What Death Forgets

1. Icarus

ICARUS

ASHER

T he gates of Lichenmoor were open, but fog obscured what lurked beyond them. A man guarded the gate, arm lifted, finger pointing through the mist.

Was it him ?

A flock of butterflies launched into flight inside Asher’s chest and disappeared as the luxe SUV slowed to a stop in front of a life-sized statue shrouded in scarlet ivy and mottled with moss.

Leather creaked. The gray-haired driver unbuckled his seatbelt and turned around. “This is as far as I’ll take you, Mr. Blakely.”

“I don’t mind paying.” Asher reached into his wallet and pulled out one of four remaining twenty-pound notes. Lugging his clothes and six months’ worth of empty sketchbooks uphill sounded exhausting after a long day of traveling.

“All guests are to walk the remaining distance. His rules.”

Him. His. He. Too big to refer to by given name, like he was a god or something—the God, which was only fitting.

Leviathan Marks might as well have been a god to Asher, and this journey was as much a pilgrimage as a chance to win a prestigious mentorship under the artist he idolized so much he’d turned his body into a living shrine to him.

Never meet your heroes. They’ll only let you down. Asher knew the adage well, but he would risk flying too close to the sun if he could witness a moment of Leviathan’s mastery before he plummeted like Icarus.

“Don’t worry, lad.” The driver smiled, deepening the wrinkles on his face in a way that reminded Asher of a bulldog. “Stick to the road and you’ll be right as rain. Let me help you out.”

“No thanks,” Asher rushed to say. The last thing he wanted was a man well into his sixties standing in the drizzle while he retrieved his bags.

Asher slipped a rain jacket over his lucky black hoodie and pushed the door open, then heaved his oversized duffel bag out.

Salt and decay stung his nose. Waves rumbled somewhere unseen.

“Remember what I said, Mr. Blakely. Mind the tide too. It sneaks up on you.”

Lovely.

The driver tapped the steering wheel with his thumbs. “Speaking of which, I’ll be off now. My wife won’t be happy if I’m trapped here overnight.”

Asher didn’t blame him. Lichenmoor Hall lorded over miles of boggy moors from its perch atop the bluffs. When the tide was high, the ocean swallowed the land around Lichenmoor, cutting it off from the mainland until the tide went out again.

“Good luck!” the man said.

“With what?”

Finding the castle, winning the mentorship, or surviving Leviathan? But the driver had already rolled up his window, and the quiet soccer game on the radio now blasted from the speakers .

Fog swallowed the taillights in seconds, and the engine fading in the distance was the only proof he hadn’t gotten lost inside a daydream.

The back of his neck tingled with awareness. Was someone there? Maybe Leviathan?

His pulse sped as he whipped his gaze over his shoulder to find a monstrous aquamarine eel arcing over the gate, glaring at any who dared enter with rows of sharp, needle-like teeth.

What a warm way for Leviathan to welcome his guests. Shaking off a shiver and his paranoia, he passed through the gate.

“Creepy.”

A blast of briny wind snatched a fistful of leaves from the trees, twirling and tumbling them down the path as if a malevolent force had shown him the way.

Chasing the trail of breadcrumb leaves, Asher hurried up the cobblestone driveway. His vision only ventured a few feet into the fog, and he had no choice but to put faith in the driver’s directions and the castle’s existence, like God or Santa Claus or Leviathan Marks.

Nobody had heard from the aristocratic playboy and celebrity artist in five years, but his reputation was legendary.

Asher had feared him dead, or at least the muse inside of him. He’d already mourned the loss of the greatest artistic genius of the twenty-first century—until he’d received a wax-stamped envelope bearing the Marks family crest.

Leviathan had selected Asher and six other artists to compete for one month at the Marks Family Artists Retreat, the first held since Lucian Marks had died. The prize? Six months as Leviathan’s protégé.

Asher had to win. Learning from Leviathan would be a dream come true, and help relaunch his art career.

His calves burned as the path sloped upward through a tunnel of interlocking trees. An ancient oak groaned, clawing long branches over the path. Widow makers . That’s what his dad called them. Heavy branches that grew too greedy, and broke easily, thirsty for death.

The sun hung lower in the sky. He checked his phone again. Still no service. He’d been walking through a fugue of fog for twenty minutes without a clue whether he headed toward his destiny or his doom.

Anxiety bubbled in his blood. If he couldn’t find the castle before the sun set and high tide swept in, Leviathan would assume he’d asked the driver to take him back to the ferry.

To have his hero believe him a coward and a quitter was a fate far worse than being lost on the moor until the sea dragged him to death.

A rock clattered. Blades of seagrass crunched. Was someone in the fog?

“Who’s there?”

Footsteps clicked on the cobblestone in the staccato of a hurried pace. Asher swirled around, but the mist was so thick, and… Fuck. Now he couldn’t remember which direction to go.

He took a deep breath. Calm down, Asher. If he met the ocean, he’d turn around and go the other way. He trudged off in the direction that felt most right.

“You’re going the wrong way,” a voice called, velvety low and laced with a British accent.

“Who said that?”

Asher spun with stuttering footsteps, thoughts spiraling with his field of vision as he scanned the haze, searching for a silhouette.

The fog grew denser, shifting, coalescing into something darker, more defined, and then a man stepped out onto the road. But not just any man.

Leviathan Marks.