”

The words catch her off guard, soft and sharp all at once. Once, happiness had felt like a luxury best left to others, when survival was the only victory she dared hope for. And yet here she is, in Hell of all places, surrounded by her daughters, and the man she once thought she could never have.

It took nearly dying to reach this point, but she’ll count it a blessing all the same.

“Now, as much as we’d love to tease you two lovebirds, some of us have to get to work.” Clara says, licking a final streak of syrup from her plate. “You should enjoy a well-deserved break, mom.”

Odette rises from the table, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “We can handle it. You’re only allowed back on Monday when the Extermination orders start rolling in.”

“That includes you too, old man.” Clara grabs another cup of coffee to go. “Do try to behave, you two. Make sure to spoil her, Zestial!”

The girls give her a quick hug goodbye before heading out. The door slams behind them, leaving her and Zestial alone.

Zestial arches an elegant eyebrow. “Thy daughters are formidable, sweetling.”

“They take after their mother,” Carmilla replies dryly.

He turns back to her, setting a fresh plate of pancakes before her. “They do have a point. Won’t you let me spoil you, sweetling?”

Carmilla folds her arms, pretending to deliberate. “Maybe just this once.”

Laughing, he sets the syrup beside her and pours her coffee with practiced ease. His pink apron sways like his ridiculous hat as he pulls up a chair to sit beside her, reaching out to grab the powdered sugar to dust his own pancakes.

For the first time in a long time, the earth has stilled on its axis. There are no meetings, no deadlines, no impending mortal peril—only this.

—

Perhaps she can get into the habit of this.

—

—

—

—

Zestial shifts beside her, pressing an apologetic kiss to her hair, as he moves away from her.

Carmilla sleepily blinks. Instinctively, she pulls him back to bed, burying her face against his back. “See you tonight?” she murmurs. He has an early meeting today—or else he wouldn’t be waking up at this ungodly hour.

“I did promise Odette and Clara pasta.” Zestial twists just enough to brush his lips to hers. “Who else would they trust to save the noodles from a fiery doom?”

She puffs out her cheeks, half-awake and indignant. “I only burned it one time.”

He chuckles softly. “Then once was a tragedy most complete.” A final kiss to her forehead. “Sleep now, sweetling. I shall behold thee soon.”

It’s too early to argue with him. Carmilla burrows beneath the covers, the scent of him still clinging to the sheets, and drifts back to sleep.

By the time she stirs again, morning light spills through the curtains. Carmilla turns to find blueberry scones and coffee on the bedside table, kept warm by a softly glowing circle of runes. Smiling, Carmilla nibbles on a pastry and sips the still-steaming drink before dressing in the spare clothes she keeps in his closet.

It’s rare that they stay at his place. Hers is closer to the factories—and he’s made it clear that he’d much rather be where she and the girls were than wait for her to come to him.

She returns to his library, where their notes from the night before still lie scattered. They’d been experimenting with shielding spells for potential use in mass-produced armor, and the hour had grown too late to make the trip back.

Sighing, Carmilla grabs the book she had been attempting to decipher last night, gathering a few notes, to take back to her office.

“So you’re Carmilla Carmine,” a dry voice drawls behind her.

Carmilla spins, expecting an enemy, only to find the speaker trapped within a gilded frame. A painted woman peers out, with olive skin, seafoam eyes, and a playful expression. Her white robes fall in immaculate folds, her pose decidedly entertained.

“You’re not what I expected. I thought you’d be less… human.”

Carmilla blinks. “And you are?”

“We’ve never met, have we? I suppose there’s a reason for that—a tall one that wears a ridiculous hat.” The woman smiles. “I am Kassandra, Oracle of Delphi, Zestial’s resident seer and inconvenient voice of reason.”

Zestial has mentioned Kassandra before as one of his oldest and most trusted confidants. Carmilla had expected her to be another sinner or a Hellborn demon, not an oil painting with an attitude.

“He’s always spoken highly of you.” Carmilla crosses her arms. “I’ll add ‘jester’ to your list of titles.”

“Oh please. I’ll leave that to Zestial. He’s always been much better at bearing the brunt of a joke.” Kassandra leans a hand on her chin. “I’m more interested in you, dear. I’ve only heard tidbits through Horatio and prying information out of Zestial’s reluctant jaws—and now here, you stand.”

“Why?”

Kassandra laughs. “I’ve been curious about the soul who made even Sundays sacred again.”

“If this is your idea of prophecy, I see why you’re kept framed.”

“Ooh you’ve got fire too.” Kassandra smirks. “I can see why he’s been enchanted for so long.”

“I’ve never seen you in the library before.”

“A change of scenery not by my own design.” She sighs dramatically. “Zestial’s worried I’ll spill all his embarrassing secrets now that you’ll be swinging by more often—or provide inappropriate commentary.”

“Is there a difference?” Carmilla asks dryly.

“For him? None whatsoever.” Kassandra tilts her head. “He’s very easy to embarrass, you know. You should have seen his face when Lucifer told him he needed more subordinates. ‘You’re an Overlord—you can’t just have a painting as a subordinate!’ It’s how we got our favorite secretary Horatio.”

Kassandra’s tone is light, but something in it makes Carmilla wonder if she’s being measured—like a scale weighing cost against worth. “A secretary and a painting—a marked improvement.”

“It is now that he has you.”

Carmilla opens her mouth to answer, but the light in Kassandra’s eyes flickers—like oil catching flame.

The Oracle’s smile dies as her gaze fogs, pupils turning stark white. Her voice changes, deepening with something more ancient and dangerous.

“He’ll crown you queen with borrowed stars,

then claim the throne you make.

The coronation feeds his flame;

the scepter seals what fate may take.”

Even the air seems to hold its breath.

Kassandra blinks, color returning to her eyes. The playfulness has drained from her face to leave only anticipatory grief.

“What does that mean?” Carmilla demands, pulse racing. She searches for sense in them — stars, thrones, flame, fate — but every meaning twists back on itself. None of it makes sense. What throne? Whose fate?

(A smaller, meaner voice in her—still mortal, still scarred—whispers that the throne she makes might mean her forge, her weapons, her usefulness. She crushes the thought before it can properly bloom.)

“If I knew, I’d charge extra.” Kassandra stares at her with a gaze heavy with a weight of thousands of years. “The thing about prophecy is that no one ever knows until it comes to pass. And in my experience, that’s usually when it’s already destroyed them.”

Carmilla’s fists clench. “How do you stop it?”

“You don’t. Everything has its time.” The levity is gone, and whatever affection in those seafoam eyes has vanished. “All flames fall to darkness in the end.”

There's a beat of silence. Kassandra looks at her differently now—not unkind, but no longer warm—like seeing a puzzle piece that doesn't quite fit in the quartet Zestial has been a part of for centuries.

“That will do, Kassandra.” Horatio, Zestial’s long-suffering secretary, appears in the doorway, neat and composed as ever. The spider brooch on his lapel catches light when he adjusts his cuffs. If not for the black horns curling back from his temples and the green markings veiling his eyes, he could almost pass for human.

Kassandra inclines her head. “Horatio.”

“Lord Zestial did ask you not to frighten his guests.” Horatio rubs his temples, as if he is already calculating the fallout. “Some of us prefer getting through the day without an existential crisis.”

“Well, then he shouldn’t have moved me from his office.” Kassandra flicks a speck of imaginary dust from the painted hem of her robe. “Besides, she’s hardly a guest.”

“And here I thought you’d want Lord Zestial to be happy.” Horatio has a similar expression that her daughters wore when they first found out about them—a mix between pleased and something else she can’t quite read.

Kassandra’s mouth flattens into a thin line. “Not when the price became too high.”

“Are you here to lecture me too, Horatio?” Carmilla sweeps the last of the notes, eager to escape the library. The walls are closing in—and she needs to leave.

“No, ma’am.” Horatio’s attention snaps back to her. “Lord Zestial requested I check if you needed anything.”

“I’m fine. Thanks.” She may have left a scroll or two behind, but Zestial can always bring it to her later. Carmilla is far too invested in a hasty retreat to grab it.

“Carmilla…” Kassandra calls, her voice softening. “I’m never wrong, even when I want to be.”

Carmilla feels Kassandra’s painted eyes on her back, almost pitying. The weight of it follows her out of the room.

She doesn’t look back.

—

—

It seems to be common knowledge now to his inner circle that he frequents her home far more than his own. Her people have yet to notice, but she assumes it’s a simple matter of time before rumors spring forth.

Kassandra’s words linger still, the Fates at their loom, spinning threads of borrowed stars and thrones and flame. The more she tries to ignore them, the louder they ring in her mind.

Carmilla can’t fight the feelings of uncertainty poking through her skin, sharp pinpricks from within. This may be Hell, but lately, it feels like Heaven—and she’s terrified that this happiness will collapse around her.

There are still questions she herself can’t answer: Why, out of hundreds of years of waiting, did he choose her? He could have anyone, sinners, demon nobility—and all of a sudden, after years of disinterest, he chooses her, her with her heavenly baggage, two daughters, and a personality that left so much to be desired.

It can’t just be the carnal indulgences (as heavenly as they may be).

Carmilla tries to sift through the reasons, attempting to find the right angles to fill the question marks he has inadvertently left behind.

Carmilla-as-a-woman-who-has-a-terrible-history-with-men-and-really-should-have-sworn-them-off-in-the-afterlife:

“He’s probably just using you for angelic weapons and he’ll discard you when you’re no longer useful. That’s what your husband tried to do.

What makes you think Zestial will be any different? He’s a demon, after all, and you should have never trusted him in the first place. You should leave now before your daughters get hurt.

He’ll claim the throne you make, after all.”

The fear, ice cold, briefly courses through her veins. She’s warmed by the simple truth: although Zestial himself admits he deserves damnation, he has never once done anything that warranted her mistrust. He could have abandoned them so many times and yet remains her steadfast shadow, in fair weather and turbulent storms.

Carmilla-as-an-optimist:

“I’m sure it’s because of your scintillating personality and martial prowess. Who wouldn’t want to choose you? Anyone in Hell would be lucky to have you!”

She does not dispute the fact that anyone would be lucky to have her, but Zestial is powerful enough that he doesn’t need her—for either her martial prowess or angelic weapons.

Carmilla-as-a-realist:

“Logically, this relationship is an excellent business opportunity. Two of the most powerful Overlords working together is better than just one. Out of all the Overlords, she is the most trustworthy to team up with.”

But that’s not quite right either, she knows. They had this alliance for years—without any romantic entanglements. Carnal indulgences are superfluous to that partnership. If anything, it only complicates matters.

Carmilla-as-a-romanticist:

“When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Perhaps he just loves you.”

The angel in her hasn’t quite been snuffed out, Carmilla supposes, for she wants this so badly to be true.

—

Carmilla goes to the spider’s mouth to hear it for herself. The afterglow fades, leaving only the cold abyss of uncertainty.

“Why me?” She turns to face him. “Why did you choose me?”

Zestial tilts his head. “What brought this on, dove?”

Carmilla hesitates. “Kassandra,” she admits at last.

“Ah.” A shadow of guilt crosses his features. “I’ll speak to her. She’s always been cautious.”

“It doesn’t change the question, Zestial.”

His eyes study her carefully, as if trying to commit her to memory. “The first time I saw you,” he murmurs, “I realized I’d been waiting all these years for you.”

Zestial leans forward to kiss her forehead, his hand cupping her cheek, his fingers tracing delicate patterns on her skin with reverence. “Remember the first thing I said to you? It wasn’t a line. I meant it then and I mean it now: you are truly the fairest sight I’ve ever seen.”

Her breath catches in her throat. “All this time?”

“Always.” He draws her close, looking at her as if she were dawn itself.  “You’ve undone me, sweetling. I’d choose you every time, no matter the cost. I’d tear down the sky, if it meant keeping you, Odette, and Clara safe.”

“I don’t need grand promises, Zestial.” She presses a hand over his heart, feeling the steady beat beneath her palm. Carmilla doesn’t want to imagine the day the price becomes more than she can bear. “Just swear to me you’ll come back to us.”

“I promise.” Zestial’s smile softens, almost shy. “If anything, I should be the one asking you why you’d choose someone more shadow than man.”

Her answer is simple. Carmilla loves the man and the demon in equal measures, prophecy be damned.

She has never met someone like him before, who is both the best and worst of creation. The very same demon who inspires fear and terror across Hell is the same man who looks at her as if the very sun and moon and stars are in her eyes.

Perhaps she had been waiting to meet him too.

She wants every moment they can have in this endless, uncertain forever—and Carmilla Carmine has definitely become a woman who gets what she wants.

She steals a kiss from him. “I chose you because I love you,” Carmilla whispers. “I’m yours, remember?”

“As I am yours.” His grip on her tightens protectively, his voice low, prayer and vow all in one. “I love you and I will for eternity. I’m not going anywhere, sweetling.”

She knows he means it too.

—

(Kassandra’s voice lingers. “Everything has its time. All flames fall to darkness in the end.”

But when Carmilla closes her eyes, all she sees are his glowing eyes defying the shadows—steady, bright, eternal)

—

—

It is alarming how quickly they fall into a familiar rhythm together. She’s grown used to waking up in his arms, his lips greeting her with a gentle kiss. Zestial is her constant companion as they continue to build and protect what is theirs in Hell. He is a permanent fixture in their lives, from his watchful spiders in the shadows to her staunchest ally in the Overlord meetings.

It’s the simple things that Carmilla cherishes most—how he happily cooks them delicious meals, how he holds her close as the family listens to the dramatic soap operas Odette and Clara insist on following, how he refers to her house as “home.”

It had been such a passing moment, but it still frequents her thoughts more than it should.

“I did bring thy most favored morsel home.” Zestial had pressed a quick kiss on her cheek before setting out a few cakes from her favorite bakery. If she could love him more, she would in this instant. “Methinks thou did endure a day most grievous.”

“Thank you.” She had given him a small smile. “You called this home.”

“Home is where those whom thy heart doth hold dear reside,” he had said warmly. “A house, sans those we love, is but cold clay.”

The word home shouldn’t feel this heavy. And yet it lands in her chest like a promise unspoken, a vow waiting to be forged.

(A small part of her wants to make that official.)

Marriage, among sinners at least, is a punchline. There is little point in marrying someone when all of Hell is a free-for-all buffet of never-ending debauchery. Those that are interested in the concept rarely do—marriage is an open confession of weakness for the rank and file.

She’s been married once already. (And look how that turned out.)

She doesn’t need another husband. Zestial certainly doesn’t need a wife. (The man never even had a wife on earth—what in Hell would make him want one now?)

It’s a ridiculous, fanciful notion, she thinks. Marriage won’t change the way he feels about her.

He’s hers as much as she is his—with or without the vows.

—

(In spite of her best efforts, the bitter longing for more still remains.)

—

—

After so many months of rush shipments and custom orders, she finally escapes her meetings earlier than expected. Carmilla figures she can catch Zestial and attempt a proper romantic night with him, instead of subsisting on fleeting moments in her office. She finds him setting up the dining room. 

Evidently, her spider demon has the same thought.

“This looks lovely, Zestial.”

He jolts at her very presence. Zestial looks like a naughty child who’s just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Though he looks like his ever-intimidating self, Carmilla notices his rapidly tapping fingers causing his cloak to sway.

She’s seen the best and worst versions of him and knows all his tells.

The man is nervous beyond measure.

She gives his shoulder a squeeze. “What has you so tense, mi amor?”

“This is not how I thought this would go.”

She can feel the sheer embarrassment rolling off him in waves. It’s an adorable emotion to see on his usually unflappable face.

Whatever he was doing, it certainly looked romantic, with candles, her favorite flowers, and what smells like a delightful dinner from the kitchen.

“I can leave if you want to set up.” Carmilla stands on her tiptoes to press a delicate kiss to his cheek. “Sorry for ruining the surprise.”

“You didn’t ruin anything. Perhaps, this is exactly how it should be.”

His shadows swallow him up, and from their depths, his human figure emerges. Zestial is dressed in a formal green-lined and green-trimmed black suit. In his human form, his emotions are sewn onto his black sleeves. His emerald eyes look at her as if she holds his ancient heart in her hands. His smile is small but hopeful.

“Carmilla.” The legion in his voice is gone and only the man remains. His mask as an Overlord and a sinner—from his deliberate Shakespearean English to his sinister shadows to his spiders—has been deliberately removed. Zestial is standing in front of her, not as a demon, but as the man, vulnerable faults and all exposed to only her. “I am yours for eternity, if you’ll have me.”

He drops to one knee, revealing a simple silver ring in his shaking hands. It glimmers like borrowed starlight. “Will you marry me?”

Her smile stretches from ear to ear. Carmilla throws her arms around him, kissing him with reckless abandon.

“Is that a yes?” he manages to ask between kisses.

She smiles, slipping the ring onto her finger. “What do you think?”

His expression is so bright that it threatens to eclipse even Heaven hanging in the sky.

—

—

It’s never quite how they imagined things going.

Sometimes reality is even better than fantasy.

—

—

—

Change is not loud. It whispers, growing silently like roots in the dark, until one day the forest stands where barren earth once was. Spring always comes in the end.

They’ve changed, she knows. Perhaps for the better, perhaps for the worse—but together all the same.

In another life, she might have balked at a marriage ceremony outside of a church. Now, she can’t imagine a moment more perfect than the one they had.

There are no priests in Hell to officiate—nor would they want one. They needed no permission from Heaven or Hell to sanctify what was already theirs.

In his garden, under a sky full of stars, he had gently taken her hand. The air smelled faintly of earth and spring. Zestial had squeezed her palm, his thumb drawing circles on her skin, as though he could feel eternity there.

“I take you as my wife,” he murmured reverently.

She smiled. “I take you as my husband.”

With those two sentences, it was done.

She had set the silver ring upon his hand, angelic steel forged by her, and he slipped hers on, hell-born Stygian steel tempered with mortal care.

Carmilla cupped his cheek, kissing him softly, and whispered against his lips. “Mine.”

His smile deepened, eyes burning bright green against the night. “Yours.”

Clara, Odette, and Horatio looked delighted; even Kassandra’s painted smile softened in its frame. Lucifer’s crimson eyes welled with tears—he would later claim it was merely the acid rain.

In the black mirror of her ring, the garden had bloomed twice—first in violets, then in stars.

She can’t imagine her husband as “the worst little shit stain to ever come to Hell” to quote Lucifer—not when he holds her so tenderly and gallivants around Hell with her daughters and loves them all so deeply.

(“Perchance mine old bones have grown soft,” Zestial laughs when she brings up the matter. “These past few years, I have grown more gentle, thanks to thee.”

“You still revel in the sound of screams,” she points out playfully.

He gives her a sheepish shrug. “I am not so wholly tamed.”)

Nor can she imagine a reality where her younger self recognizes her current form. She is no longer shining, silver, or new, but she’s happy and free—and that, she knows, is more than enough.

(“When first we met, thy light did softly gleam. Now burns an endless flame, a fevered dream.” Zestial murmurs into her hair. “How fortunate am I, to have chanced upon thee.”

Carmilla tugs him closer, smiling into his chest. “Your poetry could still use some work, mi amor.”

He laughs.)

Let Heaven keep its hymns, its rules, and its empty promises; Hell has given her everything worth keeping. Carmilla would trade life as a lonely forgemaster in Heaven for an eternity with Zestial and her daughters again and again and again.

This is enough. This is home.

—

—

—

—

—

Chapter Text

Act I: Monster

When Zestial sees Carmilla for the first time, he immediately knows that she’s the one.

He hadn’t meant to be out, but his wards flared over the Doomsday District–portal of angelic make or some sort. Lucifer would probably want him to check, he thinks, and it’s out of duty that he goes to see.

He half-expects several Exorcists or others of their ilk. Instead, he sees a lone, cloaked woman hurrying down alleys. A winner angel, he decides. Her feet move with too much uncertainty to be an Exorcist, and any higher ranked angel would never walk in Hell like a mere mortal.

He is uninterested in the entire situation until he catches a glimpse of her face.

Lightning strikes him, not once, but twice, and he can only stare.

Perhaps Shakespeare had been onto something with that love at first sight nonsense, after all. (If his old friend in Heaven ever learns of this, he’ll never hear the end of it.)

This woman is the very definition of divine, with long white hair broken by a single rebellious streak of black and soft purple eyes that remind him of the violets he once pressed into books for safekeeping.

He has never seen anyone so beautiful. Is this how Hades felt, he wonders, when the King of the Underworld first saw Persephone in her mother’s garden, the sun kissing her lips, wind in her hair?

For a moment, even shadow forgets itself in the face of dawn.

He continues to watch over her progress as she navigates the streets of Hell, trailing after in the darkness. The angel seems to be looking for someone, as those gorgeous eyes of hers search passing sinners for some sign of familiarity.

He can’t help but be impressed—no winner angel has braved Hell in all the centuries he’s been here, let alone harnessed portal magic.

She is, however, getting a little too close to that knave Viktor’s territory. It’s better to step in now than let the dove fly a little too close to a wolf’s den.

His mind is racing. These are the first words he’s going to say to the most beautiful woman in the world. This has to be perfect.

His mouth opens and “Hath any told thee thou art beauty’s queen? No fairer sight mine eyes have ever seen” escapes from his lips.

He is grateful he’s still immersed in shadow, so the angel can’t see the abject mortification on his face.

—

In another lifetime, he’d been the lady-killer of court, even seducing Queen Elizabeth herself much to Sir Walsingham’s dismay—and this is the best he could come up with?

Centuries of ingrained etiquette is the only reason he manages to salvage this mess.

—

—

The dove’s name is Carmilla Carmine.

She may be a dove, but her claws are sharp and she isn’t afraid to use them. He quite enjoys their parley, how she easily counters his parry with a sly riposte, silken words hiding steel.

He offers to find her daughters before he can stop himself.

She doesn’t believe his weak excuse of wanting amusement.

In his defense, Hell has grown rather dull in the past century or so—one can only torture so many sinners before even screams grow trite. (It is also better than admitting that he just wants to see her again.)

Slipping into the mortal realm is child’s play for him. He simply thinks of going and he’s there. A simple tracking spell later and he is in New York observing her daughters, Odette and Clara. He shadows them for a day or so, but they, like their mother, seem to be on the straight and narrow, and bound for Heave in God’s good time.

The rest of the time he’s in the mortal world, he scrounges up every scrap of information he can on Carmilla Carmine. He is not acquainted with love, but information is his tried-and-true companion. He creates a dossier on her, from her brief ballet career to homemaker to mother to inventor, and he can’t help but admire her more.

She’s not just beautiful, but brilliant as well. Her guns, like their maker, are as lovely as they are lethal.

Her story is a tragedy. She had been about to leave her husband, the papers said, and the cur stabbed her to death in front of her daughters. He wishes he had Shakespeare’s ability to craft narratives to rewrite her play and give her a better ending. There is nothing more tragic for someone so magnificent to be killed by a knave so unworthy of her, for her luster to have been dulled by his grime.

He leaves violets on her grave before he returns to Hell, fitting flowers for a life cut far too short.

—

—

—

When he sees her next, his heart breaks.

She may be goddess made flesh, but her violet eyes are very mortal. He knows those closed-off eyes, filled with an insurmountable sadness lurking under their depths. It’s like looking at his old reflection, back when he still had one, when he was younger—still starry-eyed and hopeful, more light, less shadow.

Time may heal all wounds, but she has very deep scars.

As Carmilla stares at her daughters in the mirror, he can do nothing. It’s a quiet tragedy to watch someone so beautiful slowly collapse from within.

He presses a handkerchief into her palm, muttering some platitude of making tea, and gives her space.

When he leaves, only then does she truly allow herself to weep.

—

—

He returns when her mask of indifference has been slipped back on. He keeps up meaningless conversation to fill the void, and Carmilla seems grateful for it.

His mind continues to run through multiple scenarios. She might never come back after this, he knows. Now that she’s confirmed her daughters are alive, there is nothing in Hell that Carmilla can possibly want.

Other sinners would’ve tried to chain her down to Hell with deals or outright threats, but he finds the thought distasteful. Nothing is more wretched than a bird trapped in a gilded cage when it is meant to soar freely across the azure sky.

Based on her expression, Heaven hadn’t been much better. He notices the way her lips curl into a frown at his suggestion of making exquisite arms.

Eternity is tedious without proper entertainment. It would be remiss of him to let her return to Paradise empty-handed.

He offers her a book on the latest firearms, a curiosity he’d taken for no reason he could name.

Her entire expression changes. Her wings flutter excitedly before she can stop them.

Something shifts in her eyes and the cinders have become flame, burning away the sadness to leave something stronger.

—

Perhaps, this might give her cause to return, he thinks wistfully.

—

—

—

Hades had to endure the Underworld alone, patiently waiting for summer to fade to autumn, before he could hold Persephone in his arms again for six glorious golden months, as the earth languished in the shadow of winter.

The darkness is patient, and Hell is truly forever.

He waits, clutching to the memory of spring.

—

—

—

It takes over six months, but Carmilla does return, with a prototype firearm in tow. He has to pinch himself to make sure this isn’t some wicked illusion or jest of Lucifer’s making.

Though she’s long deceased, she looks alive for the first time he’s seen her, eyes bright, cheeks rosy, smelling like gunpowder and violets. Carmilla rattles off rapid-fire on how she can improve the mechanics. He doesn’t understand any of it, but he’s happy to listen.

She laughs for the first time. It’s a gossamer thing, like spider’s silk catching the dewdrops from first light. It’s at his expense, and he would gladly make the fool of himself to hear that mirthful sound escape her lips again.

She is glorious in her element. For a peaceful dove, Carmilla is less Persephone and more Athena reborn, springing forth fully formed and battle-ready.

He is deeply regretting boasting of his kingslaying to her.

He had barely been able to hit the target in the old matchlock days—and now, he’s an even worse shot. Her touch is featherlight, her proximity intoxicating, and he can barely think, much less shoot straight.

“Are you ready to trade your daggers for a real weapon?” Carmilla asks teasingly when they break for tea.

“I shall leave matters of firearms to thy sovereignty,” he replies, the picture of composure.

(She doesn’t need to know that he had cast a targeting spell by the end of it to look less the fool. Everything else had been lucky shots.)

“Pity.” She gives a mock sigh. “I thought I convinced you otherwise.”

“Thou didst shake my faith.” Zestial rests a hand on his cheek, grinning. “Mayhap the next lesson will persuade me.”

Her eyes sparkle dangerously. “Wait until you see the next model.”

“I shall look forward to’t, dove.” He pauses, adding playfully, “Bring a matchlock too, Carmilla; I shoot most true when the musket and I are kin in years.”

She laughs again, a hand flying to her mouth as she dissolves into giggles. Her smile is radiant, her violet eyes gleaming with carefree joy.

For a heartbeat, Carmilla looks at peace.

—

And in that instant, he knew he had struck truer than any shot.

—

—

—

Carmilla continues to return of her own accord, and he can’t suppress his glee.

She is the most interesting, brilliant, and beautiful being in his afterlife. Carmilla pulls him, like gravity, and he is blessed to have fallen into her orbit.

She singularly eclipses all others—because for him, there is her, and only her.

When he isn’t performing his duties for Lucifer or managing his own domain, he is busy seizing every firearm book and model from the mortal realm he can get his hands on. He presents her knowledge, like a dog bringing dead birds to its owner. He delights in the way her eyes glint, as she pores over his offerings. The soft sadness in her violet eyes fades and is replaced by steely purple filled with unbridled joy.

There is too much red in his ledger for him to ever consider himself a good person. Centuries of Hell have made him indifferent to emotions beyond wrath and pride. While alive, he had never been foolish enough to hope for anything beyond tomorrow.

But in Carmilla, he still sees the opportunity to be happy.

Heaven may chain her down with rules, but he wants nothing more than to watch her soar freely. It’s his personal, selfish mission to see how high she can fly.

He wants to make her smile.

He wants to make her laugh.

He wants to take away her unhappiness, if only for an ephemeral moment.

—

He can, he discovers, and it’s a thrilling, wondrous thing.

This is more than enough.

—

—

—

—

Shadows, he reminds himself, have no right to their own desires. He’d learned that hundreds of years ago when he first entered Her Majesty’s secret service, an unknown commoner with nothing but his sharp mind and a burning determination to succeed.

Sir Walsingham’s beady eyes had fixed him with a gaze of steel. “Naught is more perilous than a sense of surety. Thou shalt serve at the Crown's command, and yield all for God's glory and Her Majesty's safety. Titles, medals, nor renown shall e'er be thine, yet thy labors shall Britain shield, that she may endure. Wilt thou still join me upon this venture?”

“Of course, Sir Walsingham.” He had little choice in the matter; commoners rarely did. This, he had figured, at least was an opportunity to make his life have some form of meaning—or at least survive a little while longer.

The old man had pensively looked out the window, eyes hard. “God shall pardon us, perchance, for all that we shall do in the wars to come.”

God certainly hadn’t. They both ended up in Hell for their service, endless night and suffering their reward for all that they did in His name.

(The last words he heard before his death still linger. “In the end, you’re nothing more than a servant.” He had died, will unbroken, even as his body was destroyed by the Crown’s betrayal and torture. The words cling to his soul, like smoke, all the same.)

Years later, when he had tracked down the old man in Hell, Sir Walsingham’s cold face softened for the first and last time. “The game is played out, and I am content to lay me down. But thou—aye, thou hast endured beyond all I might have hoped. Ever wert thou the sharper blade, lad. Hold this for me, if thou wilt.”

A ghost of a smile touched his lips as he settled the oversized top hat—a ridiculous thing, crowned with skull and feather—atop his protégé’s head.

“It is thy duty now to go on.” The old man looked rather pleased with himself for some reason. “Fare thee well, lad.”

Walsingham died within the week, slain in some petty turf war.

He slaughtered those responsible. He was never sure exactly why.

When the blood had dried and the last cries faded, the sinners named him with fear, and the shadows closed in as witnesses. From that slaughter, he rose anointed, blood his chrism, souls his seal. The damned and the darkness alike crowned him Lord of Shadows.

He had gone on, as bidden—perhaps not happy, but content enough with his eternal punishment. He had Kassandra and Horatio, his domain, his excursions with Lucifer to keep things interesting, and more freedom than he ever had in life.

He doesn’t need to yearn for more—but when he sees Carmilla, desire pulses in his chest.

—

Mammon had been right all those years ago.

They’re both cut from the same greedy cloth.

—

—

—

He isn’t so blinded by naivety that he doesn’t plan for the worst. It is a simple thing to cast a spell to alert him in case Carmilla’s daughters somehow end up in Hell. Better to fear too much than too little.

So, he is horrified when the notification comes.

He doesn’t understand why her daughters deserve the same fate as a person like him. From what he had observed, they had been decent people. Heaven is far crueler than he, it seems.

At first, he meant to only shadow them as they navigated this place. Then they foolishly neared Viktor’s turf and forced his hand.

“There shall be no accord struck with them.” He materializes out of darkness, separating the girls and Viktor, his shadows smacking Viktor’s hand away from them. He releases his magic, just enough for darkness to consume the entire room, unfurling suffocating pressure, as glowing eyes stare out from the abyss. “Their souls are forfeit unto me.”

Viktor sneers, but takes a few cautious steps back. “Aren’t they a little young for you, old man?”

“I am no lecherous knave, as thou art.” His eyes narrow at the very implication. “I am but honoring a bargain struck.”

“Whatever you say, grandpa.” Viktor’s false bravado fades when his shadows start creeping toward him. He and his cronies take the hint and flee.

Carmilla’s daughters stare at him, eyes wide, furious, and perhaps a little frightened.

Clara squares her shoulders, fists trembling but steady. “What do you actually want with us?” she snaps. “Everyone knows what you are.”

Odette steps in front of her sister, chin high though her voice wavers. “We aren’t making a deal with you.”

Zestial exhales deeply. His reputation as an Overlord seems to have preceded him in the few hours that they’ve been in Hell. “I should hope not.”

He tries to find words that won’t sound like mockery or betray the truth. None inspire much confidence. In the end, he settles for what he hopes is the least terrible option.

“I am not thine enemy,” he says evenly. “Thou hast my word.”

Odette scoffs. “That’s what monsters always say before they destroy you.”

Clara bares her teeth. “I hope you’re a better fighter than liar!” Clara lunges.

Clara and Odette truly are their mother’s daughters, he thinks. He’d be more appreciative of their fire if they weren’t making his job harder than it has to be. Odette claws at his face; Clara snatches a broken beam and aims for his throat. Both attacks glance off uselessly.

With a long-suffering sigh, he has his shadows seize them and spirits them away to his house. The moment he puts them down they try bolting for the exit in spite of his attempts to explain the situation to them.

He binds them to chairs in his dining room. It’s a kinder alternative than allowing them to roam free with the upcoming Extermination. Better temporary indignity than a mortal wound.

Clara strains against his shadows. “When I get my hands on you, old man, I’ll rip you to shreds!"

“Let go of me and my sister, you pervert!” Odette snaps, glasses flashing angrily.

He is tempted—briefly—to gag them, but he doubts Carmilla would appreciate such liberties.

He sighs, waiting for Carmilla to return.

—

—

He watches Carmilla’s reunion with Odette and Clara pensively. It’s unfair. He doesn’t deserve salvation, but they most certainly do.

If a thief, nailed beside Christ, could be promised Paradise for but a single plea of faith, why not them? God boasted His mercy stretched as far as the east is from the west, yet none of it has reached them.

Forgiveness, it seems, is never for the ones who need it most.

Carmilla will stay. He knows her, knows her stubbornness and her unfathomable love for them. She would tear down the Pearly Gates, if it meant keeping them safe; forgoing Heaven will be the easiest decision she has ever made.

In Hell, however, choices are cruel things. Carmilla can do anything she so chooses, he knows. She could build the café she and her daughters had once dreamed of, dance again as she did in life, or turn to music. He’d offer a place for her in his realm in a heartbeat if it would make her happy.

But this is Hell. Nothing is ever safe here.

Strength rules, and mercy is the privilege of the strong.

She must ascend as an Overlord, he knows, for it is the only throne strong enough to protect her daughters and herself. Besides, it is a waste for a forgemaster to avoid her own fire. Let her blaze, anointed not in shadow as he was, but in flame and steel—a queen crowned in the forge, sovereign by her own hand.

He loathes the thought of her being bound by anyone.

“Anyone but yourself,” a sly voice whispers.

He silences it with a glare.

—

—

“What’s in it for you this time?” Carmilla asks, when he offers her the deal: she becomes an Overlord, and he’ll keep her daughters safe.

He cloaks his reply in half-truths, gilded with analogies sharp enough to distract and soft enough to reassure. It is the sort of answer he has given countless times before: convincing, useful, and utterly untrue.

Whatever he says is safer than saying the awful truth—that he wants her to be happy.

—

—

—

He’s worn so many faces that he has forgotten who he’s supposed to be. His parents called him something once, but they died before their time and he discarded their memories and his name. By the time he entered Sir Walsingham’s service, he’s swapped names so often that he’s long forgotten any true semblance of identity.

It had been Lucifer who had called him Zestial, hundreds of years ago. It was his dog’s old name apparently, and Zestial has for better or worse become his dog of war (though he had little choice in the matter).

It’s far easier now to wear the face of a spider demon or a mass of shadows than it is to be himself. He dons his human guise rarely, and then only when crossing blades with angels, as though flesh itself were a weapon best reserved for holy war.

There are no mirrors in his house. As a demon, he can no longer see his reflection, and even if he could, he knows a lost cause when he sees one.

Carmilla is no Saint Jude—and he’s not the praying sort.

He stares at his very human face in the water’s reflection. A man with a tangle of black hair and emerald eyes gazes back with silent reproach, the last remnant of who he had been so long ago.

Who are you? he wonders. He’s been a demon far longer than he’s been a man—and he’s forgotten the finer details.

He knows what he is. The Lord of Shadows. Overlord. Spymaster. Assassin. Murderer. Servant.

All titles, never a name. All duties, never a choice. Sir Walsingham had bidden him once to go on, and so he had, through centuries, through masks, until the man beneath was dust.

But who is he truly? Beneath the titles, beneath the posturing, beneath the pride—who remains?

Shadows have little use for identity. Zestial is just another mask until his sentence is up. He is a mere servant living on borrowed time, always waiting, wanting, but never having.

Yet with Carmilla, he wants to be more. Not shadows. Not sadistic laughter. With her, he dares to hope he might wear a name again.

He wants to be someone with her.

He wants to be someone to her.

It doesn’t matter what shape that takes. Any capacity is more than enough.

—

It’s a foolish, fanciful notion, yet he clings to it all the same.

—

—

—

Act II: Man

Carmilla Carmine is truly a marvel.

Zestial adores noticing the little things about her. His spiders may roam around Hell collecting information, but watching Carmilla is a task he reserves for himself alone.

Her drink of choice is whiskey neat, and when that’s not available, red wine—and he has no doubt that she can drink him under the table. She takes her coffee black while sketching new designs and dreams on paper, yet she always keeps her office stocked with his preferred tea leaves, as if expecting him to visit. She bites the back of her pens when she is lost in thought, her nose crinkling when she finds a more difficult calculation. She ties ribbons into neat double knots, just like pointe shoes, on packages and the braids of her girls’ hair. She has a ferocious sweet tooth that she rarely indulges in, slipping sugar cubes straight from the tin after a particularly long day.

When she’s impatient, she taps her heel in precise counts of eight, a ghost of her ballet training. She whispers a prayer in Spanish under her breath before she lights the forge, an old superstition she still clings to. At the forge she is all precision, every diagram exact, every mechanism deliberate; but in battle, she abandons calculation for instinct, dancing through the chaos until victory is hers.

Zestial is not blind to her faults, for she has many—her pride, her refusal to ask for help, her tendency to withdraw into herself in the vain hope that sheer will can mend what is broken. But it just makes her all the more human and all the more extraordinary.

Her flaws are balanced by her capacity for creation and love and greatness—and he only admires her more for it.

On the surface, she may be cold steel, but her forge has always been warm to him.

Feelings are a weakness. He knows his—known the moment he saw her all those years ago.

Demon though he may be, at his core still beats a heart that stubbornly refuses to stop being human.

—

He is merely a shadow. It is only natural for his feelings to go unrequited.

Zestial is content to simply drift in her orbit, a shade warmed by light that will never be his.

—

—

—

Her rise to power is as magnificent as he had dreamed. She and her children hardly need his help, really. Carmilla Carmine is many things, a master weaponsmith is one, a shrewd businesswoman another—and her daughters have inherited her skill. Clara is a genius with ballistics and art and Odette is a mechanical engineering virtuoso.

Zestial is content to simply watch their progress as they slowly build Carmine Industries.

It would be easier to do so, of course, if her daughters didn’t hate him. Kidnapping was certainly not the best first impression, even if it was in their best interests. They’ve at least stopped being outright hostile to him in front of their mother, but both Odette and Clara seem determined to prolong this cold war when Carmilla isn’t looking.

“We don’t need your help, old man.” Odette glares up from the workbench. “And you can just toss the food you brought in the trash.”

“As you wish.” He sets the basket down anyway. Zestial knows the Carmines well enough now that none of them will eat unless food is placed in front of them and they need to eat. “I but thought thou mightst find some interest in the newest designs from the mortal realm.”

“You don’t need to give that to us.” Clara snorts, staring daggers at him. “You’re not trying to get into our skirts.”

His eyes narrow. “No—and not thy mother’s, either. What I offer is not so base.”

“That’s what they always say too.” Odette crosses her arms. “They never follow through.”

Clara adds fiercely, “We’re not letting anyone hurt her again.”

Odette leans forward, brandishing a wrench in his face. “We don’t want your help. We don’t want your food. And we don’t want whatever game you’re playing.”

He frowns. His only experience with children had been with Horatio, his ward turned secretary, and even as a child, the boy had never been this stubborn.

Zestial inclines his head at last, his tone clipped. “Unfortunately for thee, thy mother’s bargain hath bound me to thy side, to safeguard thee. My promises I keep—whether it please thee or no.”

The sisters exchange a look, their mistrust unspoken but unmistakable.

Then Carmilla enters.

The storm lifts, and both daughters are all light and laughter, as they eagerly show off their latest work.

—

He will make them like him, even if it kills him.

Zestial has mastered the art of waiting.

(He’s still serving his five hundred years of community service for Lucifer.

Winning Clara and Odette over is a far lighter sentence.)

—

—

—

Zestial has grown complacent, and the realization burns like acid when her daughters are taken. So much for your promises, he furiously berates himself, fury coiling in his chest.

He is ready to go on the warpath, ferret out where the cowards hide and ensure they die screaming before burning the lot of them to ash. But Carmilla is insistent that she can handle it. She has that glint in her eye, and he knows better than to argue.

Still, he sends Horatio to bring back the name of those responsible. The boy returns immediately. One whispered syllable is enough for Zestial to abandon everything and race after Carmilla.

His wrath is relentless. Lucifer himself wouldn’t be able to stop him. How dare that bastard—

He waits in the darkness, watching. To his relief, Odette and Clara are safe and alive, for now. Carmilla is pale, her hands shaking. She falters for the barest instant, her body stiffening when her husband’s hand reaches for her. That hesitation—so uncharacteristic of her—shreds what little restraint Zestial has left.

His shadows surge, striking like whips to knock the hand aside before her husband can lay his filth upon her. He spirits Odette and Clara away to her home for safety.

Zestial’s hand curls protectively around her shoulder. “May I, Carmilla?” he whispers gently in her ear.

He has always been her shadow, but in that instant, he lets himself imagine being more—not the Crown’s dog, not Lucifer’s servant, but hers, by choice.

Her voice doesn’t waver. “Go ahead and kill them.”

“As you wish.” His shadows explode outward in an unbroken tide, a thousand eyes blinking open in the dark, each gleaming a hungry green. They pour across the warehouse like a living sea, consuming screams, devouring the sinners until even sound itself is smothered.

Then, with deliberate cruelty, his shadows twist around the man that once claimed to love her. Tendrils like iron chains snap tight around his arms, dragging him down until he kneels before her.

The bastard’s begging for mercy, but Carmilla’s expression is forged from the strongest steel. Her hands no longer shake.

The crack of her shot rings out like a coronation bell. Blood spatters her in a mantle of scarlet, and she stands tall in its wake, a queen draped in carmine red.

—

His Persephone rises as the Queen of the Underworld, dispensing justice with the Furies loyally executing her will.

The dove is truly a wolf now.

—

—

Carmilla gathers her daughters in her arms, as if touch alone can shield them from the echo of the bastard. When her eyes finally meet his, Zestial sees fear filling them: that the deal will fail, that angelic steel is all she is useful for, that she will have to leave.

Fear is a beast that devours all judgment, he knows, but it still stings that she thinks so little of him.

He wants to assure her she doesn’t need the ability to forge angelic steel to be wanted or worthy. She is enough already—to him, she always has been.

Her hands are trembling, her flame sputtering from the doubt. Zestial knows that his words won’t reach her in the same way newly forged angelic steel in her hands will, so he stays silent.

Her daughters urge her to go to the forge, and he promises to watch over them. Reluctantly, Carmilla takes her leave.

The moment the door shuts behind their mother, Clara and Odette unravel. The bravado they had worn like armor cracks, leaving only tired young women in its place.

Odette sighs heavily, curling in on herself. “You can just go.”

“No.” His magic isn’t meant for healing, but he examines them again nonetheless to check for anything nefarious. They seem fine, save for a few bruises. He summons a poultice, the faint green glow of his magic curling around the herbs before pressing it gently into Odette’s hand. “For the burns. It will sting, but it will work.”

“Our mom’s not here right now.” Clara clutches herself, as if holding herself together by force. The fire in her eyes has gone out. “You don’t have to fake that you care about us.”

“I do not pretend.” Zestial sighs, feeling every bit his age. He hardly remembers his father, much less ever wanting to become one. “I promised your mother.”

Odette scowls, turning the poultice over in her hand. The ghost of their father hangs over her. “He used to say that too.”

Clara glances away, bitterness creeping into her voice. “Yeah. And then he’d make her pay for it.”

“Don’t expect us to believe you’re different.”

None of Sir Walsingham's lessons have prepared him to play this role. Zestial doesn’t quite know what to say. This is not a game that he’s familiar with and he doesn’t know the rules. For once, he chooses honesty over his usual web of fabrications and glib remarks.

“I will be. My contract binds me to you both,” Zestial reminds them gently. “Like your mother, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe. I will serve you faithfully, in whatever measure you allow.”

Clara’s sharp expression falters. Odette looks like she wants nothing more than to reply smarmily, but all that escapes her lips is a tired sigh.

Odette begins to apply the poultice to Clara’s wrists, her sister returning the favor.

—

He falls back into old habits and makes them tea.

For the first time, they drink it.

—

—

Carmilla’s steely exterior seems brittle when she returns and finds him still there, as if she half-expected him to leave, like everyone else.

When her voice trembles and her composure falters, Zestial forgoes his fears and reservations to pull her to his chest. He offers truth at her altar, for honesty will serve her better than any web of lies he can spin.

Her tears seep into his chest. She is warm and fragile against him, yet forged from steel all the same.

Will he too one day leave a scar upon her? Persephone had been bound to the underworld with seeds, both bitter and sweet. Perhaps Zestial is no different, and his devotion is destined to one day leave the taste of ashes on her tongue.

One cannot understand the joys of spring without the sorrows of winter. So let the world’s orbit still, let the earth lie frozen, he resigns himself, if it means her light will never dim.

—

—

—

—

Lucifer is demanding his company to avoid interacting with Hell’s high society, a fair enough request from him (for once). Zestial endures Lucifer’s merciless needling to ask for a plus one to take Carmilla.

It is, he tells himself, a business decision, nothing more. This is the opportunity to cement her as the weapons dealer in Hell and ascend beyond mere Overlord status. (And if he gets to dance with her, well, that is a selfish indulgence he won’t name aloud.) He calls in favors from his friends so she looks every bit a queen, gorgeous and deadly, and after introducing her and her wares to a few nobles, there is no question that she will emerge from this as Hell’s premier weaponsmith.

Unfortunately, Lilith was not part of his initial equation. The Queen of Hell throws a wrench in his plans, dragging him helplessly away to go and rally support for one of her frivolous causes. Zestial can only perform a servant’s duty and return to high-society games once again. It is a ballroom of masks and false smiles, an easy waltz of calculations, each step measured, every turn an adjustment. His rejoinders spin like pirouettes, his strategies shifting mid-beat, until he twirls his partner, helpless, into his web. (He would much rather be dancing with her.)

As he escorts Carmilla back home, Zestial is unsure why she seems so incensed. She had been understanding of him being ordered away by Lilith, so that couldn’t be it. Had it been his interactions with the Goetian Princesses and nobility?

But that had been work, nothing more. He had done worse to get information and set plots into motion, long before he had become a demon. He’s faked love and lust to ensure a mission’s success.

When Zestial’s with her, it’s always been real.

With her, he doesn’t know what lies ahead. His meticulous, well-laid plan collapses upon first contact. His footing is never sure, and he’s always at risk of stumbling and tripping over his words, tongue-tied.

He tries to tell her as much, but Carmilla is not having it.

“I bet you say that to all the ladies,” she mutters darkly.

Zestial admits softly, “Only the ones that matter.”

For a fleeting moment, he wants to tell her the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but those three words— I love you—are the most terrifying words he can ever say. He can face death without fear, but her silence will undo him entirely. Carmilla alone can bring him to his knees by not saying it back.

Cowardice wins. He settles on giving her a gentle kiss to the forehead instead.

“Good night, Carmilla.”

Zestial escapes before he can embarrass himself further.

—

—

—

“Well, that was fun,” Lucifer says, wiping his hands clean, as they wade through the last of the cultists. Lucifer had been summoned by them and wanted some company to help slaughter them all after granting their wish.

Everything has a price, after all.

“Sorry about the party yesterday.” Lucifer pats him sympathetically on the back. “You know Lilith.”

Zestial barely suppresses a groan. “I do.”

“For what it’s worth, Carmilla didn’t take her eyes off you all night,” Lucifer teases.

“If she looked at me with less loathing, perhaps I might hope.” Zestial’s shadows start devouring the souls of the recently deceased, curling around him as they pour into his veins. Power thrums in his chest, but it pales to the looming anxiety of seeing her again.

“Please.” Lucifer snorts. “That definitely wasn’t loathing. My suggestion? Be honest and tell her the truth.”

Zestial stares at him incredulously. The truth is a blade without a hilt. Pick it up and it cuts the hand that holds it first. It has a price that he is afraid of paying. “That’s not happening, Lucifer.”

“I’ve been a happily married man for over nine millennia, Zesty!” Lucifer calls, smug. “I know what I’m talking about!”

Lilith may beg to differ, Zestial thinks, but he lets that thought die unspoken. “We’ll see.”

“You should go for it.” Lucifer flicks the brim of Zestial’s hat over his eyes. “And when you two finally get your act together, invite me to the wedding!”

—

—

—

He’s grateful that things between him and Carmilla return to normal the next time he sees her. But uncertainty still lingers, like the earth has tilted beneath them, the ground unsteady from a fragile thaw.

—

—

—

In spite of the personal disaster that was the party, from a business perspective, it’s a success—so successful it had become its own curse, leaving them its victims. They’re working late at her house as he presses magic seals to yet more guns scattered on her kitchen table. Paimon had demanded a rush order of specialty weapons for his legions, each one enchanted with hellfire rounds. Carmilla had been scrambling to deliver it in time.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think thou keepest me only for my magic,” Zestial remarks.

She laughs, glancing up from the gun she’s inspecting. “That, and your cooking.”

“A glorified servant then?” His smile twists bitterly at the thought.

Carmilla shakes her head. “I prefer partner in crime.”

He freezes, tamping down the fragile flicker of hope daring to rise. “Aye, a crime most worthy, to steal thy company.”

They fall into rhythm, passing rifles back and forth. His seals are etched into steel while her hands test and pack each one for shipment. By the time the last weapon is finished, dawn is rising, pale light spilling over them, soft against steel and shadow alike.

Carmilla brews coffee for herself and tea for him, setting the cups down between them. They both breathe a sigh of relief that the work is finally done.

He reaches for the sugar tin, and she frowns in protest, cheeks puffed out adorably. “Those aren’t for you!”

He pinches one anyway, grinning. “They taste sweeter when stolen.”

Carmilla fails to contain her laugh, her eyes sparkling. “You’re insufferable.”

Zestial leans closer, conspiratorial. “Only with thee.”

“Scoundrel.” She gives his shoulder a playful push, her touch lingering a fraction too long.

He notices—of course, he notices, but he knows better than to read into it. It’s a fleeting moment, sweet and stolen, like the sugar cube melting on his tongue.

Nothing more.

—

Hope is a dangerous indulgence, yet it coils in his chest all the same. Hades had won his spring when Persephone smiled upon him.

For the first time in centuries, Zestial wonders if winter might not last forever.

—

—

—

When he comes to, Zestial is surprised that he’s not passed out on the floor of his house. Instead, he’s surrounded by comfortable sheets and a warm hand holding his. Cautiously turning to his side, he discovers an exhausted Carmilla by his side.

“Zestial?” she croaks. Her voice is hoarse. She sounds as if she hadn’t slept all night.

He blinks.

Is he at her place? Scanning his surroundings, he recognizes the room that he occasionally uses when they’re working late dabbling in magical weaponry. Zestial wishes he can disappear into the shadows in embarrassment. He and Lucifer had run afoul of an archangel on Earth, and the King of Hell—predictably—couldn’t resist needling his former brother. The encounter ended poorly for everyone involved.

After dropping Lucifer off, he had thought of going home and his magic—the traitor—had transported him to her door instead of his own.

“I’m sorry, Carmilla.” Stubbornly sticking to Shakespearean English flies out the window when he notes the expression on her face. Zestial hastily tries to straighten up, but her iron grip on his shoulders prevents him.

“You shouldn’t be moving.”

“I’m fine.” He’s endured far worse—and centuries of consuming unsuspecting souls has left him with a rapid regeneration factor. A good night’s sleep usually fixes everything. Zestial hastily shows her his unbroken skin. “Everything’s fine.”

Her crimson eyes well with tears, relief mixed with frustration. “Next time, go die on someone else’s doorstep, estúpido!” Carmilla presses her face into his chest, her fingers curling into his back as if anchoring herself. Her tears soak his shirt as her shoulders shake.

His hands carefully close around her. “I’m sorry, Carmilla.”

It’s a foreign feeling to be cared for. He’s always been a tool meant to be used—and discarded when no longer useful. That’s how it always goes.

Yet, here she is, desperately clutching him as if he matters. In spite of his web of lies, she sees him—all of him—and cares for the man underneath the mask.

In her arms, Zestial almost believes that the darkest of shadows can be deserving of light, that one day he too can be worthy.

—

—

—

To his surprise, Clara and Odette catch him at the door before he can slip away.

“You need to be more careful, Zestial.” Clara scowls, then swats his shoulder. “Don’t go dying on us now.”

“We’ve just gotten used to you.” Odette adds quickly, giving him a quick jab on the other arm. “We need all hands on deck at Carmine Industries—and that includes you.”

He rubs at both arms with exaggerated offense, but there’s no heat in his glare. “I’ll be more careful next time.”

“You better!” Clara calls after him.

“Don’t make our mom cry again, old man!” Odette hollers, “Or else we’ll use you as target practice!”

—

—

—

—

Zestial insists he’s not upset about the destruction of that stupid hat. A few stray spells on his last outing with Lucifer had torn the top hat to shreds. It was an ugly, outdated thing anyway. Sir Walsingham would probably understand from beyond the grave. (It’s not as if Zestial had spent hours scouring for every single scrap.)

A bowler is fine, he tells himself, by virtue of availability. It’s the only spare hat he owns, a gift from Lucifer from decades ago. (His friend may or may not have been snickering when he had so graciously bestowed Zestial said tomato-red bowler.)

He’s grateful that he can’t see his reflection in the mirror. Ignorance, he decides, is mercy disguised as bliss.

Zestial grabs paperwork from his office and from her painting, Kassandra starts howling with laughter. “I’d call you dashing, but you look like you’ve dashed headfirst into a grocer’s stall,” she wheezes, wiping tears from her eyes. “Even I couldn’t prophesize being a warning light for carriages would ever be in fashion.”

He mutters something about prophets and taste, but Kassandra’s laughter drowns him out.

From the corner of the room, Horatio wisely stays silent, but Zestial knows that the boy has a few choice words for him. None of them positive.

And Carmilla… Carmilla takes one look at him and drops everything that they’re supposed to be doing to fix this.

It’s only a hat, he wants to tell her, but she is hellbent on fixing it. Carmilla is the kind of woman who gets what she wants, and he knows better than to engage in a losing battle.

She drags him to a fabric store. At a glance, none of them are quite right—every shade too pale, every weave too coarse, as if every single bolt of cloth in existence is conspiring against him. Zestial can already hear Kassandra’s howling laughter in his ear and see Horatio’s judgmental stare, if he masks the damage poorly.

He doesn’t even want to think about what Lucifer will say.

“Let it be mended, not masked.” Zestial says as he selects a grey fabric that at the very least complements the upper portion of his cloak. “Truth sits better on the brow.”

“Whatever you want, Zestial.” Carmilla grins, reaching up to touch his shoulder. “It’s your hat.”

It isn’t his though. It’s always been Sir Walsingham’s in his mind, never his. He’s worn it only from some twisted sense of duty.

Their search for thread proves to be even more fruitless—to the point where Zestial has resigned himself to simply buying a new hat. He almost leaves, but Carmilla drags him back. She digs through boxes of thread until at last, Carmilla triumphantly thrusts a green spool before him.

He blinks. The color matches his eyes.

“I told you we’d find something.” Her smile can outshine the sun. “Come on. Let’s make you look presentable again.”

His shadows return them to her home. Zestial patiently sits and watches as she begins to reshape the crown, the mess of cloth slowly resembling a top hat. He knows better than to talk while she works, unless prompted.

Today, she is awfully loquacious. They’ve spent hours in companionable silence while she forges masterpieces. Now, Carmilla keeps asking and asking about his past—and she’s not taking his single word replies as answers.

He hears Lucifer’s voice, smug and quiet in his ear, “Be honest and tell her the truth.”

Reluctantly, he lets the truth seep out—a few drops at first, until it floods forth like a long-dammed river.

He hasn’t spoken about the details of his history to anyone before—not Lucifer, not Kassandra, not Sir Walsingham, no one. He tells her about his parents—how his mother used to give him violets that bloomed from the forest as a reward for a job well done, how they died too soon and he had been all alone. The world had been cruel to clever boys without names, and cruelty taught him to wear a hundred faces before he was old enough to fashion a broken one of his own.

Knowledge is power; his history is a weakness—and yet, he wants her to know him, all of him. Try as he might, he truly can’t bring himself to deny her anything.

He tells her everything he did to survive—the masks he wore, the lies he built, the faces he forgot to take off, the shameful things he resorted to, for duty, for survival, for the Lord’s own name.

She listens patiently. He half-expects her to leave in disgust, but she faithfully stays.

Her nimble fingers fix his hat—she makes marvels before breakfast; she can fix something this mundane without issue.

She crowns him with that ridiculous hat once again, flicking the brim over his eyes with a bright smile. “It may have been your mentor’s hat once, but it’s very you now.”

She has stitched him into something new, and he doesn’t know if the seams will hold. Every plan, every contingency he might have rehearsed, dissolves at her soft smile.

He can barely choke out, “Thank you, Carmilla.”

He lifts his hand to her cheek, his heart pounding furiously. He wants to speak—anything, everything—but every phrase fails before it reaches his tongue.

His first thought is to whisper, You are the fairest sight I’ve ever seen. She is, but it rings far too hollow. She is more than just a fair sight. Carmilla is the sunrise itself, and he—he wants to be the horizon, endless, grateful to hold her light for a fleeting hour

I want to be yours. It's true-but it’s honestly something Lucifer might say. Or a lovestruck schoolboy. Or Shakespeare. …pass.

You make spring come again. It sounds like something from those ridiculous romance novels Clara and Odette devour. Rejected.

I love you.

…Lucifer had said honesty, after all.

He opens his mouth—

“I’m home!” Clara’s voice comes from the hall.

He jerks back, retreating to a polite distance away before he can humiliate himself further. His pulse is still racing with what might have been.

—

If ignorance is bliss, cowardice is cruelty dressed as caution.

And mercy, as always, asks too high a price.

—

—

—

On a fanciful notion, he sections off part of his once utilitarian garden to grow violets.

It takes months, but Zestial finally gets it right. With a little bit of magic, a few tricks from an old espionage assignment, and more patience and luck than he cares to admit, he coaxes the flowers until they grow no longer monstrous, but as delicate and ordinary as they once were on Earth.

Zestial nurtures them until their blossoms are the exact shade of Carmilla’s real eyes—soft purple beneath her crimson disguise.

It’s nothing more than a whim, the coward in his heart says.

The part of him that is braver knows precisely why he is doing this.

Zestial is fluent in the language of flowers—he knows exactly what purple violets represent. 

He is no hero, and fear often wins. Zestial can’t muster the valor to pick a single stem, let alone offer a bunch to Carmilla as a gift.

“These are new, sir,” Horatio remarks as he, Odette, and Clara swing by the garden for herbs. His lips try and fail to suppress a grin. “I was under the impression you only tolerated useful flora.”

“I owed a favor to Lilith,” Zestial says without looking up, focusing his attention on watering the plants.

“Nice try, Zestial. Lilith prefers roses.” Odette crouches down to inspect the flowers. She glances up with a knowing grin. “Besides, I think our mother would appreciate them more.”

“They’d definitely brighten up her office.” Clara teases, “A bunch of violets never hurt anyone.”

“Or a romantic gesture.” Horatio adjusts his cuffs innocently. “Women do like those.”

Odette nudges Horatio playfully. “This is the part of the story where the gentleman makes a grand declaration.”

“Go get your Elizabeth, Mr. Darcy!” Clara calls, winking.

They leave laughing, a trio of conspirators, before he can reply, leaving him alone with just the soft, knowing scent of violets.

Silence settles, heavy and sweet. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Kassandra’s voice resurfaces — she’d seen the flowers too from his office window.

“You know, Zeus made violets to beg Hera’s forgiveness,” she’d said impishly. “Even gods send flowers when words fail.”

Her voice fades, but the thought lingers. The thing about violets is that they fade quickly, in spite of their faithful return year after year. Nothing in Hell lasts forever, and it may be months before he can cultivate a batch this perfect.

It’s been a rough year for them—between the multiple turf wars and the most recent weapons specialist trying and failing to take her title as Hell’s top weapons dealer.

Zestial reasons that flowers wouldn’t be the most unreasonable thing to send to a close friend for her victory.

It’s a kind gesture between old friends. Nothing more.

Drawing his knife, Zestial begins to carefully separate the flowers from the stem, his hands trembling.

—

He sends Carmilla a bouquet for a job well done.

(He thanks his lucky stars that Carmilla is running late in a meeting, so he won’t have to see her reaction.

Relief still rings hollow in his chest.)

—

—

—

He’s lost people before and no stranger to grief—but Zestial cannot envision a world without Carmilla in it. He’s anxiously awaiting Carmilla’s response when Odette and Clara call him frantically through his spider familiar, and he is by their side in an instant.

His shadows instinctively find her underneath the debris. The fire of his fury dwindles to embers of terror when he holds her, bleeding and broken. He leaves his familiars to dispose of the rest of the survivors and departs with Carmilla at once.  

Any cinders of rage are put out by his all-consuming fear, drowning him in icy waters. He is treading for dear life, simply going through the mechanical motions of cleaning her wounds and calling his usual doctor.

He knows he’s being irrational. Carmilla’s wounds aren’t fatal. Constance is an excellent doctor and an old acquaintance. She’s treated Horatio before without issue.

But reason falters before fear.

What if she isn’t? The nagging thought persists. What if she doesn’t wake up? What if-whatifwhatif—

His whole world is in the palm of his hands, delicate and precious, a violet peeking out from the snow.

“She’s injured, not dying, Zestial.” Constance murmurs gently, as she examines the nasty gash in Carmilla’s side. He’s been hovering over her since she came in. “She’ll be fine.”

“Is that your professional diagnosis?” His eyes narrow. His control is slipping, and a maelstrom of magic releases from him, the room becoming awash with shadows and the sound of spiders scuttling menacingly.

“Yes, it is.” Constance juts her chin out and waves him away. “Now stop being dramatic and leave me to her. You’re getting in the way.”

Only then does he finally let the old woman be.

—

The waiting is the longest part. Clara and Odette are pacing the sitting room while he watches. Clara asks him for tea, and Zestial is all too happy to oblige. He cooks their favorites for dinner that they reluctantly eat, too worried about their mother to taste anything. When they ask to be left alone, he withdraws to his room.

In the darkness, he breaks down, chest heaving with dry sobs.

For the first time in centuries, he prays.

Please, Lord. Don’t take her.

—

—

—

His prayers are answered.

Carmilla wakes up.

She’s alive. She’s safe. She’ll be fine.

He wants to collapse in relief. The looming possibility of losing her has left him with nothing but the truth. Zestial would die a thousand times, so she and her daughters will avoid tasting death but once. He would tear down the sky for her, watch everything burn if it meant keeping them safe.

(Lilith once asked him to join her revolution, and back then, he scoffed, for there was nothing in Hell worth dying for. Now, he’d willingly tear apart the very fabric of his soul to protect them.)

Zestial is not good, nor safe—but he is for them. Carmilla has undone the monster and remade him a man.

He is her steadfast shadow as she recovers, patiently waiting by her side. Carmilla still looks delicate on white sheets, but color has finally returned to her cheeks.

He cannot stand waiting any longer.

Zestial leaves her another bouquet of violets beside her bed, hope budding, even though the flowers are in full bloom, caution scattering, like seeds on the wind.

Perhaps she will never look at him the same way again—but he needs to know. Better to face rejection than rot in this purgatory of silence.

When he returns to her side the next morning, something in the air has shifted.

She murmurs. “Don’t you have places you need to be?”

His hand finds hers, giving it a gentle squeeze. “None more important than here.”

Her face softens, her red eyes glittering with an emotion he can’t quite place. “Zestial.”

“Yes?”

“I—" She trails off, as if struggling to find the right words, so she lets actions speak.

Her hand seizes his lapel and yanks him down into a kiss.

For an instant, he stiffens, every muscle locked. This can’t be real, but her lips are warm and insistent, choosing him. Reverence flickers through him like lightning—and then the floodgates open. Greed surges up, raw and selfish. He deepens the kiss hungrily, reduced to a man starved for centuries, feasting at last. Zestial’s hands frame her face, desperate to keep her near, terrified she’ll vanish if he lets go.

She deserves better than him, he knows, but in the end, he is just a man, hopelessly in love with her.

“Mine.” The word escapes before he can stop it, ragged and low.

“Yours,” she whispers back, and it’s the sweetest music to his ears. “Yours.”

—

He emerges from the shadows, reborn by her hand, and spring finally comes again.

—

—

—

—

“She’s going to be the death of you,” Kassandra says the moment he enters the library—not in accusation, nor surprise, but with the calm certainty of a physician delivering a terminal fate. “I’m certain this time."

"Thou say’st as much each time."

"This time it's different." Kassandra’s sea foam eyes glare daggers at him. “I don’t regret telling her, so I don’t want to hear another single word out of you—unless it’s ‘I’m sorry, Kassandra, for so unceremoniously moving you from the office in the name of modesty.’”

He knows better than to quibble. Centuries of her company have taught him that much. He sighs heavily. “I’m sorry, Kassandra.”

“For?”

There are so many things he could apologize for—she has cause to be furious with him for so many things over the centuries. He had met her shortly after he was crowned the Lord of Shadows, long before he became Zestial. She had been a torn canvas hurled into the gutter by a son whose late father had ignored her counsel. He’d heard her whimpering, begging for someone—anyone—to save her, as the acid rain began to eat away at her face.

His eye had twitched. He remembers his own final moments—breath shallow, palms slick with blood—silently praying to a God who never answered.

For centuries, he told himself he’d restored her only to have something other than shadows to speak to.

“For giving thee cause for worry,” he says at last.

“You are rather good at that.” She’s looking at him as if he is a walking corpse. “You’ve decided then.”

“Prophecies oft fulfil themselves, e’en to those that flee their reach.” Zestial shrugs. “Whether it come this day, next, or a thousand years hence—’tis all the same.”

She leans against the frame, her painted fingers curling. “I know.”

“If doom must have me, let it wait a while longer.”

Something flickers in her eyes. “You’ve changed. You’re not the same brat I met all those years ago.”

“And I could well say the same of thee.”

She sniffs indignantly. “I’ve always been the pinnacle of perfection.”

Kassandra’s eyes roll back into her head, her voice deepening with the weight of her thousands of years.

“From shadow’s vow and steel’s bright weight,
Love bends but breaks not fate.”

The trance loosens. Color returns to her eyes. Kassandra’s tone softens from grief. She looks at him as though he were already a dead man. “Fate truly hates you, Zestial,”

Zestial’s mouth tilts, almost a smile. “’Tis well enough, for I make mine own.”

—

—

For the first time, he fears neither truth nor mercy—and he will pay whatever price they name.

—

—

—

—

Back in his day, marriage was nothing more than an economic proposition. In Hell, it is advertising one’s weakness for everyone to see.

That doesn’t stop Zestial from recruiting Clara and Odette to show him how to use the forge and hammer properly.

It had been a romantic sentiment at first, but he’s awful at this. He is built for destruction, not creation. Magic and war come easy to him, but steel laughs mockingly under his touch. Clara and Odette still persevere with what they call “the worst student they’ve ever had.”

It takes weeks, but finally, he is able to make a simple ring that is Carmilla’s size.

They take pity on him with the engraving. At his request, Clara sketches out a dove carrying a violet, and Odette engraves the intricate design into the interior of the ring.

“Stop looking so nervous, Zestial.” Clara slaps him on the back as they all admire the finished work.

Odette grins up at him. “You know she’s going to say yes!”

Zestial isn’t so sure about that, but he appreciates their vote of confidence nonetheless.

He had an entire proposal planned out. Unlike Shakespeare and his shotgun wedding, he wanted to do things properly: a quiet dinner at home, her favorite flowers, a better couplet than the one he first said to her all those years ago...

But like always, when it comes to Carmilla, his best-laid plans collapse like a house of cards. Odette and Clara must have done their job of clearing her schedule far too well because Carmilla returns home early.

He finds her in the dining room, and lightning strikes twice all over again. Even after all these years, Carmilla is still the most divine sight he has ever seen, his queen, crowned in carmine, sovereign and resplendent. She has forged herself in fire and steel and emerged in Hell, unbent and unbroken. Zestial is the luckiest man in all of creation to be by her side.

He can’t wait any longer, for he is hers as much as she is his—and he needs to make it official.

Zestial stands before her, not as a demon but as a man, his hammering heart in her hands, Hades at long last before Persephone, hoping, wishing, daring to ask her to stay with him, to love him in spite of the cold and dark.

“Carmilla. I am yours for eternity, if you’ll have me.” He drops to one knee, hand trembling as he holds out the ring. “Will you marry me?”

For a moment, Carmilla does not move, crimson eyes wide, as if he had dared too much. Then spring returns with her laughter, as she throws her arms around him, kissing him as if to stake her claim.

“Is that a yes?” Zestial manages to ask hoarsely.

“What do you think?” Carmilla grins as she slips on the ring.

Shakespeare had been right all along. One look, and he was hers forever.

—

—

—

—