Of Opium and Asphodel

VIII. Forget the past

Author's note: trigger warning for themes of self harm and suicide for this chapter.

~

Cairn watched Asmodeus' carriage depart from the stained glass window overlooking the palace courtyard. He felt a tug in his fingertips, and his stomach dipped. Was it foreboding, settling over him in a promising blanket? But what did he have to fear? What did he care about what would to befall him in the demon lord's absence. He was no safer here than he was at Asphodel, the difference being here he wasn't making money. How long was he to be Asmodeus' slave, kept prisoner within the palace and confined to his chambers save when the demon lord summoned him? Then again, Asmodeus had seemed less than interested in Cairn. Asmodeus had expressed no desire for him at all, and despite all the enchantments he wove into his words, nothing seemed to effect the demon. A spark of frustration flitted through him. He was used to reciprocity with the targets of his affections; Asmodeus presented a stubborn challenge.

The carriage, now a small inkblot against the parchment path of the city, had all but faded from view. The low-hanging sun was hazy from the smokestacks, casting the skyline of east London in a red glow.

He thought back to the entrance hall he'd been brought to after entering through the passageway under the bridge. That door to the demon lord's palace was halfway across the city from where he currently looked out. He reasoned then that the palace must occupy a strange liminal space, half there and not amidst the streets. Which made sense--it was far too huge a building to be possibly contained in any one place. The complicated journey from the dungeon cistern to his new living quarters had convinced him of that.

He turned to Wil, standing hooded a short distance away. She, too, looked out the window at the departing carriage, expression unreadable.

"Does the offer of a tour still stand?" He asked, an attempt at charm. Wil's lips quirked up in a smile, previous incomprehensibility gone.

"You're gonna love the library. I have a feeling you're a writer. Or a reader. Am I right?" Her freckles lent her hard-edged face a softer look.

Cairn smiled a genuine smile. "How did you know?"

"Ink stains on your fingertips. You're right handed, too. I can tell from the way you stand." She grinned, beckoning for him to follow down the great hall that led to the rest of the palace and, ostensibly, the library. Cairn trembled at the nearness of literature, of poetry. He longed to taste the beats of pentameter in his mouth as he murmured the poems softly to himself, as if he were still a small  child. Poetry and its rhythms and codes and symbols had kept him company and lent him sanity when nothing else had.

His eyes lingered on the stained glass portraits decorating the window through which he gazed. The story of Prometheus, he had thought earlier. Except there were slight differences between the myth and the image; this man was younger, not a god but a horned being forced to his knees. Rocky crags rose up behind him, brimstone flecking his ashen skin.

Cairn tore away before the image beckoned him more strongly. Art always called to him like a siren's song out on open water, a promise and a lure all at once.

He flexed his gloved hands and made to follow Wil down the corridor. As they walked, he asked, "Why does your demon lord insist on wearing gloves?"

Ahead of him, Wil's back stiffened before she quickened her pace. "First thing to understand is that you must never," Wil said, switching in that uncanny way of hers from cheerful to serious, "lay hands on the boss."

Cairn scoffed. "I'd have thought that obvious. I only ever touch people if they're begging me for it."

Wil leveled her gaze at him. "I mean it. Don't touch him. His curse will kill you."

"Curse?" The second spine twitched in his back at the mention of the word. So the demon lord bore a curse, too. Even the all powerful, it seemed, had weaknesses.

"Anyone who touches him will die. Or at the very least become excruciatingly sick."

"That explains the gloves," Cairn said, looking down at his hands. "But he gave them to me, what will he do without them?"

"The boss has his ways. Anyone who can levy such a curse on themselves, live with the weight of it eating at them, and hardly diminish their power, can summon a fancy pair of gloves. Oh! We're here."

The library was a grand spacious dome-cielinged stone room with narrow windows and rows upon rows of shelves. Cloth and leather bound tomes gleamed at him from the walls. In the grate to one side, a fire crackled warmly despite the fair spring afternoon. Cairn lost himself in the poetry of Whitman, of Coleridge, of Wordsworth. He could never choose a favourite, the authors as dear to him as kin. As a child, words had been the only salve to the ache of the world and its harshness. Euphrasie had taught him to read first English, then French, Cairn taking to them with the ease of a savant. Stories had captivated his thoughts, and stanzas had echoed in his head, keeping him company in the dark of his rooms at Asphodel. Drowning out the sounds of creaking bedsprings and distant revelry and raised voices.

~

That night, after passing much of the day reading, Wil escorted him back to his chambers. That wing of the palace was becoming familiar, at least.

All but collapsing onto the bed, Cairn  set about preparing to sleep. As he reached to draw the shirt over his head, his elbow brushed against his chest, and he inhaled sharply, his mind flitting back to a moment he had pushed from his mind for as long as he could bear it.

The bathtub swam before his vision. Red, red water. Escape, he had thought. Escape from the body that did not feel like his, the breasts he bound flat to his chest with rags, escape from the gap between his legs. Escape from the starvation he had endured to slow the onset of a female puberty. Escape from the endless hours of dance and not eating between servicing his clients. He had been nineteen when he received his first client. But he had been much younger when they had touched him anyway.

Too, too much, he couldn't think about it. A silver blade. The letting of blood. The bathwater had grown warm as Cairn's body grew cold.

Euphrasie had cried and berated him for hours, after. Bandaged his wrists with a harsh, "you could have died."

Cairn hadn't looked at her, hadn't needed to for her to know that he didn't care. The emptiness within him now was cavernous as the memories tore through him, one after the other.

He blinked, and was sitting on the edge of his bed in Asmodeus' palace. He breathed out shakily and finished tugging the shirt off over his head. Fuck memories. Fuck the past.

He settled into the unfamiliar bed.
It was then that Cairn thought back to what he had learned of Asmodeus.

He had cursed himself.

Cairn had little idea how demon curses worked, but imagined in his mind's eye a younger Asmodeus, cloaked and decrying, let all those who would touch me suffer their own violence, magnified. Cairn let out a slow breath and stared into the darkness, not needing to imagine the sort of horrors that one would have to endure to desire such a curse for themselves.