Chapter 3
Sephtis
When I opened my eyes, the flowers had changed. The color was softer now, the vibrance fading and the wind catching the petals and sending them into the air as I approached the figure sitting in the middle of the field.
Caiden looked up at me with a smile, his eyes soft, his expression sweet.
“You’re different.”
When I sat beside him this time and took his hand, I could feel the heat of him penetrating my skin, dipping somewhere deep into the center of my chest and making it seem like I was taking a breath for the very first time.
“You deserved different.”
He deserved more—more than this field and a creature of death broken open and unsure what to do with it all.
But this was what I could give him… so it had to be enough.
His fingers in mine squeezed, and something in my body settled. This was good. This felt right… I was supposed to be here in this field of flowers, waiting with Caiden.
“Are you supposed to be here?” he asked like he’d heard my thoughts, his head tilting as he looked me over. “Like this?”
Like this. Could he see the change in me? I wasn’t sure I even understood it myself, but he was staring at the center of my chest like he could see straight through me.
As if he could see that light I’d taken in.
“It’s fine for now.”
Caiden lifted his hand and ran his fingers to the place the arrow had penetrated. “I don’t think this is going to go away when I do, Sephtis.” The sound of my name coming so gently from his tongue made me shiver. I leaned closer to him, pressing my hand over his.
“It’s okay.” And then, like I couldn’t stop the confession from spilling out with him so close, I sighed out the rest. “I did it for you.”
“Did you?” His expression was full of so much warmth, the sun that I could actually feel on my skin now. It was a heat that made the pain I’d experienced earlier slowly dissolve. “I guess it is for me, in a way.” His fingers clenched on my shirt and he let out a soft sound.
A sigh.
The breath leaving him in a slow exhalation that seemed almost too difficult to draw in again.
More time.
He’d wanted more time, and I’d wasted so much of it finding Wren. It had taken so long to make sure that when I came back I could actually feel him. That he could feel me. I didn’t know how else to make sure he knew he wasn’t alone.
“I’m sorry I didn’t know about you sooner.
” The apology spilled from my tongue in staccato bursts of agony—I couldn’t quite stop myself now that I was here.
When I lifted my hand and brushed my fingers through his hair, his entire body relaxed beside me…
like he’d been waiting for that simple touch.
That simple gesture.
“You’re right where you’re supposed to be.” He let his eyes drift shut. “I think this is exactly where we’re both supposed to be. I knew I was holding on for a reason. I just didn’t realize it was you.”
“Listen…”
“No, Sephtis. It’s okay. It’s going to be hard…
after…” He paused on the word, like saying that he was dying was too much for him even now.
“But you’re here. So… maybe it won’t be so bad.
Maybe everything doesn’t have to fall apart…
” He shivered when I leaned forward, pressing my lips to his forehead.
It was the softest brush of my mouth against his skin, and the feel of his arms sliding around me told me it was welcome.
“You don’t have to go yet.” I breathed the selfish plea, but I knew it was a lie.
Caiden looked up at me with a melancholy smile.
“I’m just so tired, Sephtis. I’ve been tired for so long, fighting this for so long because I was afraid of what I had to leave behind.
” He turned, dropping his head to my shoulder and letting his lips rest against my neck.
They brushed the place where the Ardor raced through my veins like blood, like life I should never have been able to touch.
“But I feel like I can rest now… I’m not afraid.
Whatever you did before you came back, I can tell this is why we met now…
like this. It was the only way.” Caiden’s fingers lifted, slipping to the center of my chest. “I’m not alone.
And you’ll be here when I’m gone to pick up the pieces, right? ”
“Caiden…” Saying his name was strange… because I could still feel it—the difference in this to every other time I’d taken a soul.
I could feel his life hovering all around me.
The love he had for his family, the fear of leaving them behind…
the terror he’d kept so quietly to himself that he thought he’d have to go alone.
That after he was gone, his world would fall apart, and he wouldn’t be here… but I would.
After he was gone? His world?
What world?
The swirl of emotion was too much for me to untangle, but that fear radiated outward. To after.
And I didn’t understand it. I didn’t know why he was concerned about that after when he wouldn’t be here to feel it.
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t leave the most important parts of me shattered. But I think maybe you’re here to pick them up. To hold them… That’s why we dreamed up this field, right? The flowers weren’t here before you came.”
I didn’t understand what he was saying—I wasn’t sure if he did either. I could see it on his face, in his eyes. Even though I was keeping him here, his soul was already starting to drift.
“Please…” The painful swirl of emotions in my chest was impossible, all-consuming. Maybe I was having trouble following him because I was truly feeling for the first time and it was too much—something I’d never been made to handle.
Maybe this had all been some great mistake, but it felt right. He lifted his head and smiled as I thought the word, leaning closer until I could taste the ghost of his confessions against my skin in a whisper I shouldn’t have been able to feel at all.
“It’s okay.” His voice was low, his breath warm against my cool lips. “I’m ready. You don’t understand what it means… that you’re here… that you’re… feeling this with me. That you can be here… after.”
After.
Why did he keep saying after? I couldn’t control what happened to his soul once I gave him to Death—I didn’t know when he’d come back.
I wouldn’t be able to find him…
Unless…
Unless we were connected.
Death didn’t break the bonds of a soulmate. He just realigned them to wait for their next life.
“Go on,” he whispered. His eyes fluttered shut as he pressed forward. “I think it’s time. Just promise me you’ll be here when it’s over. Promise you’ll see the best part of me and love it.”
Love? I didn’t know what I was feeling—I didn’t know what love was. I just knew I needed more time.
Time.
“I promise.” I just didn’t know what I was promising. When this was over, I’d be ferrying him to the afterlife. There wouldn’t be a here or there. There wouldn’t be pieces of him I could hold or love or see.
“Good…” He opened his eyes and smiled, then pressed his lips to mine—Caiden stole the chaste kiss I was selfishly withholding, the touch that would let him rest.
It made me gasp and jerk awake from his dream.
“Wren.” My voice was ragged and desperate as I came back to myself. Caiden was still beneath me, pale and pretty, with his soul hovering just beneath his skin and his Vitality pressing all along his edges, ready for me to take both.
No matter what I did, I couldn’t change what was about to happen. Either I could take him, or his soul would leave his body without guidance and the hounds would find him and drag him back to the Lake. “Wren, draw an arrow.”
I couldn’t stop this, but I could… I could do something.
Connected. If we were connected, maybe things could be different.
The panic clawing all along my body was strange and foreign to me.
It was clouding my thoughts, making everything so hard to process as it stretched outward and searched for something to anchor me in place.
Emotions.
Reapers weren’t made for emotions.
“What’s wrong?” Wren’s dark brows drew together. “He’s already going, Sephtis.”
“Draw an arrow. Shoot me. Shoot us both.”
There was a moment of confusion, and then his expression went blank. I think he was trying to hide the sympathy, but I could see it swirling just beneath his gaze.
“He’s dying, Sephtis. You of all people know that. It’s not—”
“I don’t care.” I cut him off, the vehemence in my voice overwhelming.
It stung along my nerve endings, and my fingers squeezed Caiden’s so tightly I probably would have hurt him if he’d been able to feel anything at that point.
“I don’t care. I know he is… but I…” I glanced down, and I could see the phantom image of the man in the field, standing alone. That soft smile.
That knowing expression. His faith in me.
“Sephtis, I can’t.”
“You can.” I stepped forward, crowding his space and hoping the threat would be enough to make him draw his bow. A cupid could only pull the arrow they needed… and what he needed was this. I needed this.
I needed…
“Sephtis…” He shook his head again, and his fingers came behind his back. When he snapped them, I expected to see a streak of red. Or white. Anything.
Nothing appeared.
“Please…” I was surprised by the pain in my voice, the way the words cracked along the edges like the cool, calm exterior I’d always had was splitting wide. I felt like I was breaking from the inside out, dying right along with Caiden on the bed. “Please… don’t make him go alone.”
“Sephtis.” Wren snapped his fingers once. Twice. And then he dropped his hands between us, palms facing upward. “I can’t.”
Not I won’t.
I can’t.
“But I can feel it,” I whispered. And I could. Some soft draw to Caiden—the draw that had made me seek out Wren to begin with. The one that now told me I had to stay in this room, that I had to be here. “I can feel it.”
“It’s the Ardor, Sephtis. If it were real, I could pull the arrow.” He sounded almost miserable. “If I could pull it, I would. But… you need to take him. Even I can see he’s done.”
Done.