Chapter 3 #2
Done, and his soul was reaching out to me to finish it.
The sting in my eyes was something I was unfamiliar with. Hot tears cutting like knives behind my lashes. Emotions I couldn’t control.
Caiden’s love for life, his fear of death… and the calm he had now that he knew I would be here.
That I would be here to take him.
To stay after.
After.
What after had I promised him? It almost seemed like there was something he wanted to tell me, but he couldn’t manage in that place we were in.
Death was funny that way, stealing words and thoughts, names and memories.
I’d met people incapable of saying the name of the person they loved most when they were stuck in that in between, like they were afraid to drag them down with them.
“Sephtis, you have to do your job,” Wren sighed, but I was already moving.
I leaned down and pressed my lips to Caiden’s cool mouth, and his soul poured forward without hesitation.
His Vitality leaped between us, spilling into me and leaving me shivering.
I was wrecked with the way Caiden filled me up, the way I could feel every moment of his life.
All of it, flashing in a sharp burst too fast for me to understand, too overwhelming for me to sort through.
A thousand fractured images of his face.
For just a moment, his soul lingered in front of me. So soft. His smile so sweet. He leaned forward and whispered, “Remember your promise. He’s coming.” Then he stepped into me, disappearing like he’d never been there at all, ready and willing to be ferried to the Lake.
“Sephtis?” Wren’s voice came to me like I was underwater—I was drowning in Caiden’s emotions, in humanity, in the way it felt to feel him die.
I realized now that part of his confusion, his inability to fully tell me what he meant, was because of my confusion.
I’d shaped the world we were in by making him stay, and now I was drowning in all the things he’d left behind, left unsaid.
I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to surface until I heard it.
A voice. An impossible voice.
“Hey, Caiden, I…”
The man in the doorway was a ghost—a beautiful ghost, whose tender expression was slowly fading to one of shock.
Of pain.
Of agony as his eyes drifted to the dead vessel on the bed where Caiden had been.
He looked exactly like him. His hair was shorter, and the lean muscle on his body was on display beneath a black tank top, but he had the same smile, the same dimple at the corner of his cheek. The same dark lashes that fluttered rapidly as he took in what he was seeing.
He looked just like him, and yet I hadn’t seen such a wrecked expression on Caiden’s face.
Brother.
A twin.
The best parts of me. The name he couldn’t say because we’d been trapped in a moment and he knew I wouldn’t hear it. So he’d kept me there to wait.
For after.
Something in my chest twisted—sharp, painful, infinite.
Inevitable.
This was the after. This was the promise.
He was everything.
The vase he was holding crashed to the ground, and like some fucked-up twist of fate, the red petals fluttered into the air, spilling between the two of us.
“No wonder I couldn’t pull anything before.” Wren stood behind me, and in his fingers was a shining red arrow. Exactly what I’d begged for, here now that it was too late.
“I don’t understand, I—”
“Who the fuck are you?” the ghost in front of me snapped, and I noticed his eyes were a vivid green—the same color as the stars in Caiden’s dream—viridian disdain pouring down on me and drawing the truth from my chest before I could stop myself.
“I came for your brother.”
“Gods, Sephtis. Why can he see you? Why are you still here?”
That was… a good question. Why could he see me? It shouldn’t have been possible, unless he was close to death himself. And yet…
My hand lifted to my chest—to the place Wren had shot me, to the Ardor that still poured through my veins… and I came away with a soft red petal. The field of flowers.
They aren’t my favorite. The flowers weren’t here before you came.
Oh… gods…
“Sephtis?” Wren’s voice was cautious, because he could see it.
The pain on my face.
“Wren—”
“I can’t take it back,” he whispered. His voice was full of pity as the human stepped forward and his hands connected with my chest in a hard shove.
“What did you do?” As soon as he touched me, my body flooded with heat.
Cole. His name was Cole, and Caiden thought he was all the best parts of him. All the pieces he wanted me to stay for.
To love.
Fuck.
“Wren.” I said it again, because everywhere the man touched me, my body felt like it was on fire. Like it was feeling for the first time.
“What did you do to Caiden?”
“Sephtis, I can’t take it back. I warned you.
I…” Wren took a step forward. “I’m so sorry.
Do you want—” His fingers twitched, and the arrow glinted in the low light of the room.
A spark of red, the pallor of a corpse, and the blazing green judgment in the eyes of the man who called out to a soul I’d accidentally awakened when I let Wren shoot me.
A soul I never should have had.
“No… don’t. Not right now.”
Reapers were born to be soulless, emotionless… to do a job. And now…
Now I could feel everything. Most of all, I could feel the hate of the man standing across from me.
The hate of my soulmate.