Chapter 6
Sephtis
Forbidden.
Every rule that could be broken lay shattered at my feet, but it didn’t stop me from pulling Cole from the water that tried to suck him down—from the tendrils of death that were slowly snaking across his frame and trying to call me to take him.
To pull his soul from his body.
To let him go.
I couldn’t let him go.
I hadn’t been able to since the first time I’d seen him in that room, and I hadn’t been able to stop watching him since.
It was interfering with my work. I kept almost falling behind on my quota, and I didn’t know how long I could keep going like this before Death realized I was…
Distracted.
Reapers weren’t made to be distracted. We weren’t made to save mortals.
That didn’t stop me from jumping into the water as soon as Cole hit the current, and it didn’t stop me from dragging him onto the shore.
I could see it there—his soul hovering just beneath his skin, his Vitality burning bright even though every part of him felt broken.
This close, with him lingering on the edge of death, I could feel his pain even more than I did when I watched him at night, drifting on the periphery of his dreams but too cautious to step into them.
I could feel it burning along every inch of my body, dipping inside my veins and twining with the Ardor that still poured through me all this time later. His loss, his agony, his sorrow held depths no ocean could fill, that left his soul eager to flee from the pain so it could start anew.
Some part of him wanted to die… and I learned another thing I wasn’t supposed to be.
Selfish.
I leaned down and blew my breath gently across his lips, forcing his soul back into the center of his chest. I let out another soft sigh, easing the slightest hint of the Vitality I’d collected earlier into his body to heal the injuries he’d sustained—just enough to knit bone and skin together. Just enough to make sure he was okay.
Just enough that if Death ever found out, I couldn’t fathom the punishment I’d receive in return.
We weren’t permitted to use the Vitality unless something supernatural tried to push a human to death before it was their time.
It could reverse smaller injuries—it couldn’t have saved Caiden, but it could save Cole now that I’d forced his soul back into his body.
The world was balanced; I was upsetting it at every turn and I didn’t care.
It was worth it… because lingering with my mouth so close to his, I almost closed the distance between us.
What would it be like to kiss him?
Would I feel that burn go all the way to my center? Would his anger eat me alive, or would I be able to sense his soul calling out to the fragmented pieces I’d awakened in my chest?
Soulmates.
Even though I hadn’t let Wren use the arrow, the knowledge was still there, the draw—a connection unforged, but still lingering.
And every day, every second that passed…. I wished I’d asked him to shoot.
Cole took a shuddering breath, and his eyes flew wide. This close, it felt like my world was engulfed in a vision of spring. Bright green chased around his dilated pupils with a burst of blue.
“Are you… actually real?” It almost seemed like he was afraid to ask, and my answer came just as reluctantly.
Rules.
Every broken rule coming from my tongue in one syllable. “Yes.”
There was a moment where his eyes softened as he looked at me, where his breath came in an awed exhale and his hand lifted, pressing to my chest like he couldn’t believe I was really here.
The moment his fingertips touched the front of my sweater, his palm flat where my heartbeat should have been, recognition poured across his features and he jerked back.
“What did you do?” he snapped, and I wasn’t sure if he was asking about now or before.
I didn’t have an answer for him the night Caiden had died, and I still didn’t have one now.
I didn’t know what to say. The only time I spoke to him was in his dreams, when sleep stole away the vicious accusations and left him with nothing but the feelings that should have existed between us all along.
He smiled when he heard my voice then.
But Cole wasn’t smiling now. He scrambled from beneath me like I’d tried to kill him instead of saving his life, and the look of loathing blossoming across his features nearly chased away the paleness of his skin.
“I’m sorry.” Who apologized for saving someone’s life? If I hadn’t pressed my lips to his, hadn’t forced his soul back into his body… He’d been ready to give up. He would have died had any Reaper but me found him.
“You… what are you?” Cole sounded furious, even though his body was shivering like it had finally caught up with the fact that he’d nearly died, that he should have been dead.
“I…” I trailed off, the words literally trapped at the back of my throat.
Another forbidden thing—no living human was allowed to know of our existence.
I’d never realized how many rules we had before I’d taken the Ardor into my body.
Our movements, our actions? Everything was restricted to the perfunctory task of reaping souls.
There was no room or space for anything else.
I sometimes wondered if that was why Caiden hadn’t been able to tell me about Cole while we were stuck in a limbo of our combined creation.
Yet here I was, kneeled beside the same red flowers he’d brought to Caiden’s room… the same as the red field we’d been sitting in while we waited for him.
Caiden had kept me there to wait for Cole.
And I…
I didn’t know how he would feel if he realized I wasn’t a comfort to his brother—I wasn’t helping him overcome his grief. It was painted across his face like a scar, a second skin he couldn’t escape.
“You know what? Forget it.” He pushed himself to his feet and nearly stumbled forward from the sudden movement. People were already starting to make their way down the bank toward the river. As much as I wanted to stay, I couldn’t.
Cole could see me, but none of them would be able to. What they would see was a man shouting furiously at the air. They’d think he’d suffered some brain injury when he went into the water. I didn’t want to do that to him, but I couldn’t leave him with nothing.
Not again. Not now that he was looking at me while he was awake.
“You know who I am,” I finally murmured in a soft voice, and his eyes narrowed.
“I know what you did.”
I reached for him, and the pained sensation that ripped through my chest when he jerked away was enough to let me know exactly what it felt like when the water from the river filled his lungs. Cold.
An icy weight.
He wanted nothing to do with me, and I wondered idly if this was my punishment for becoming something I was never meant to be, something unnatural.
Maybe it was my punishment for what I was about to do, because Death knew when we were supposed to come back with Vitality. He knew… and I couldn’t take it from the place I was supposed to.
“I’m sorry.” I said it again, softer this time. He watched me with wary eyes as I leaned down and plucked one of the petals from the red flowers beside us.
“Stop saying that and tell me what you want.” So furious. So frightened… and I couldn’t give him what he needed. I leaned forward instead, catching his wrist when he tried to jerk away so I could press the petal into his palm.
“I don’t know what else to say, Cole.”
His eyes widened at the sound of his name on my lips, but his attention jerked away as the shouting from behind us drew closer. I let myself spill back into the shadows, dissolving from view as worried onlookers reached us.
I wanted to stay. I wanted to touch him, to run my fingers through his wet hair and tell him exactly who I was, what I’d been doing in that room with Caiden.
I wanted to tell him that his brother dreamed of a field of red, and he’d placed his entire world in my hands before he died—that he’d trusted me with Cole.
The words wouldn’t come. It seemed like some things were still sacred, regardless of how loose my tongue wanted to be. I couldn’t say the words to a living human. Bound in secret by Death…
And now I needed to find a way to pay the debt of a life I’d saved.
It was easy enough to follow the scent of someone on the edge, someone close enough to dying that a little push wouldn’t be remiss. It wasn’t as though I could go around killing humans who had years ahead of them—the soul would be fractured, it would call the hounds.
So I found a man on the streets instead—old, with lines worn into his face from the cruelty of time.
Because of the Ardor, I noticed how they crinkled at the corners of his eyes, at the curve of his lips.
He’d smiled through his struggles, and I could feel his exhaustion from keeping that expression on his face through the pain.
The sensation of exactly how tired he was poured over me in waves that made my body feel heavy, in stinging depths that clawed through the emotions I shouldn’t have been able to feel and made it nearly impossible for me to move forward.
How many lives had I taken where I could feel every trial they’d gone through? How many more would I be forced to reap knowing they were afraid, that they weren’t ready?
How much more could I take before something inside me broke and Death realized the game I’d been playing, the mask I wore when I came to his domain to deliver souls to the Lake?
I shuddered as I stepped from the shadows, and the man’s eyes turned up. He couldn’t see me yet—of course he couldn’t see me. It wasn’t his time. He still had months left, but…
Well…
If I had a soul, if the Ardor had truly awakened it, I’d sold it long ago to make sure I could keep Cole exactly where he was.
Somewhere I could watch, could obsess over.
Somewhere that, at night, when his guard was down and nightmares plagued him, I could run my fingers gently across his chest and calm him.