I call him the devil because he makes me want to sin
He has waited for this moment.
Patient, mostly, his dark, shadowed eyes studying the horizon, waiting for the telltale sign of crushed gold and cloven hoof. He has spent his time well, letting the hours pass, letting them swell around him. He has learned mastery over the Fear. He is no longer the knobby-kneed, thick-fingered boy of his youth. He is sharper now, his abilities more refined, having learned the ability to pluck a single thread instead of breaking the whole instrument. It’s done more than benefit him, done more than help him.
But none of that matters now because he sees his shark-eyed father and everything else melts away. Everything that could have even conceivably mattered fades and he’s just the young boy at his father’s knee, learning the lessons that has molded him into the man that he has become.
He doesn’t bother pretending to wait.
Doesn’t play his typical games with the ultimate gift giver.
Instead he weaves his way through the rabble, picks his way through the masses until he nears the golden stallion. There are so many things that live on the edges of his lips, so many truths and questions and things that he wants to say—things that he wants to confess. Things he wants to bend the knee and offer.
He wants his father’s approval. What a pitiful thing for him to admit. He has always wanted his father’s approval, he thinks, and he loathes that weakness in him even as he dips his head toward the elder Krampus. When he lifts his gaze again, there’s something feral living in the depths of it, something that thrashes against the bars, something that he barely contains with a violent flick of wrist.
“I remembered to wash the blood immediately,” is finally what comes.
And he thinks of Lucrezia bleeding out into the ocean as he baptized himself in the saltwater.
He thinks of her and he waits.
(and every time he knocks, I can't help but let him in)