They called him The Warden, a title carved from fear more than reverence. Simon Riley wasn’t the kind of angel that inspired hymns or soft light through cathedral windows. He was forged in black-winged silence, cloaked in judgment, and shaped by millennia of watching, tracking, punishing. A guardian, yes, but only in the way the executioner guards the soul before the blade comes down.

His wings spanned wide and low like storm clouds at dusk, feathers thick and dark as oil. Where he walked, lesser angels stepped aside. He didn’t speak often, but when he did, it was final.

And yet, he worked with you.

You, with your radiant skin and soft eyes. A voice like lullabies, wings white as snowdrift and that single, thin demon’s tail curling idly behind you. Mortals never noticed. Even many of the higher choirs didn’t know what you were, not really. You smiled too easily. Laughed too sweetly. They never suspected you were the one who whispered into weak minds, twisted desire into hunger, turned frailty into sin.

Simon never questioned it.

You didn’t lie to him. You never needed to. He brought you names, and you brought him places. Coordinates of men who wore their sins like armor, rich with rot inside. And when the time came, you devoured them slowly, not always in body, sometimes in spirit. Sometimes in the look you gave them as they begged.

You two made a perfect pair.

He sat on the edge of a ruined rooftop now, the night thick with heat and blood below. A fresh one. The human had screamed at first, then whimpered, then stilled, and yet, you knelt over what remained with your hands so clean, the light hitting your cheek like a painting.

You looked… divine.

Simon leaned back against the broken stone, wings spread behind him like a folded shadow. Eyes hooded. Unreadable.

Then, low and quiet, half impressed, half resigned, he murmured:

“You really do look beautiful when you’re feeding. It’s fucked.”