25. Chapter Twenty-Five
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
MAVEN
Something’s crushing me.
A blanket? I think. A heavy one, tucked around me in such a way that I’m now a burrito.
And the smell…soft and clean. The air itself possesses a gentle quality as it caresses my face and the eyes I haven’t yet opened. My brain runs through the last coordinates of my body, then all the places I’ve ever been when none of those make sense. Where am I? And why do I feel so calm?
Gentle light greets my eyes as they shoot open.
I jumped off a building. Nothing hurts…there was such intense pain when I hit the ground, physically and mentally.
Then nothing. Now, there’s no aching, no cracked lips—well, no cracked anything.
My body feels like it just woke from the best sleep its ever had, which is honestly rude, given the circumstances.
So, dead then. I’m dead.
With careful movement, I sit up.
The room I’m in is enormous. It reminds me of how castles appear in movies, but it’s not showy in the same way—there’s no gold or jewels, nothing that screams royal and egotistical at me.
But the ceiling reaches so high that the tip of it is swallowed by shadow.
The walls are dark stone gray, cool-toned, with pale veins running through them, partially hidden by a shelf and art.
The bed I’m in could sleep five people and a horse. A huge cloud would be the best description of it.
There’s a window across from me, arched at the top, and beyond it the sky is the color of post-sunset—such a specific blue-violet that photographers would kill to capture.
It’s beautiful. Reminds me of the times during high school when I’d sit next to the lake and wait for this exact moment, knowing I’d at least get a small amount of happiness for the day before going back to whatever foster house I was in at the time.
A silky texture catches my attention, and I look to my abdomen. I’m still wearing the nightgown I had on when I jumped. Not a scratch or smear of dirt on it, though. Strange.
My arms are next, and I turn them over slowly, palms up. The scars remain, but it’s interesting that there’s no new ones.
I don’t know what I expected. Some kind of factory reset, maybe—a clean version of me that developed proper self-awareness as a child and hadn’t yet marred my body from my weak mental state.
But no. The thin silver ladders are exactly where I left them on the inside of my left forearm, along with the shiny round burn near my elbow, and the mess of scars on my thighs.
Okay, I think. So I brought myself with me. Wherever this is.
I’m having a hard time believing this is my next life, mostly because I wouldn’t remember everything that happened in the previous one. Wouldn’t be haunted by how I died.
Nor would I wake in a new life as an adult.
Scratching the base of my throat, I survey the rest of the room and gasp when I notice a jar on the nightstand. My jar of dead flowers…what is going on?
Maybe I lived after my fall and I’ve been in a coma for so long that my wounds healed and now I’m in the psych ward. Just what Helen wanted. She must be so happy that I’d finally given her a reason to commit me.
At least she sent me to a really nice facility.
Something shuffles on the other side of the door before the handle turns, and my mouth opens before I can stop it. “Dr. Voss, I really don’t think—” My words are cut off when a man steps into the room, a warm smile gracing his features.
I’ve never seen anyone smile like that in my direction.
Curly, black locks cover his forehead as dark eyes scan my face. My heart stutters. I know exactly who this is, even with never having seen his face.
His face…it’s beautiful. He’s beautiful.
The veil no longer covers an inch of him—he’s just here, in the doorway, wearing cream-colored linen clothing, and looking like the most casual, happy man.
It has to be him. I know that jaw. I sat on a freezing roof and mapped it with my fingertips—the sharp turn of it under his ear, the strong cut of the bone, the way it narrows at the chin. I know that nose, the set of his brows, the slight arrogance on his smirking lips.
I’m no longer breathing, but I don’t dare hope that I’m exactly where I wanted to be.
And his eyes…fuck, his eyes are dark. So dark the edge of the pupil is impossible to discern, which does not lessen the warmth they radiate.
“Ash,” I say. My voice comes out gritty, like I’ve been screaming, which—yeah, I probably was.
“Hello, my flower.”
That delicious voice. Fluttering builds in my abdomen as I allow myself to consider that my plan worked. He crosses to the bed in three strides and sits on the edge, close enough that his knee presses the mattress against my thigh, as his hand hovers next to my cheek without touching.
I nod to his unasked question before caressing my face against his palm.
A low, rough sound leaves his throat, flipping my stomach upside-down, and his thumb strokes the bone under my eye. His skin is so warm and solid. It’s perfect.
Still, I need to know before I sink into this happiness.
“Am I dead?” I ask.
“Your mortal body is, yes.”
I blink. “You could’ve eased into that.”
“You’ve never wanted me to ease into anything.” His mouth twitches. “You’d have called me a coward for it. You did once—told me I circled the truth like a dog readying its nap spot.”
I can’t help but laugh at that. “That sounds like me.”
“It is you.”
My hand covers his as my eyes close. I’m not ready to lose the contact, and I’ve stopped pretending otherwise. “So this is…your world?”
“This is our world and home.” His thumb continues stroking my cheek. “You are in my palace, in the room I have rebuilt hundreds of times because I could never decide which version of you would want which decor.”
“You—” I stop. “You said you changed it, but hundreds of times? That’s crazy!”
“Three hundred, if we count the tiles in the bathroom.”
My eyes bulge. “Ash.”
“I was patient, yes, but I was not idle, Maven. You have questions. Ask them, and I will answer every one.”
“That’ll take quite a while, I think.”
“Good. I enjoy nothing more than talking with you.”
So with a deep breath, I ask. And I sit there in a bed the size of a garage, with his hand curled around mine and the twilight not moving in the window, and I make him explain everything.
He tells me that he could not take me the other times I died when I questioned why now.
There were rules, and he needed me to say yes before I died.
I would’ve had to kill myself no matter what, but it was the intention behind it that kept him from claiming me.
He tried everything a god can try that isn’t force to get me here, and nothing worked.
He tells me that when he left—when I screamed at him to go—he went only because I asked, and because he had never once refused me anything I truly wanted, even when what I wanted was to be rid of him.
“You didn’t come back, though.” My throat closes around the accusation. “I called for you so many times. I laid in my apartment and said your name for days—”
The tightening of his jaw is the only reaction he gives. “I heard you. Every time. I heard you in the park and the church, and on the street where you shouted for me like a madwoman.”
“Then why—”
“Because if I had come, I feared we’d start the cycle over and you’d end up in a new life.
” His voice drops along with his eyes. “If I had appeared, you might have said yes at first, but that version of you was indecisive, just like others before. I thought to try something new this time and remove myself entirely. And when you jumped from that roof again—well, I was with you the entire time. I grabbed your soul the moment it detached from your mortal body.”
Ice crawls up the back of my neck. “You didn’t have to let me jump without telling me what would happen. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again!”
“I let you choose for yourself, Maven. Do you understand what it cost me to stand aside while I listened to you fall? Heard your skull crack open as pieces of your flesh scattered the street?”
Something breaks in my chest, sudden and hot, and my hands grab the front of his shirt without me telling them to. “You were there.” Regardless of his lack of warning, he was there for me the entire time. I was never truly alone.
“I was there for all of it. I was mere feet from you and could not move.” His forehead drops to mine as he exhales a shaking breath.
“You said my name. My true name, flower; and you said you loved me and then finally, you said yes. It was both the worst and best moment of my terribly long existence.”
I’m crying. I don’t know when that started.
“I’m sorry,” I manage. “I sent you away, and I meant it for about ten seconds, and then I—”
“Do not.” His thumb catches a tear before it slips over my jaw.
He wipes it away with such gentleness that I sob.
“You have apologized too many times already. You are done. There is nothing left for you to be sorry for, and I will not tolerate you feeling as though you did something wrong.” He finishes the sentence in a harsh tone, making me laugh.
“That’s the nicest threat anyone’s ever made.”
“It was a promise.”
“Sounded like a threat.”
“You are exhausting.” He grins against my temple before pressing a light kiss there. “I’ve missed you.”
After presenting me with a luxurious meal, he shows me around the palace.
It takes hours. The halls extend forever, all dark stone and dim, tranquil light, and more windows than I can count. I nearly cry when he presents a wall of shelves with an endless amount of books and a rolling ladder. It smelled incredible. I’ll be spending much of my time in that room.
He showed me through his bathroom with a tub sunk into the floor, deep enough to drown in, which he mentions with a completely straight face and then adds, “You cannot. I’ve tried just to be safe.”
I stare at him. “You’ve—”
“Yes, you will not be able to drown, or die for that matter. I’ve made sure of it.”
“You’re insane.” A grin is his only response.