Chapter 21 Grim
This whole situation kept getting worse and worse. Worse still?
I kept doing shit I shouldn’t fucking do.
I glared hard through the motes and flotsam as I drifted deep in midnight waters half a world away from where Helena waited for my return, the glow of the souls in my hourglass, clipped to my belt, haloing me in murky, parti-colored light.
What was she doing right now? Cursing me, most likely…
While I didn’t like to think I’d made her my prisoner, there was no denying that detaining her—a delicate way of putting it—was exactly what I was doing.
Was she awake yet? She had to be pissed. More pissed.
She had a right to be.
I hadn’t exactly asked her if she wanted to come to the Netherworld and crash on my couch. Nor had I stuck around to explain myself.
A note hardly counted.
Guilt tore through me—though it warred with the conflicting peace of mind that came with knowing that, at the very least, Helena was out of Cedric’s reach.
No measure of magic would allow him entry into my corner of the Hallowed Halls. And no measure of ingenuity would allow Helena out, either, since the door moved only for me.
While the four luminous souls of those who had lost their lives during that morning’s storm floated above the wreckage of a sunken fishing boat, I surveyed the scattered debris.
In the hours that had passed since the squall, the sea had calmed, and the deep had mostly cleared—not that either storm or lack of visibility would have impeded me or my work if I’d made it here earlier, at the time of death.
My intervention on Helena’s behalf had set my schedule back by several hours—and several souls—however.
Though it could be argued I no longer needed to care half so much about the call of the deceased since I would soon have my title, powers, and soul stripped from me… I still did. The dead did not stop dying without me, and these waters presented a cold and lonely purgatory.
Aside from that, the necessity of carrying on with my duties gave me the excuse I’d desperately needed to leave Helena’s presence.
After making contact with her soul, brushing my darkness against her light, wrapping her warmth with my frigidity and getting singed like that—like I’d dared to touch the fucking sun—I needed distance.
My goal had been to shift her spirit off its axis by the tiniest degree.
So long as I had her soul in my grip, I could physically transport her out of her world and into mine without her presence being detected by one—or all—of The Few.
And a slight loosening of her essence was enough to do the trick without unbinding it from her body.
If altering the fate of a soul was forbidden, an even more egregious crime was to tamper with one directly. Killing Cedric—twice now—almost didn’t count because he had no fate waiting in the hereafter. At least none that he hadn’t subverted through his own hubris and hunger for immortality.
Meddling with Helena’s soul, however, had produced a few unexpected… side effects.
For me.
I drifted forward through the water, drawn by the glow of the souls.
With my free hand, I took hold of the first, and like plucking an apple from a tree, I freed it from its invisible tether.
If left to their own devices for too long, souls separated themselves from their vessels.
Without my intervention—or Flora’s—they would remain anchored to their earthly figures.
Unless the souls jumped to new anchors—places, objects, and sometimes even people.
If a spirit’s desire to remain was strong enough, Flora and I would arrive to find empty vessels.
Sometimes we could locate the renegade spirits, and sometimes they snuck through the cracks.
Either way, the living called those wayward spirits ghosts.
Some ghosts I came across would go with me. A few rare ones… would not.
Tonight’s shipwrecked souls presented no challenge.
I let my scythe hang in the water while, with care, I secured the soul—a red one—in my hourglass. Then I descended to collect the next soul—pink in hue.
That soul would go into the White Basin—same as Helena’s.
Helena’s had been a rare yellow—the same bold shade as daffodils, those little flowers that so defiantly confronted the lingering breath of winter in those first days of spring.
I collected yellow souls perhaps once in a century—they were always Fated, and always, they went to White.
I’d not seen Helena’s color so much as I’d felt it—perceived it—sensing it similarly to how one might taste brightness in food. Yellow might not have a taste, but pineapple did, and Helena’s soul had felt like that, too—sweet in essence but also sharp enough at its core to sting.
I’d enjoyed that faint burn too much, and the resulting steam had not been expected, either.
While Helena’s beauty had been something I’d noted nearly the moment I’d set eyes on her, I hadn’t dwelled on it or even paid her appearance a second thought.
I encountered beautiful women every day, on the hour even, and I’d secured the souls of too many to count.
Helena hadn’t been any different. Not until she’d spoken to me…
That fucking smile was why I was where I was now—why she was where she was.
In my house. On my couch. Safe but still doomed.
That night on the balcony, she hadn’t seen my face. Didn’t know that I looked like every man does when he’s been dead for long enough. Yet she’d still expressed interest in me.
True, she hadn’t realized I was an entity of literal death, but then, for all she’d known, I could have been anyone.
She’d still smiled at me.
Asked me out…
It hadn’t helped, either, that everything she’d said had resonated—that, even if in her mind she’d been joking, so many of her words about who and what I was still rang true.
She had not seen me. But, at the same time, she also had…
I secured the final soul, but I lingered in the depths, my normally empty skull full of brine—and thoughts.
Of her.
And that was why I couldn’t yet bring myself to return to her.
After laying her on the couch, I’d watched her sleep for far too long, my gaze tracing the curve of her cheek, dwelling on the shape of her lips before following the swell of her hip.
I was quite literally a monster, and my thoughts had no business trespassing on the reprehensible territory they now dared to venture into.
I’d taken an oath not to interfere—in any way—with the lives of the living.
Aside from that, my soul, which belonged entirely to my station and to the Hallowed Halls, certainly had no right to yearn for another taste of hers.
Hadn’t I horrified the poor woman enough already?
Our relationship was strictly one of business—because it had to be.
I was not human and had not been for a very long time.
Therefore, I could no longer permit myself to take my human form in her presence—or even at all. Doing so only enticed me to behave like a human—to think like one.
Desire like one.
And neither Helena nor I needed the torment that would bring.
My priority must be to see her soul to safety, whatever that looked like.
And when I returned to my quarters after depositing today’s souls in the Basins, I would do what I must. Because of the threat Cedric posed, I now had to.
I would summon Sir White and confess to my list of crimes directly.
I wasn’t willing to risk the fate of Helena’s soul any more than I already had.
Aside from that, I’d likely fare better after admitting my guilt than waiting for Cedric to accuse me.
Most importantly of all, if I spoke one-on-one with Sir White, I would remove Cedric’s motivation to kill Helena.
That could not save her—just like I could not save her.
But it would ensure Helena herself did not suffer any consequences. Any more consequences.
Helena would still die. That was out of my hands.
In truth, that outcome had never truly been something I held any real capacity to change.
I could still protect her spirit by fessing up and making it clear she had no hand in or influence upon my actions.
Aside from that, I could implicate Cedric before he could incriminate me, which would disqualify him as my replacement.
And hopefully get him booted from the Hallowed Halls as well.
Why, though, even with my own soul on the line, did facing one of The Few still feel easier than facing her again?