Chapter 2 Caiden
Caiden
No one had ever looked at me the way the man on the ground was—then again, no one who’d ever looked at me had huge eyes that were mostly black, save for a little ring of nearly luminescent gray.
He was… really pretty.
Maybe the prettiest thing I’d ever seen in life or death… and that was saying something, because I’d met the Reaper who had decided to love my brother in a field of red flowers stretched beneath an endless sky.
But this man… shit, was he a man?
“What are you?” I tried to keep my voice careful and calm, because I could see panic racing along the edge of his expression.
I wondered if he could see my heart beating just as hard, just as fast. This was different.
Until this point, unless it was in a dream, I hadn’t been able to touch anyone.
I’d tried when I’d first come back here, asked for help, watched my hands pass through bodies like I wasn’t here at all.
But he’d felt real, tangible… so warm when I’d pressed my fingertips to his chest.
I wanted to do it again—maybe just to see if I could, maybe to convince myself I still existed—but when I reached out to help him stand, he snarled, recoiling like I was trying to hit him.
With a frown, I kneeled again. It didn’t quite bring me to eye-level with him. He was enormous. I had a feeling he’d tower over me when we both stood.
Maybe that was a good thing.
Maybe it helped that I looked so small compared to him.
His cautious expression softened slightly as I leaned in.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
Fuck, that sounded ridiculous, even to me. I wasn’t going to hurt anyone. I wasn’t even sure what I was doing here. I’d come to the Lake with Sephtis after I’d let go, when I finally knew Cole was going to have someone to take care of him…
And then my brother’s agony had somehow called me into the living world again.
I’d spent my time lingering there, watching Cole as he struggled through pain and guilt I’d never meant to leave him with.
I’d done my best to help him move on. After that, I’d spilled to the edge of the Lake to see Sephtis facing down a tall, pale figure…
And then my hand had touched the shore, and where my fingers dug into the earth, flowers sprang to life.
The blue seemed odd and almost impossible in the dark, near-colorless landscape, and it kept blossoming behind me as I stood.
As I walked.
Something strange was happening—I didn’t want to go back into the water. The thought of it made my stomach twist, my heart race. It was funny… I’d never really been that afraid of dying, but after it had happened, I was afraid to stay dead.
And perhaps that was the strangest thing of all. Even though I knew I wasn’t alive, I could feel my heart beating in a steady, loud thrum. That beat told me I couldn’t stay put, couldn’t stay in place. It wanted something else. It was… searching.
Seeking.
It carried me from the pale forest back to the world of the living, to the last place I’d seen my brother… but he wasn’t there anymore. And I realized as I stood by the graveyard that as much as I wanted to see Cole, that wasn’t exactly… right.
What I was looking for wasn’t there. It had been easy to track him down, and when I’d found him I knew…
as much as I wanted to see Cole, he wasn’t what I was looking for.
I’d brushed my fingers against the ledge of the window and watched flowers blossom beneath my touch…
and then I left, feeling just as empty and restless as I had before.
My feet carried me back to the graveyard, and I lingered on the edge of the woods there.
It took me until the moment my eyes dropped to the erratic pulse of the man kneeling in front of me to realize…
That beat matched my own perfectly, the nervous jump visible and pounding in a steady thump, thump, thump like it was trying to speak to me in morse code.
Like it was trying to tell me the secret that had drawn me from the still waters of the Lake and taken me from what I’d honestly thought was a well-deserved rest. I had no idea why I’d crawled out of the water after I’d helped Sephtis—why I’d made my way back into this world that had been so painful.
I had no idea why I was still here. I didn’t know how the man in front of me could know all the answers, but I couldn’t look away as he finally steadied his breathing and spoke in a deep voice that felt like it brushed against my bones.
“I’m supposed to bring you back to the Lake,” he said, the words coming out more question than statement. Like he realized it too, he bared sharp teeth at me, more animal than human. “You have to come back with me.”
Of course, I’d never seen a human with black eyes, and I’d never seen a human with a tongue that lolled out quite as long as his did when he licked his lips nervously.
“I don’t want to go back.” I didn’t know why, so I really hoped he didn’t ask me. I’d been looking forward to resting after the pain that had ruled my life for the last few years I’d been holding on… I’d craved it.
There was no pain now, but there wasn’t peace either.
There was just… something empty in my chest. No rest… just restlessness.
Something reaching out and telling me it wasn’t time yet.
A thundering beat of a heart that matched the pulse of the man in front of me. Impossible, but… honestly, after everything I’d seen, everything I’d experienced, I wasn’t really the kind of person who believed that anything was impossible anymore.
“Oh. Okay.” As soon as he spoke, his eyes widened like he realized what he’d said.
“I mean… no.” He clenched his fingers, clawed points digging into his palms as he spoke.
When he ducked his head, messy tumbles of white hair streaked with black strands fell into his gaze, hiding the confused furrow of dark brows.
“No… I have to take you back. My Master doesn’t allow souls to wander from the Lake. ”
His Master?
I thought back to that figure that had forced Sephtis beneath the water, the way his presence had been so commanding he was nearly blinding, pale like the moon and terrifying when I’d glimpsed him through the rippling surface.
If that was the thing that governed the Lake, I really didn’t want to be there.
“Please? I don’t want to go.” I said it again, a little slower this time. When I backed up, he spilled forward like my movement had pulled him on strings. That beat of my heart suddenly felt like it was a siren—an alarm screaming that I wasn’t safe. That something was wrong.
His pulse jumped again to match. When he moved this time, it was faster than I could keep track of, faster than I could scramble away.
One minute I was trying to decide if I could get up to run quick enough that I could lose him in the trees, and the next I was flat on my back against the cold earth, and his head was dipping down so I could feel the sharp press of those teeth against my throat.
“Please…” It came out in a soft whimper. “Please, don’t hurt me.”
“I—” He paused, and I felt him shudder above me. “I…” I closed my eyes, waiting for those teeth to clamp around my neck. I wasn’t exactly afraid—I didn’t think I could die again.
But what happened to a spirit when someone tried to kill it? Was there some second layer of death waiting for me? Something worse than the Lake?
Or would I just… cease to exist?
That thought made my heartbeat pick up, and I didn’t miss the way he stiffened before the press of his teeth was replaced with a slow, warm lick.
His tongue. Too long, too hot, but somehow… soothing.
“Why are you afraid?” The whispering rumble rocked through me, pulling an answer from my chest before I could think to lie.
Did I need to lie?
“The water’s cold. I don’t want to drown.”
It wasn’t the reason I’d crawled from the Lake, but it was the reason I hadn’t gone back.
After I’d dragged myself onto the shore, some part of me was certain that if I tried to step foot into that Lake again, I’d get lost in it.
Something about seeing Cole… something about giving Sephtis that petal…
It had changed me.
I was changed… and I didn’t think the water would accept me if I went back to it, even though I’d been longing for it for so long while I was still alive. I wasn’t the same as the rest of the spirits that had swirled around me, at peace and waiting for another chance at life.
I was waiting for something else.
Something outside of that Lake called me to the shore. I didn’t have a place in the water, in that soft, drifting peace. Until I found whatever it was that had lured me out, there wasn’t a way for me to go back. I didn’t know how I knew it, but it was true.
“Souls can’t drown,” he murmured, his voice soft and a little confused. I noticed he wasn’t moving, though, wasn’t shifting away from my neck… and fuck, the sensation of him, broad and huge, warmth pressed against me…
It was the realest thing I’d felt since the last time Cole had hugged me.
“I’ve been drowning my whole life.” The confession spilled easily from my tongue, something I’d never said aloud. I’d never let myself feel it—I’d been too busy making sure I could take care of Cole. “It’s not a surprise it followed me when I died.”
I’d died—I’d been adrift… and now…
“You’re not drowning right now.” The voice above me still sounded so soft, so confused.
Like he wasn’t sure why he said it at all.
The strange thing was, I couldn’t help but agree with him.
It was impossible to feel like I was drowning with the solid weight of him on top of me, heavy like an anchor that should have dragged me down but somehow held my head above the water.
It was impossible to feel anything but him. His heat, the life that seemed to radiate off him. It was impossible to be anything but caught up in the odd sea of his eyes—a halo of gray surrounded by an ocean of black.
“You don’t understand,” I said, shocked that I was still trying to explain myself—shocked that, with the way he was pressed against me, my words seemed to be spilling from my chest like I couldn’t quite help it.
They were confessions I’d done such a good job keeping locked away since the day I learned I was sick, suddenly coming out like he was some cure forcing poison from a wound I’d thought too deep to touch.
“I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know why I couldn’t just…
rest. But ever since I stepped out of that Lake…
” I let my head fall back against the leaves and closed my eyes, feeling the heat and burn of tears trapped behind my lids. “I’ve felt so… untethered.”
There was a pause, and the soft feel of his warm breath on my neck.
In the silence, I could hear the sound of foliage rustling in a gentle wind, the branches clacking together.
In the silence, I could hear the rush of my heartbeat—a heartbeat I shouldn’t have had—echoed by the thundering I felt where the man’s chest was pressed to mine.
In the silence, there was infinity, and the oddly infinite possibility that maybe I wasn’t completely dead, maybe I wasn’t completely lost. If I had a heartbeat, that meant I wasn’t gone.
It was strange, because I could feel it now more than I had when I was alive.
I opened my eyes to find him staring at me, his head slightly cocked, snowy white hair falling into his odd gaze.
Maybe because the heartbeat wasn’t mine. It was his.
Maybe because, for whatever reason, by whatever chance of Fate, I was supposed to be here to hear him when he said his next words.
“I could be your tether… if… if you wanted?”