Chapter 27 Cole
Cole
I had no idea what Sephtis meant to do when he took my hand and led me from Gethin’s house. This wasn’t really a place to take an idyllic walk. I didn’t want to explore it. I didn’t want to see Caiden’s headstone.
I didn’t want to see any of it.
But he led me deeper into the graveyard, until Gethin’s house was out of sight… and I was starting to wonder if he’d just said what he did to trick me into leaving the grounds so we could go kill someone… when I realized what we were heading toward.
It was an older man, kneeled on the ground and carefully brushing away leaves from a slab of stone.
He looked like the motion hurt, but the tender expression on his face said it was something he’d do a thousand times over… that it was probably something he’d done at least that many times, judging by the worn lettering on the marble.
We were far enough away that the man didn’t see, and I kept my voice hushed enough not to distract him from his mourning when I spoke.
“What are we doing here, Sephtis?” It almost sounded like an accusation. He turned to me without a word, pressing his cool lips to my temple before sliding them to my ear.
“You need to see. Death isn’t always vicious. It’s not cruel. Sometimes it’s a kindness we afford to those who are ready to let go.”
I was still trying to work out what he meant when he let go of my hand and started forward. I’d seen him kill people with rage on his face—I’d seen his eyes go dark and his veins pulse like he was nothing more than a monster.
And now I watched as a soft swirl of black rippled around him.
A cloak.
A hood that didn’t obscure his face as he stepped up to the man still kneeling on the grave.
“You miss her, don’t you?” His voice was deeper than I was used to, a soft rumble that sounded like thunder in the distance. I’d meant to tell him to stop, that I didn’t want to see whatever he was going to show me.
But now I felt frozen to the spot, caught rapt in the interaction unfolding in front of me… because the man didn’t look afraid when he turned his gaze up to meet Sephtis’s.
He looked…
Tired.
Sad.
And…
Relieved.
“Every day. I miss her every day.” The man’s voice was feeble, soft. His face was worn like he’d seen too much sun, too much pain… but I could see laugh lines around his eyes, and how the dark brown still held the softest twinkle of life.
Sephtis held out a hand to him, and the soft upturn of his lips was beautiful. Peaceful.
“She’s waiting for you, you know. I remember her.
” Sephtis’s voice was liquid and warm, wrapping around both of us.
It was almost a lull… and it was impossible to ignore the way the pain on the man’s face spiked and slowly started to drift.
“She was sad to go, but she said your name before she did. She loved you.”
The tears in the old man’s eyes were impossible to miss as he took Sephtis’s hand. “I’ve been so tired lately… so ready to lay my head down and find her.”
“I know,” Sephtis whispered and pulled the man to his feet. One hand came up and cupped his face, and I watched as he lowered his head and pressed his lips gently to wrinkled skin. “You’ll see her soon.”
There was a moment where I thought I saw something happen—a gentle spark of light leaving the body, forming into the figure of a much younger man standing beside Sephtis.
His smile was warm and he stood tall and strong with a crimson thread trailing from his chest and disappearing into the air in front of him.
“Go find her. She’s waiting for you at the shore of the Lake. You’ll be reborn together, ready to have another chance. Another life. Follow your thread.”
And like that, the vision of the man was gone, and the body in Sephtis’s arms went limp.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything but watch as he silently lowered his head and drank down the Vitality still so bright in the body of the man he’d just killed.
Killed.
Sephtis had killed someone, but I couldn’t see a world where it could have been a bad thing. Is this what he did when it wasn’t fucked by the circumstances I’d put him in?
Was this Death when it was kind? Because… fuck.
Fuck, I’d heard those words before.
“I’ve been so tired lately.” It came numbly from my lips as Sephtis carefully lowered the body of the man to the ground beside the grave of his wife. “That’s what Caiden used to say.”
“Cole…” He sounded so gentle when he spoke, that soft whisper the same tone he’d used with the dead man, like he was still trying to help someone move on. To let go. “Death isn’t a punishment. It isn’t always painful. Sometimes the dying are tired, sometimes they’re ready to go.”
I knew what he was trying to say. I knew what he was talking about… but I couldn’t do this.
I wasn’t ready.
“Is she really waiting for him? Will he be able to find her if you don’t take him?
” The thought of that man not seeing his wife after Sephtis had promised was enough to break me, enough to distract me from the other truth he was trying to force me to see.
I swayed, but he was already walking forward to catch me.
He pressed his hand over my chest, and the dizzy sensation I’d felt started to ebb away.
It was replaced with something else, though—the quick fluttering of my heart, the dazed sensation of what I’d just seen. “Is she going to find him?”
“Yes.” He leaned in, tilting my head back.
I thought he was going to kiss me, but he just pressed his forehead to mine.
It was almost more intimate. The soft feel of his breath on my lips, my world swimming in a sea of gold…
It was gossamer threads, breakable and beautiful, trying to stitch all my broken pieces back together with the promise of a world that could be beautiful if I would only let it.
“I don’t have to ferry soulmates. Their threads never break once they’re connected.
They’ll always find each other. In this life. In the next life. In every life.”
His fingers on my chest spasmed, and it felt like I was being broken wide open, left bare and vulnerable in front of all these gravestones, for the entire world to see.
My whole world.
For Sephtis.
“Really?” Was my voice cracking? Were my eyes blurring with tears, or had it started to rain? I wasn’t sure. I just knew his arms around me were the only thing holding me upright.
“Always.” He did lean in then, pressing his mouth to mine to breathe his promise there. “I’ll always find you if you call for me. If you wait for me.”
Wait for him?
“Fuck… I think I dreamed of you before you were ever in my dreams, Sephtis. When I was little… I told Caiden…” My voice broke on the word.
“I told him about you. Fuck, maybe I dreamed you into this world. Maybe I did die in that river and I’m in Heaven.
I don’t know…” It felt so vulnerable, admitting that truth.
I dropped my eyes to the ground, because I wasn’t sure if I could let him see my tears just now.
“Can we go back to the library… please… I…” I couldn’t look at the body beside us either. It wasn’t that it frightened me.
It was the implication that it had been so easy for him.
Almost beautiful.
Letting go.
Taking another step to some future he deserved.
What would it feel like to finally let everything go and just… be?
“Cole.” Sephtis’s voice was a soft ache that beat along my skin like it was trying to find a way to slip beneath and burrow into my bones.
Just him saying my name made things inside me thrum that I couldn’t understand, that it was impossible to ignore.
I couldn’t help but wonder if it had always been impossible, if he’d always been inevitable.
If where we were right now was the only place we could ever have been.
If Fate really was real, then I had to wonder if he was the whole reason we were standing here now, beyond all odds.
“Please,” I whispered, and I wondered if it was the first time I’d said that word to him and really meant it. “Please… can we go back to the library now?”
I wasn’t sure what I was feeling, what I needed.
I just knew I was raw from what I’d seen, that my entire life felt like it was upside down.
Sephtis had shown me obsession, shown me death.
He’d shown me that an entire world of supernatural creatures existed, and that the world could be a scary place…
And somehow, in all of that, I’d never seen until now that death didn’t have to be all those things.
It could be…
Good.
You could be tired. And ready. And it could be okay.
“All right. Come on.” He slid his fingers into mine like it was the most simple thing in the world, like the connection of our hands wasn’t the center point of an entire universe I was only now starting to accept, so raw and flayed open from my emotions that I couldn’t close my eyes to it.
Sephtis was peeling back every bit of armor, every hard place and rough edge, every wall I’d ever put up… and he was doing it with soft touches, with gentle words. With an endless wave of dedication and patience.
He was going to break me apart; he was truly going to kill me.
And for the first time, I realized it might be okay… because as he pulled me through the door of the little library and closed it behind us, I realized he would never actually let me die.
He would let me be born anew, as something less… shattered.
I turned in his arms as soon as the door closed and came up on tiptoes to press my mouth to his. He didn’t fight it, opening up and giving me access. He drank down the sob that tore from my lips, his arms coming around my waist to pull me close to him.
“I hate you.” I whispered against his mouth when I finally pulled back, and the soft upturn of his smile was proof that he heard what I was actually saying.
“I hate the way you make me feel so… whole.” I said the word like it was something dirty, something I shouldn’t be willing to admit.
“I hate that I’ve wanted you since before I knew you. ”
My fingers tangled in his hair as I kept on with my confession, dragging his mouth back to mine so I could kiss him again.
“I hate that you’re so patient with me, that you look at all my broken pieces and you still see a man.”
So much… I hated him so much.
“You can hate me as much as you need.” He murmured the promise against my lips. “For the rest of forever. As long as you’re with me.”
My head dropped to his shoulder, and I couldn’t stop the tears from falling down my cheeks. “I hate that you see me, Sephtis. That you really see me, even though I feel like I can’t see myself anymore.”
Hate.
Hate wasn’t what made me lift my head so I could press my lips against his, and it wasn’t hate that made me wrap my arm around his waist so I could drag him back to the bed. I didn’t understand why I needed to feel close to him, to feel overwhelmed by his touch, by his taste.
I didn’t know why the most vulnerable parts of me seemed to crave him after tragedy, and it didn’t matter.
Because I knew one thing.
As much as I said it, as much as I wanted to mean it.
What I felt wasn’t hate at all.