Chapter 16 Sephtis
Sephtis
In all the time I’d been watching him, I’d never actually imagined a moment where Cole would be in my home. It wasn’t like it was something I took pride in. It was functional; it was here.
It let me be there at night, when he wasn’t so caught up in mortal thoughts and feelings, human grudges, that he let me close to him. I wanted to tell him he was honest when he slept, that a cupid couldn’t pull an arrow that wasn’t true…
I wanted to tell him so many things, but it was obvious that he was tired of me telling him things. He’d made it clear he was tired of me making decisions for him.
There was only a small part of me that felt guilty in knowing I was going to have to keep doing it.
If I couldn’t figure out how to keep him in his body without Vitality, if I couldn’t figure out how to properly reseat his soul so it wasn’t attached to me…
I was going to have to keep killing to keep him alive and well.
He was the mortal equivalent of a psychic vampire, and he didn’t realize it.
I wasn’t going to make him feel guilty for the victims he didn’t want to take…
but I wasn’t going to let him lay down his life to save someone else either.
There were plenty of people in the city who were just like the man I’d killed in the alley.
He hadn’t seemed too broken about that particular death.
Would he forgive me if he knew the people I went after were killers and villains? Or would he think I was feeding him poisoned Vitality? I wasn’t sure if he’d understand or accept that every person had the same essence and vigor for life—it wasn’t pure or corrupt. It just was.
It was the soul that held the weight of a person’s worth. The soul that told stories of who a mortal really was.
And it was his soul that I could feel slowly reaching out to me with each moment we spent together, like it could recognize the connection between us, even if Cole never acknowledged it.
I hadn’t been lying to him before—his hate would have been enough… but feeling this? The way he wanted, even though the words never left his lips, instead swirling in unsung litanies behind his eyes?
It could be enough.
Even if he never understood that the arrow of a cupid could only make humans feel emotions that were true, it could be enough for me.
Anything from him was enough for me as long as he was living and breathing to give it.
Maybe that was selfish, but it didn’t matter. I blamed Fate—the smug asshole—because I knew he always had a hand in things like this.
I sometimes wondered if humans based their stories of Puck, Loki, Mischief, on some iteration of Aiden.
“Do you have anything to eat? Do you even have to eat?” The sound of Cole rustling around in the cabinets drew me to the kitchen.
As soon as we’d entered the apartment, he’d broken off and started going through my things.
I couldn’t really blame him for it, since I’d barely answered any of his questions.
I did wonder if the bare cabinets would give him enough information. When he opened the refrigerator and saw that it was empty, he turned to me with a frown. “You know, I don’t know a lot about what’s going on with me, but I think I probably still need to feed myself.”
“I can get you food.” The thought made something in my chest hum in satisfaction.
“I can order something. Can you eat?” He was already pulling his phone out and using his thumb to swipe across the screen.
“I can. I just… never saw the point to it.” Until the Ardor, it was another useless mechanic that kept humans alive until they no longer needed it.
It wasn’t something I’d considered, though I knew our bodies were designed to function in the exact same fashion as a human.
Anything they could do, a Reaper could do.
We were made based on their mold, from their souls.
It was just the essence of Death that trailed through our veins instead of blood—his power and strength in our chests that made us breathe and function instead of a mortal heart.
Except… I could feel Cole’s heartbeat still thrumming in my chest, slow and steady now that we were safely behind locked doors.
“Okay, you freak. Let me try this again… Do you want me to order enough food for you to have some too?” And then, after a beat, he added, “How do you pay for this place anyway? Does your boss have you on some spooky payroll?” I wondered if he realized he was sounding more curious than angry with his questions.
Had seeing the hounds finally shocked him into believing this was really happening?
The warmth in his tone made me drift forward, close enough I could see that he had a page open on his phone and he was ordering delivery.
“I… it’s not hard to acquire funds when the people I work with aren’t there to contest it.
” It had taken me a few months to figure out exactly who was and wasn’t safe to take money from, and about as long to realize humans were so corrupt, so keen on hiding things from one another that it was far easier than it should have been to figure out ways to take a little for myself every now and then.
One rich woman dying while estranged from her children left me with enough to buy the apartment I was living in.
I’d had to barter a few more favors to have it explained to me, but the witch who’d helped had called in her boon almost immediately.
She’d wanted to be there when her lover passed—not to save them, but to relish the moment.
It seemed a petty favor.
At least Wren had called me to save his soulmate—I could have told him then that it wasn’t Theo’s time. The hounds hadn’t come after them. I’d simply pressed all that darkness back into Theo’s chest and used the smallest burst of Vitality to seal it away.
Cole, though… his soul had left his body more than once.
What I was doing wasn’t following the natural order of anything.
“Do you want to try pizza?” The innocent question was so out of place in the shroud of my dark thoughts, and I couldn’t help the small laugh that bubbled from my chest in response. The sound seemed to take him by surprise.
“I’ll try whatever you want me to.”
Cole’s brows came together like my answer frustrated him, but he still punched some information onto the phone screen before he pocketed it.
“You’re like a moody golden retriever.” When I arched a brow in curiosity, he shook his head and turned his back on me, drifting into the living room so he could start going through the bookshelves I had there. “It’s not a good thing.”
Cole watched me with curious and half-expectant eyes as I picked up the food he’d dropped onto the table in front of me. I’d never bothered trying to eat… but this was exactly why I’d gotten this apartment, wasn’t it? For the furthest reaching dreams of a moment like this.
I took a bite of it, and he leaned in closer.
“Well?”
I wasn’t sure what he wanted.
“It’s… adequate?” It was warm on my tongue. It had what I had to assume was a nice flavor.
Cole frowned like I’d just kicked him.
“You’re a robot.” He sat back in his chair without saying anything else and started to eat. After a few seconds of silence, I followed suit. I could see why humans enjoyed this—not the food, but the act of eating together. It was nice, and there wasn’t any need to fill the silence.
Except Cole swallowed the mouthful he had and leaned in again. “What’s the point of you even having a place like this if you aren’t going to fill it with shit you actually care about?”
At least the pizza in my mouth gave me an excuse not to answer on instinct—it was full of the only thing I cared about now that he was here. Instead, I carefully chewed and came up with a response that wouldn’t overwhelm him.
“Most of the time when Reapers aren’t at work, we rest by the Lake, or in the forest surrounding Death’s domain. We don’t have to sleep or eat… we don’t have to follow any human needs. But I…” I paused, unsure if the answer I’d come up with was any better than confessing my feelings again.
“You?” He obviously wasn’t going to let it go.
“After I met… Caiden. After I found you…” His expression instantly shuttered at the mention of his brother, but it was too late for me to stop now. “I couldn’t stand to stay there. I couldn’t stand to stay away from your world for long. I wanted… more.”
The word more hung between us, the weight of it heavy enough to fill the air. Cole’s tongue darted out to lick his lips before he finally smoothed his expression and settled back in his chair.
“Okay. So… why do Reapers exist at all? You talk about Death like it’s a person. Why don’t they do their own dirty work?”
“Death… is a complicated being. Reapers have always existed to help him, but he walked your world too, once.” It almost felt strange talking about him.
“He was banished to his domain long ago. Any time he walks the human world, chaos follows. There are more things at work to keep the balance than just him.”
Cole’s curiosity burned warmly through the thread connecting us. It made me want to keep talking, even though I was fairly certain Death would be furious if he knew I was spilling his secrets.
“What has the power to control Death?”
“Fate. And I wouldn’t really say control, just… contain.”
“Fate?”
“He’s calling himself Aiden now.” I shrugged.
“He’s capable of controlling most things that happen in your world.
” I had to bite back the knowledge that he was the reason for the Ardor burning through my chest and the red thread between us.
“He can’t exactly keep Death sealed away, but he can certainly…
show his disapproval if he breaks the barrier between worlds. ”
Fate had erected that barrier long before I’d existed—he and Death had been at each other’s throats since before that.
Something about spirits walking from their graves, and the living and dead being able to speak seemed to put Aiden at ill ease.
I was fairly certain that the psychics and those who could see ghosts now were a direct result of when Death used to roam the mortal realm without a care for what humans he touched, what he did to the living.
Once upon a time, he’d raised entire graveyards out of boredom—that was probably when Fate had stepped in.
He and his brothers worked so hard to conceal all their little supernatural beings, cupids and Enmity and everything in between, that it wasn’t a surprise that legends of the dead rising were enough to catch their attention.
“So your boss is just as weird as you are.”
The frankness and near accusation in his tone made me laugh.
“You have no idea. Let’s just say Death and Fate aren’t really beings you’d want to meet.” And gods, I would do everything in my power to make sure that never happened.
Maybe Aiden had a hand in what was going on between us, but Fate was too fickle for me to take a chance.