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Her hand jerked away and she recoiled, shaking it as if her fingertips were burning. ‘In the name of the Sovereign!’ she cried in shock. ‘You were. . . You were one of ours! A Glorian Justiciar!’

I opened the buttons of my shirt and tugged it open to reveal the Infernal sigils burned into my chest. ‘Not any more.’

‘A diabolic’s markings—?’ Her voice was equal parts disgusted and curious. This was the most genuine emotion I’d seen her display. ‘How can this be?’

Oh, what a tale,I thought to myself,of brave deeds and noble sacrifice, ending in deception, betrayal and tragedy. Sit back and listen well as I recount my life’s story to you.

‘I switched sides.’

The angelic swallowed, an oddly human way of conveying her confusion. She transfigured herself once more, but this time more slowly, like an apprentice sculptor attempting a difficult piece for the first time. Her palms passed over her skin, turning it the hideous alabaster much favoured by the Devilish. She tugged at her fingernails, lengthening and sharpening them, then she traced weaving lines down her cheeks and her neck and between her breasts, leaving behind a texture of ornate diabolic sigils. Next, she brushed a hand through her hair, staining some of the tresses silver, others crimson. Finally, she clenched her fists and pressed them against the sides of her forehead. When she pulled them away, a pair of goat horns had sprouted in their place.

‘Can it truly be so simple for one such as us to change our nature?’ she asked.

Here’s something most people don’t know about being in the presence of someone who continuously alters their appearance: it makes you nauseous. While our eyes can handle all kinds of chaotic visions, nothing is more disorienting to human beings than being unable to hold on to an image of a person. The way the angelic kept shifting from one thing to another in her attempt to please her client was making it impossible for me to concentrate. More importantly, it was wasting my time.

I dropped to the floor and sat cross-legged, placed both hands over my heart and, letting my vision blur, I slowed my breathing.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Trying to concentrate.’

The problem with her kind is that they’re meant to be the personification of the Auroral ideal of self-sacrifice. What sublimes like Galass and Fidick were trained to do– subsuming their own desires so that they could better serve the Lords Celestine– is pretty much baked into an angelic. That this particular angelic was bound to a pleasure vessel and subjected to the continual bombardment of the yearnings of those aboard was making it impossible for either of us to think straight, never mind have a conversation. Trapped between the narrow boundaries of lust to which she’d become accustomed in this cabin, she couldn’t stop herself from trying to break through my instinctive repression to attune herself to my sexual desires.

Which very quickly got annoying.

What I needed now were answers, not some momentary sexual diversion. I had to learn what she was doing here, and how some petty local prince had been able to blackmail a pair of Glorian Justiciars to act as her guards. Why would the prince risk everything by desecrating an angelic just to provide salacious entertainment for his guests? Once the Lords Celestine finally got off their heavenly arses long enough to discover what was being done to one of theirs, heads would roll. Lots and lots of heads.

I know what you’re thinking. I was thinking it, too. I just wasn’t ready to admit it to myself.

Regardless, as questions buzzed around in my head, I was working on slowing the beat of my heart so I could slip into a waking trance– until I was distracted by the sound of writhing flesh and creaking bone. The angelic had twisted into an amorphous, translucent figure, like a sea creature stretching its tentacles in search of prey, in response to the onslaught of contradictory desires seeping through the floorboards from those occupied in their own sexual escapades in the cabins above. My momentary attention caused her body to change back into that of a woman, but even then, she couldn’t hold on to a single form. Her hair darkened, then lightened; her breasts swelled, then shrank. The shape of her legs, her belly, even her genitals, constantly changed, thinning, plumping up, lengthening, shortening, as she instinctively struggled to please me.

Apparently, I was making that an impossible task.

‘Would you look deeply into my eyes?’ I asked.

Amidst the endless transfigurations of her face and body, her voice dived from lilting and musical to deep, almost rumbling. ‘Will it hurt?’

‘It will be uncomfortable, but it’s important.’

Her form stopped shifting, for the most part, although her lips swelled into a sensuous bow and parted softly. ‘Will it please you?’

‘It won’t please either of us, but life isn’t always about pleasure.’

Her eyes settled into an almost angular shape, then narrowed, first in suspicion, then in curiosity, as if I’d just said something to her in a foreign tongue and yet she’d understood the meaning. ‘Then I will try.’

She abandoned her seductive poses and came to sit at the end of the bed, hugging her knees to her chest. She could have been mistaken for a woman my own age now, pretty, but not overly so, curious about me, even a little attracted, but not overwhelmed with desire. There was more character in her features, which I appreciated: a few lines here and there, the nose not quite straight. She struck me as someone I could have a conversation with, get to know, maybe even come to lo—

Damn it. She wasstillscrewing with me.

I kept my eyes locked on hers and started shedding loneliness and sorrow like rainwater off my shoulders, trying to make my will forceful enough to overpower the noise of endless lazy cravings wafting down at her through the rafters.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked, sensing something changing around us.

‘I’m creating space for us to talk.’

‘How?’

‘Like this.’