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My eyeballs strained as I fought the urge to roll them, but a kernel of unease flared again. Was it actually, like, wrong of me to come here? Were these people… brainwashed somehow? Would I be taking advantage? Would they fall over themselves for the chance to become my roommate?

Fucking creepy.

But if I didn’t do this, I was pretty sure that would be it. Alone forever. Not that I was here for any kind of romantic arrangement—with a human? No way—but… I’d been a little taken aback by how lonely I’d gotten since Agma left.

I never thought I’d care. When Agma had begun packing up her clothes to leave, I’d lashed out, wounded by her sharp words, snarling that I couldn’t wait to once again be left in peace and solitude. That I didn’t need her or anyone else. That I was happy alone.

She’d looked over at me, eyes narrowed, and said, “That’s fortunate, Greid. Because you will be.”

And then she had proceeded to make sure it remained that way.

The more time passed, the less I enjoyed my own company. I’d had a taste of companionship with Agma, and now I… craved it. Much to my fucking annoyance. My feelings toward her had become snarled and tangled in the time since she’d left, so now I couldn’t rightly say whether I had truly loved her or not.

It had felt like it at the time. It was why I’d allowed myself to be open with her. To tell her the things I wanted. And then she’d left.

Not that I was here to go after those specific things. Humiliation flared again, making me shift before I forced myself to go still, because the woman was still gazing at me with reverence. I wasn’t here for intimacy. Just a companion. Just to have another person breathing the same air as me in my home. For some reason, that felt infinitely more pathetic than if I’d been here to fuck someone.

I’d figured it’d be easy to find a companion here. Just someone to live in my house with me, and who better than a human who was eager to learn everything they could about my kind? I wouldn’t have to deal with another overbearing demiurgus taking over my living room or rearranging my shit or constantly trying to debate with me about literally everything. Agma had been the most argumentative person in the world, purely because she enjoyed it.

I did not enjoy it. At all.

My hair was tied back in a knot, but strands had slipped loose on my long walk up those fucking stairs. I raised my chin and brushed one back, then stared at the woman in silence. Waiting.

She jolted and gave me another deep bow. I suppressed my wince. “Please, let me show you to the formal reception room. We have a suite of rooms here kept especially for if… for when our Greaters visit.”

My eye twitched as I followed her to a large set of double doors on our left, these ones unlike the others. They were made of black stone, and the slender human woman struggled to push one open. In silence, I stepped as close as I dared and placed a hand above hers, opening it with ease.

She shivered again, breath catching from my proximity. I immediately stepped back and clenched my hands into fists behind my back. Yes, it had been a monumental fucking mistake coming here. If they were all this eager—this unnervingly doting—I didn’t want one. I couldn’t think of anything worse.

The room we entered was made entirely of black stone. The walls, the floor, the ceiling. Candlelight flickered from wrought iron wall sconces and a huge candelabra above our heads. The obsidian furniture gleamed—two long, stout couches either side of a smooth coffee table, the seats topped with black velvet cushions.

In here, I was the one who could melt into the walls and vanish. The light was too low to bring out the deep green hue in my hair and claws, and my black suit blended into my skin perfectly. I eyed the woman again. She was a single washed-out spot of beige in the room, looking small and vulnerable in the pressing blackness that surrounded us, but she didn’t seem frightened or ill at ease whatsoever. Her sleepy look from before, when she’d opened the door, was gone. She appeared almost frantic with excitement, bouncing on her toes.

“Please, make yourself comfortable. I’ll fetch the high priest at once.”

She hadn’t even asked why I was here—probably too busy gazing at me with unsettling adoration. I didn’t move after she slipped back into the front hall, her bare feet slapping against the stone floor as she ran. At least I was slightly more relaxed in here, with the room’s décor far closer to my own home. The darkness soothed me and made my shoulders unclench, but I stiffened right back up when I noticed more reliefs carved into the walls.

My eyes could pick them out perfectly. These were far less reserved than the images in the main hall. These showed demiurgus intertwined with nude humans in all manner of positions. Mounting them from behind, crouched over their splayed bodies, beastly heads buried between thighs or thrown back in pleasured snarls.