Chapter Thirty-One
~Kalo~
The change in the room happened quickly, though at first it was difficult to pinpoint exactly what had shifted.
The reaper hadn’t moved from her place within the trap, her dark, hooded form as still and silent as ever, yet the air itself seemed to thin, like something had sucked out all the oxygen.
A moment later, the lights overhead began to flicker, casting the room into alternating bands of shadow and harsh illumination, while a low, unsettling hum pulsed up through the floor beneath us.
The bed frame rattled beneath us, the wooden joints creaking in protest, and somewhere across the room, something metallic struck the ground with an echoing clang. The temperature dropped in tandem, the warmth draining away until the air felt thin and brittle in my lungs.
“I don’t think she liked that,” Felix murmured, his voice almost lost beneath the growing disturbance.
Calista reached out for me. “Off the bed. Now.”
Leo’s reaction time was quicker than mine, and his hand closed firmly around my wrist as we scrambled off the mattress and pressed ourselves against the nearest wall, taking care to keep well clear of the rug that concealed the trap beneath it.
The vibration intensified as we moved. The wooden dresser shuddered, one of its drawers sliding open with a hollow scrape, and the hum beneath the rug grew more insistent, like a warning building towards something worse.
At the center of it all, the reaper remained utterly still.
“You interfered with the natural order,” she said, her voice cutting cleanly through the chaos, calm and unyielding despite the storm gathering around her. “And then you bound me when I came to correct it. This won’t restore balance. It will only make things worse.”
The lights flickered again, briefly plunging us into darkness before flaring back to life.
“She’s not wrong,” Calista admitted. “We can’t keep her contained indefinitely.”
Leo’s grip on my wrist tightened almost imperceptibly. “We don’t need indefinitely. We just need enough time to figure out what we’re dealing with.”
He turned towards Felix and Calista, already shifting into problem-solving mode.
“She said the bond is interfering with her task, that it’s confusing whatever system she operates under, and that a choice has to be made. We need to reject the bond or accept it fully.”
Felix nodded slowly, his mind clearly racing ahead. “And then one of you dies.”
Calista’s gaze flicked between us. “What happens if you don’t choose? What if you leave the bond exactly as it is? Amanda and Troy delayed completing theirs for years, didn’t they? There might be precedent for leaving it unresolved.”
Felix shook his head almost immediately. “That was different. They hadn’t marked each other.”
Everyone’s eyes dropped to the mark on my neck, the one I was actually starting to not mind so much.
“If a bond is initiated and not completed, it doesn’t remain stable,” Felix continued. “It weakens, and eventually, it collapses on its own.”
“How long does it take for that to happen?” Leo demanded.
“I’d have to look it up. It’s not exactly a situation that comes up often.”
None of this was, I’d wager.
The violent rattling had eased into a tense, lingering hum, but the air still felt charged, as though the reaper’s displeasure lingered like a storm cloud waiting just beyond the horizon.
“We should regroup,” Calista said, already moving towards the door. “We need to understand the mechanics of this before we do anything else.”
One by one, the others began to file out, stepping carefully along the edges of the room to avoid disturbing the hidden trap. Leo reached the door before he realized I wasn’t behind him.
“Kalo?”
I hesitated for only a moment before answering.
“I’d like to stay here.”
Leo glanced over at the reaper. “With her?”
I nodded. “I’d like to talk to her. I won’t be able to help with werewolf bonds, so maybe I can ask some more questions and try to understand a little more how all of this works.
He moved back towards me, concern bright in his sapphire eyes. “You won’t make any decision without me, right? You won’t agree to anything without talking to me.”
It stung to know he thought I might, but honestly, I couldn’t blame him. I’d given him little reason to believe I had his best interests at heart. This whole time, I’d been so focused on my own freedom, I’d barely considered how all of this was affecting the kind-hearted man in front of me.
I reached out to take his hand. “I promise I won’t. I just want to talk. Nothing more.”
“Should I stay too?”
He would, if I asked him to. I could see it clearly on his face, but in this case, it might do more harm than good. “I think she and I might have some common ground, given my time as a genie. We might be able to connect more one-to-one.”
Leo examined my reasoning, turning it over in his head to look for potential pitfalls, and after a long moment, he exhaled. “Stay out of the circle. Don’t take any risks.”
“I won’t,” I promised.
His gaze lingered on me for a second longer before he finally stepped back and followed the others out into the hall. The door closed behind him and the room fell quiet again, that unnatural chill still sitting in the air.
The rug lay undisturbed at the center of the room, concealing the trap beneath it, and within that invisible boundary, the reaper still stood in exactly the same place she’d stopped, not a hint of movement in the long, flowing cloak.
“You’re wasting your time,” she said in a monotone. “You can’t flatter or deceive me.”
“I’m not trying to do either. I’d just like to get to know you.”
“That is unnecessary.”
“Perhaps, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing.”
She didn’t agree, but neither did she dismiss me outright, and I took that as encouragement to continue.
“Were you ever human?” I asked.
“No.” The answer came without hesitation, and I believed it fully. What reason would she have to lie?
“So, you were born a reaper? Or created in this form?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Interesting. “Did you choose to become a reaper?”
“Choice doesn’t factor into it.”
Perhaps it was my imagination, but her stillness didn’t seem quite so neutral anymore. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was growing tense.
“Were you able to refuse?” I tried.
“Choice doesn’t factor into it,” she repeated, but her tone shifted, suggesting the answer wasn’t quite that simple.
“I don’t know if you know anything about my background, but I was a human who became a genie. It was my choice, in a way, but once I accepted the role, I lost all my free will. I had to grant the wishes asked of me, no matter what they were or who they hurt.”
Memories pressed in of vengeance and tears and blood, all the terrible things people had used my magic for. Used me for.
“After a while, I buried my feelings as much as I could. It became easier to tell myself I didn’t bear any responsibility. I did what the magic commanded. I followed orders.”
Though the reaper remained silent, I felt that I had her full attention.
“I promised myself that if I ever got free, I would never allow myself to be bound to anything or anyone again.”
My hand drifted to the mark on my neck, and the light graze of my fingertips over it took me back to that afternoon, floating in the lake, and the warmth of Leo’s body against mine in front of the fire. Those memories were stronger than the others, more immediate and more real.
“But since I gained my freedom, I’m starting to understand that maybe it isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. Maybe there are ways we can be free even when our lives are intertwined with others.”
“This is irrelevant,” the reaper snapped, and again, the lights flickered above us.
To me, her growing agitation proved the opposite; far from being irrelevant, something I’d said had struck a nerve.
I tried to push a little harder. “When was the last time you were free to make your own choice?”
The flickering grew stronger and the room began to rattle around us once more. Perhaps I went a little too far? Remembering what Leo said about not taking risks, I took a step towards the door, but before I could reach it, light began to emanate from inside the reaper’s cloak.
In an instant, it filled the room, swallowing the shadows and the walls until nothing remained but white. I threw my arms up, shielding my eyes as the brightness seared through my vision, my heart lurching as a single thought cut through my shock.
I was going to die, and Leo would never forgive me for it.