Chapter 20
Sephtis
My vision was all for the man on the ground in front of me—he wasn’t a good person, and all I could think about was the way Vitality had leaked from Cole’s chest. If I hadn’t been there to catch it before it spilled to the ground, I couldn’t imagine what might have happened… but I knew I wouldn’t have cared.
Pulling the thread, the pain he felt, the emotions…
he was burning straight through everything I’d given him over the past few days, and even though I was feeding it back to him as fast as I could, it wasn’t enough.
I’d been so careful, making sure he was so full that he didn’t need to pull anything from me but the Vitality.
And now, all I could see was that darkness inside me, slowly spilling into him. I had to do this.
Like he’d heard my thoughts, he flung himself between me and the prone man on the ground, swaying on the spot where he stood. His face was pale, his hands trembling… but he still put himself between me and a man who deserved death, even if it wasn’t exactly his time.
How could Cole ever believe he wasn’t worth everything?
“If I don’t do this, you’ll leave your body again.
If I don’t do this, the hounds will come.
They’ll find you.” I stepped closer, but he didn’t move.
“I haven’t been going back to Death, Cole.
I haven’t been doing my job. He knows something is wrong.
He knows I’ve broken every rule he’s set in place. The hounds…”
“You can’t keep doing this because of me.”
“For you,” I instantly corrected him. “I’m doing this for you.”
“No.” Cole’s fingers were trembling when he raised them, pressing his hand to the center of my chest. That gentle touch had the power to stop me more than chains or shackles, more than any strength. “You’re not.”
And like they could smell the Vitality still clinging to my fingertips, in the distance, I heard the hounds howl.
“I can’t stop them from coming after you unless he dies.” I could have just moved him, put my hands on his shoulders and pushed him aside… but for some reason, when he was looking at me with his chin up and his green eyes burning, I felt tethered to the spot. “They won’t leave without a prize.”
“You can’t kill someone because of me. You can’t keep doing this shit—you said it yourself. You aren’t supposed to. They’re coming for you because of me.” He paused. “Every time you left, it was for this?”
“Yes.”
Cole’s eyes were wet, unshed tears gathering to make them look glassy.
I wasn’t sure if it was because of the pain, or the guilty knowledge that people had died for him.
It was everything I’d wanted to protect him from, and now he was here, seeing it all while he could barely stand.
The Vitality I’d fed back to him hadn’t been enough—his emotions were too high, and the frayed red edges of the thread had burned through it all.
“You can’t kill him. You have to stop doing this.”
In the distance, the howls were growing closer… and I knew there was only one other thing I could do.
“Then they can have me.”
Cole’s eyes widened, and the shock gave the tears he’d been holding back a chance to fall. The track of liquid spilling down his cheeks just strengthened my resolve.
“What?”
“Just let me give myself to them.” Gods, I meant it.
If it would stop those tears from ever falling again, I meant it.
“If that’s what you really want, let me give myself to them.
” I swallowed hard, my mind flashing over his words…
how he couldn’t do this, how he wanted to hate me.
How none of that mattered, because I still wanted him so much I was willing to do anything to prove it.
To keep him safe. “I don’t know if it will save you, but maybe if I let them rip me apart and they take my broken pieces back to Death, I can plead my case.
I can beg him to spare your life—to take you whole so you can at least be reborn again. ”
“What will happen to you?” The question spilled from his lips in a tone that was a little lost, confused. Torn.
“I don’t know. Reapers can’t die, and I’ve never heard of one of my kind being devoured by the hounds.”
It would probably hurt.
Gods, it would probably hurt. There was every chance that I’d feel every soul they’d ever devoured while they were doing it, if anything that had been happening before had any weight to it. Maybe I deserved it. Maybe I deserved a thousand deaths for doing this to Cole, for tricking him.
For lying to him.
For keeping him alive at the cost of others, without ever letting him have a moment to decide if it was what he’d wanted.
And maybe that was fine. It was something I could live or die with. It was something that would save him.
My eyes flicked to the man on the ground behind him one more time, and I drew a breath. “I’ll go.”
“Sephtis, wait. Why are you doing this?”
The soft smile that crossed my lips was almost painful, and I reached out. My fingers trailed across his chest, to the place where the red thread connected us.
“Because it’s my job.”
I still hadn’t kissed him. Was I going to be unmade without ever kissing him?
I almost leaned in, almost took it… but I knew if I did, I wouldn’t be able to leave.
My hand lifted, and I brushed my thumb slowly over his lower lip instead—the softest touch—before I turned away.
It was the only thing I’d have to sustain me through whatever pain I was about to endure.
If I was going to do this, I had to get out of the house and far enough away from him that the hounds wouldn’t sniff him out after they were done with me. At least I could plead his case to Death, ask him to take his soul whole.
To give him another chance at life after this.
To…
The sound of a gunshot drew me up short—the feel of death made my entire body shudder.
When I turned, Cole was holding the gun, and the man on the ground was groaning as blood blossomed across his chest.
Cole’s face was pale when he looked up at me, and he threw the weapon in his hand to the ground like it burned him.
“What did you just do?”
He looked at me almost helplessly. “You don’t get to kill yourself for me either, you asshole. Fuck, if we’re in this… if we’re really doing this, we’re doing it together.”
“Cole…” I would have kept killing for him without guilt, without hesitation. He didn’t have to do this.
“Do your job, Sephtis.” He glanced at the man on the ground and swayed.
His tears streaked freely down his cheeks now, mingling with the droplets of blood.
“He’s actually dying now, right? And now it’s not just you…
” Cole swayed, falling to his knees. When he raised his fingers, they were stained crimson. “Red, see? Now we’re both monsters.”
When his hands hit the ground, I saw it—dancing all along the tips of his fingers. Little sparks of black.
Little pieces of Death.
If we were both monsters, it was because I’d turned him into one the moment I was too selfish to let him go. I was still too selfish, because the hounds were getting closer, and I couldn’t let them have him.
I fell beside him on the ground and pressed my hand to the gunshot wound on the man’s chest. His soul came easier than the others had, probably because Cole had made a place for it to escape.
When I lifted it into the air and dragged my hand down the middle, splintering it into a dozen broken pieces, Cole shuddered.
He fell back when I scattered those pieces as messily as I could around the room.
The hounds were close, and we weren’t going to get far.
They needed to believe this was what they’d come for.
I leaned down to pull the Vitality hovering on the man’s lips, and Cole caught me by the shoulder.
“I—” His eyes were wide, wet. Wild. The crimson thread between us started to burn the moment he touched me.
Something was happening.
Something was changing.
And it wasn’t me who closed the distance between us. It was Cole who flung himself forward and crashed his mouth against mine as the Vitality I’d been trying to take spilled upward and flooded us both.
He made a low, desperate sound in his throat, and curled his fingers in my hair. Some part of me was faintly aware that he was getting blood on my face, that his fingers smelled like copper, but all thoughts were washed away when he licked at the seam of my mouth and I parted my lips for him.
Cole kissed me like he could find the answers to why his world was falling apart on the back of my tongue, the balm to his pain on the roof of my mouth.
His fingers tugged my hair as he came up on his knees, positioning himself so he was taller than me and tilting my head back for better access as he did it.
I’d kissed more mortals than I could remember, taken life with lips pressed to lips so many times it was as familiar as breathing… but this…
This was the first time I’d truly been kissed. Not just a chaste brush—not the soft acceptance of a grateful soul.
This kiss felt like Cole was trying to burn this moment into eternity so that it would be the only kiss that ever existed—the only one that ever mattered.
The only one I would ever remember.
The sound of howling in the distance was probably the only thing that could have pulled me out of what was happening, and the low grunt of protest that ripped from Cole’s chest as I stood was nearly enough to make me forget again.
“We need to go.” My voice was husky, my body warm—flooding with crimson light. The line between us was burning hotter than anything I’d ever felt, and I faintly remembered in the back of my mind how Wren had said soulmates usually felt compelled to consummate the bond.
Had it been Cole choosing to kill someone or the Vitality shooting between us both that had finally pushed us over the edge—or maybe it was the way we’d touched without acknowledging it, while pretending we hadn’t touched at all, since the thread had formed.
Maybe it was the thread fighting back since Cole had tried to pull it from his chest.
I just knew if he came back, if he pressed his mouth against mine again, the hounds would find us here, and I wasn’t sure that either of us would realize what was happening until it was too late.
“No, come back… I need…” He pressed closer, and the shuddery sound of his breath playing against my neck made me groan. I dropped my head to his and started walking us backward.
“Outside.”
I didn’t know if we’d make it back to my apartment, though that was where we needed to be. The only comfort I had was the knowledge that the overwhelming sensation of the soul scattered into a thousand shards around us was so overpowering it would probably fool them.
Cole opened his mouth, and I didn’t know if he was going to protest. I didn’t know if he was going to damn us both.
My arms twined around him, and I picked him up. This time, his legs wrapped around my waist and his fingers tangled in my hair, and it took every bit of strength I had to walk us forward, out of the house.
We definitely weren’t going to make it to my apartment. The distant howls were coming from that direction.
The best I could do was the lake—the best I could hope was that we could hide in the water while the shredded soul behind us distracted them from their quarry.
And if nothing else, I knew that I’d die feeling something I was fairly certain I’d been waiting since the dawn of eternity to feel.