"Superbia: fixation, inflexibility, a persistent need to hold dominance over others. Self-centered to the core.
Gluttony: consuming past the point of satisfaction and still reaching for more. Coveting what belongs to others. An appetite for power that turns inward and damages the self.
Invidia: deep and corrosive envy, resentment of what others possess, a talent for cursing.
Luxuria..."
Evelyn paused. Just briefly. Then the text continued moving.
"Luxuria: a craving for warmth of another person. Attachment. The emotional experience weighted above any material desire, whether that hunger is suppressed or freely expressed."
The paper settled. Raphael read it through once, then again.
He looked at the Superbia entry and understood, without needing to examine the conclusion carefully, why that one was his.
More than the others, it fit the shape of how he moved through the world.
He hunted sinners without hesitation and felt nothing particular about it afterward, they had done what they had done, punishment followed, that was the natural order of things.
Demons were prey rather than people. The blood on his hands after a kill was the same as blood on hands after slaughter. It had never registered as something to carry.
The certainty that he was simply correct. That had always been there.
Gluttony made sense when he set it against what he'd seen.
The cultists who'd abandoned their own bodies in exchange for borrowed power, who'd handed their flesh to Jason like a resource, who'd participated in a child's murder for a commission on the returns, the word fit them precisely.
Not hunger for food. Hunger as a philosophy. Taking until there was nothing left and still not stopping.
Invidia he'd seen in one specific face, small and half-formed, crying questions into a wall that didn't answer.
Resentment at being overlooked, at love being distributed unequally and ending up with none.
That particular sin probably populated the more folkloric end of the Demon catalog, grudge spirits, skinwalkers, the things that emerged from sustained emotional damage.
He folded the paper and slid it back.
Evelyn drew a small breath.
"That's what I know. The remaining eight, my understanding of those is surface-level at best, not worth citing as reference.
Most people carry at least one Cardinal Sin without knowing it.
There are methods through the church for identifying yours, if you don't have another way."
Raphael turned the Luxuria definition over in his mind and still couldn't find a clean fit for the woman across the table.
Unless, and this seemed more likely the longer he sat with it, the definition wasn't about what the word suggested at face value.
Craving for warmth. Attachment.
Emotional experience over material satisfaction.
Evelyn was controlled around people she didn't know and easy with the ones she did.
The physical contact she extended to him and to Eva wasn't performance, it was just how she operated when she felt safe.
Not repressed. Not absent. Held, and then released in appropriate conditions.
A dormant volcano wasn't an extinct one.
He filed it under observed, not yet understood and looked at Eva.
Her food had arrived while he wasn't paying attention. Burger, fried chicken, chips, a large cup of something carbonated.
The architecture of someone who had strong opinions about enjoyment.
Raphael reached over and tapped her shoulder. She looked up with mild curiosity. He withdrew his hand without explanation.
[Scanning... Complete.]
[Eva.]
[Cardinal Sin: Acedia.]
He accepted his own tray when it arrived and considered the contents without particular enthusiasm.
Poached chicken breast, steamed broccoli, boiled egg whites, raw egg, plain greens with nothing on them, water, protein powder in a shaker he'd brought himself.
"...That's what you're eating?"
"Yes."
He set two bottles on the table beside the tray. Vitamins. Trace minerals.
Eva stared at the arrangement with genuine feeling.
"Your stomach is literally a processing unit. You're a machine. I would rather retire."
Raphael made no comment. He'd never had strong feelings about food, which was part of why the twenty percent Gluttony affinity had given him pause. Whatever that reading was measuring, it wasn't appetite.
Evelyn's plate was a different matter. Red wine-braised beef, cream-baked escargot, soft white bread, a glass of juice.
She cut into the steak with the ease of someone who had eaten this way her entire life.
The three of them ate and talked.
"I'm Level 2 now. Two contracted Demons." Raphael set his fork down briefly. "What about you both?"
Eva swallowed a bite of burger. "Level 3. Three contracts."
Evelyn touched the corner of her mouth with a napkin. "Level 4. Five contracts, not all Demons."
Raphael nodded. He didn't ask for elaboration.
He knew the shape of information that people chose not to offer. If she wanted him to know the specifics, she'd say them without being prompted.
He moved past it.
"What's the plan for the unit going forward?"
Evelyn set down her knife. "Short term, a few smaller commissions. Nothing like last night. Something that lets us find our rhythm together before we walk into anything serious."
She paused. "Medium term, we need a Priest. Ideally someone with church training, real ritual experience. Not just someone who's read the texts."
"They're rare inside the organization?"
"Chronically understaffed. The few we have rotate constantly between units, nobody gets to keep one long-term. So if the opportunity comes from outside the organization, we take it."
She looked at him.
"Long term, I haven't had strong feelings about that. Eva's said similar things. And you..." a slight tilt of her head, "...you don't seem like someone who thinks much about advancement."
Raphael considered whether that was an accurate read and concluded it was.
Since joining the Black Gloves, he'd moved from task to task without any particular destination in mind.
Not for recognition, not for the money, just because the work had been in front of him and he'd done it.
His father had been missing for years. His mother had died when he was young. What they'd collectively left him was a skillset.
Evelyn seemed to notice the silence and what was underneath it. She reached across the table and put her hand over his, her fingers pale and smooth against the scarring on the back of his hand.
Her thumb moved once, a small, unhurried gesture, like she was testing whether he'd pull away.
He didn't.
"I was thinking," she said, "that the long-term goal could simply be this, become the strongest unit in the Red Gloves."
Her gaze moved toward the far end of the room, deliberate, in the direction of the A-1 conference room.
"...Fine by me."
A goal was better than no goal. He'd work with that.
Eva, who had been watching the entire exchange with the expression of someone taking notes for personal use, let out a slow whistle.
"You two. There is another person at this table. Just so we're clear."
Evelyn's cheeks colored slightly. She withdrew her hand and returned her attention to the steak with the composure of someone who had not just been caught doing anything.
Raphael and Eva looked at each other across the table.
They both laughed.
He leaned back in his chair afterward and looked at the two of them, Eva already complaining about something on her phone, Evelyn pretending not to smile at whatever she was reading over Eva's shoulder.
Having a team wasn't bad.
A new commission came through in the afternoon. A small one, Evelyn said nothing remotely like the previous night.
The client had requested an evening meeting, which left the three of them with time to kill, and they spent part of it in the quartermaster's storehouse.
Raphael had accumulated two hundred and twenty merit points from the night's work. Enough to do something with.
He'd barely made it through the entrance when something stopped him.
A sword on the display rack, positioned between more ordinary equipment as though it didn't particularly know it was different.
Silver-white blade, the profile clean and tapered, the edge catching the overhead light in a way that ordinary steel didn't.
He moved toward it.
[Relic detected.]