These oneshots will reference current events in the manga, and aspects of Dantalion, Sytry, and Camio's natures and powers that are revealed in Isaac's Undercover Section.

the crown on my head,
the thorns at my feet

Part I. Sytry
The puppet-prince cuts off his own strings.

A palace foregrounds his elegant androgyny, and a crown and scepter accent it. From all angles he is admired, but he does not fool himself that admiration is respect. Only one of Hell's inhabitants regards him in that right, and in his own.

"Ruling does not suit you." Solomon laces his fingers through a long trail of Sytry's pale hair. Between the two of them crowns have no place. The moonlight through the parlor window casts him in fractured layers of blue, his hands the same color as Sytry's locks. "As it did not suit me. We are alike in this, Sytry."

"And yet it is not truly I who sits on the throne," Sytry responds, careful not to let weariness color his voice.

"Ah, that is true. Are you still content to be Baalberith's puppet-doll?"

Sytry remains quiet, tracing a pattern on Solomon's robe. His old friend has taken to dressing like his self of ancient times in long flowing clothes, which hang gracefully on William Twining's body. From the moment of Sytry's coronation on, the ring of wisdom has sat on his finger. At moments it is still uncanny, because they are still William's eyes, but dulled with Solomon's placid wisdom.

Solomon is often gone, flitting through the domains of Hell to revisit old acquaintances or pillars, or surfacing to the human world to explore. It was self-education, he proclaimed, the pursuit of enlightenment on the state of the times after so long a dormancy in the vessels of his descendants. For all Sytry knows, he may visit the heavens as well, if only to taunt them for what they once held.

"What should I do, Solomon?"

"Surely you shouldn't take advice from me," says the wise man. "After all, I set my own father in prison. But you have other options."

"I couldn't kill Uncle. It would look terribly suspicious, and cause more of an upset than I'd wish."

Solomon tilts his head to one side. "But if you were to attack him and drive him to the brink of exhausting his powers… you know, these days there's not a single high-ranking demon who hasn't stayed up past his or her time for rest. Matters in Hell have just been so unstable until recently. If you did it, you'd cut him off from executing the rest of his plans. And a hundred, two hundred years from now when he wakes, you may have the balance of power at court already shifted in your favor." He laughs, a dark, tinkling sound. "Imagine! He'll go to sleep not only with his plans unfulfilled, but also knowing that the pawn he thought he had so securely under his thumb has in fact become a king more than in appearance."

Sytry considers this as squares of blue light elongate on the floor. The demon world thinks of him in terms of his noble breeding and diplomacy rather than raw power and ambition. His followers flatter him, likening his way of speaking to the fall of silk, and fawn to see him dressed in a similar manner. They act as if he doesn't know that the four kings are still scheming behind him, his uncle more than any. To them he is merely a figurehead, as he has never given them cause to dispute.

To strike down those assumptions, to topple the chessboard they believe fixed… Am I ready for this? he thinks. There is an emptiness where there would have been doubt to answer.

"You are doing well, my beautiful doll," Baalberith murmurs, one hand sunk in his hair. Sytry inclines his head in acknowledgement, allowing Baalberith's fingers to creep across his scalp. It gives his uncle pleasure to see the interim ruler of Hell still kneeling at his feet. "The Eastern Duke's cabinet wishes you to review their proposal for a special forces team dedicated to protecting Lucifer. A waste of funds, if you ask me. Be sure to reject it at their appeal tomorrow."

"Yes, Uncle."

"Good. You have never, never disappointed me." Baalberith's fingers close in a fist, and he yanks Sytry's head to his. His uncle's lips are rancid smoke and an earthquake he has learned to bear, as usual.

When their meeting ends, Sytry unfolds himself into a standing position and exits the chamber. He does not break his stride as he passes Gilles de Rais, who lifts a smirk in acknowledgement, or as he walks back to the palace, or as he comes to where Dantalion and Camio are waiting at his request in the parlor.

His two head generals greet him with salutes. Authority now allows him to brook the coldness in their eyes.

"What is it, Sytry?" Dantalion folds his arms across his chest.

"A confidential mission." He lowers himself into a loveseat and nabs a mille-feuille from the table's dessert stand. Its sweetness clears the pungent aftertaste in his mouth.

Between bites, he gives them his commands. He doesn't pretend they are anything but a monarch's orders, ones that supersede their loyalties to even their own regional kings. Tolerant as they were at the school, coldly courteous though they are now, they have not come to respect him on his own grounds. But as they are no longer obliged to continue their pretense at human relations, nothing stops him from exercising the authority that is now his right.

Dantalion bows low, the crimson cape swinging from his shoulder. Camio nods. Now more than before, the words they exchange are few, and never ones that dwell on the past, or on personal history. As they sweep out of the room, he leans back on the loveseat and plucks an Eccles cake from the stand.

To wait is all that remains. In all the sundry pleasures available to him as interim ruler, he knows he'll find not a moment's true diversion. Leonard creates for him the most exquisite cherry truffles drizzled with white chocolate, trembling vanilla soufflés dusted in powdered sugar, and even mooncakes and fluffy lotus seed buns he swears are authentic from his time in China. All of them are delicious, and none of them is satisfying. Among the exquisite variety of desserts, the one he longs for the most surprises him—if only he could somehow import (or sneak down) the Carr's biscuits he enjoyed so much at Stratford.

Meanwhile, desire could be his plaything, but he has lost even the curiosity to sate it. If he wanted, he could weave himself into illusion and gorge on every fine demon or demoness in sight, but what would be the use when now he can just as well command them to submit as their ruler? And those were indulgences he sickened of anyways in his early days as a demon of desire. Whenever anyone remarked on the softness of his skin, he could not help but wonder what they would have said about his feathers. And then would come the admission that if he still had his wings, he and the night's lover would never have been there in the first place to lie together in sin.

Sytry receives the news of Dantalion and Camio's success with his chin high and his gaze untroubled. It is important to face all new developments like this, for Hell's ever-delicate sense of decorum rests on his fine-boned shoulders.

Meeting with the other high-ranking lords afterwards at banquets and conferences is almost amusing, especially when he registers the new look of apprehension they wear when they look at him. Everyone knows who must have commanded the deed, but no one dares say it aloud. Sytry joins them in eulogizing Baalberith's sleep, and the demons bow their heads in wary condolence. Elegance is his offense and defense to political matters; he wields it like a knife.

Gilles de Rais is not one of those amused, or impressed. All throughout the meetings and dinners his eyes burn. The third day after Baalberith goes to sleep, he bursts into Sytry's private study.

Rage pinches his face white, so that the curlicue of blue under his eye distorts into a twisted smear. Not often does he lose the hint of mirth that lingers by his mouth, but when he does…

"A puppet has no right to cut off his own strings, don't you think? That old man was my ticket to Heaven." He bares his teeth. "My ticket to Jeanne."

"As he was mine for my lost wings," Sytry says, too quietly for Gilles to hear.

"You'll pay for disrupting my plans, Sytry. Especially since no one is here to protect you now."

Sytry leaps backwards, out of the way of the blue fireburst, and lands on light feet. He draws up the silken tone he reserves for speaking to aristocrats at important meetings. "If you do not desist in threatening me, I will have you condemned for treason, Gilles de Rais. Should you still wish to fight, remember that I have been granted the boon of Solomon's powers through his sanction of my rule."

Gilles de Rais rushes forward anyways, just as he had time and again tried to wrest the power to break open Heaven and Hell from Solomon's own hands. Sytry dodges and calls a bolt of energy to his palm. Solomon's power flushes through him, enhancing his reflexes and steadying his aim, setting his muscles atremble. When he releases the bolt, it slams Gilles flat against the opposite wall. The shock makes the younger demon's face go slack.

I am powerful now, Sytry thinks, drawing himself tall. More so than Dantalion or even Camio. The government of Hell, an unlimited household, his choice of courtesans, the finest sweets—all of it rests before him to be cupped in the palm of his hand just as easily as he might lift a teacup to his lips.

Sytry leaves Gilles de Rais sprawled against his study wall for his guards to take care of and wanders into his parlor. "Make me a chocolate cake," he says to Leonard, who bows and trots out. He crunches on a toffee cookie as he waits and tries to rejoice. He is free, he thinks—

—although what can freedom mean to one who has known flight on feathered wings?

"Now that you've done this, my fallen angel, the doors of Heaven are closed to you forever."

The wind that blows through the curtains is cool and sulfur-tinged, a far cry from the warm sirocco that used to float about them in Israel. Sytry lifts his head from Solomon's knees. "Were they not from the moment I accepted the crown?"

"Perhaps then there was still a chance. But with the end of Baalberith's scheme, you have barred them for good against yourself."

"Yes. I chose Hell."

"It was not a bad decision," Solomon hums. "It was what I chose, when I had all the fruits of heaven laid before me for the picking." He slips his cool hands beneath the silk of Sytry's robe and traces a finger up his spine to the nubs on his back, which from time to time are sore. Sytry does not disguise his shiver.

When he is by Solomon, his old friend makes him glad of his fall. Purify me with your human wisdom, he thinks, and I will have no need of Heaven's absolution.

There was another, once, who made him happy to be in Earth's realm.

"Solomon… is William there?" he asks, almost timidly.

"My, my! I'll never understand why you, Camio, and Dantalion so coveted my current vessel. I never may be around any of you three for long but you glance at me as if hoping to see someone else." But Solomon's laugh is too gracious for jealousy. "His presence remains under mine, however, and it is a strong-willed one. Sometimes I almost anticipate him breaking through with sheer stubbornness. But most of the time he is… quiet."

Sytry curls a little closer to his king on the loveseat so that he may gaze into Solomon's eyes. They are a placid green, the green of lily pads or thirsty grass. And then something unthinkable happens: he looks into those cool, blank eyes and wishes with all his heart to see one moment of William's apple-bright irises instead.

What he gave up the chance to regain his wings for was not merely to be free to rule Hell as he wished; it was also to be saved by Solomon, or the one who had inherited his wisdom, and return meaning to a life without wings. He has the freedom now, and he has Solomon. What remains to be missed?

Why does he long for purposeless days running through the academy's grounds, the companionship of his fellow demons playing at being classmates, and the pursuit of an edict that had once never seemed likely to be given? Does he miss Earth because it was closer to Heaven, enough to carry its scent? In a human who contained the barest trace of a memory of divinity, did he find a world that was preferable to it?

Did he then watch in silence as that human was forced to slip on the ring at his coronation, as the scintillation of his brilliance faded to the steady twinkle of another's wisdom?

No matter how it falls, he has exchanged one friend for another, and allowed him to be buried in the depths of a soul that is not his. Sytry leans back, suddenly hating his regal clothes, the lacquered parlor, and Solomon's impenetrable smile. All the crowns of Hell and wings of Heaven cannot equal the candor of a realist's eyes.

A/N: These three chapters consist of different branches of William's decision of interim ruler. Camio's part is next, followed by Dantalion's.