Chapter One
Kara
Grim’s woods often felt like a prison. The castle was the bars I lived behind.
My family were the enforcers. Alone in my room, I could almost ignore the chaos surrounding the Reapers.
No matter how long I sat on the same white loveseat, the human world was dying.
No matter how many times my room was rebuilt after a dragon attack…
No matter how unchanged it looked… The outside world was shifting, and so were the Reapers.
The era of Reapers might be ending, and I had never lived beyond Grim’s woods.
Movement caught the corner of my eye. I turned toward the floor lamp on the right, then to the left, where the light faded into darkness.
Darkness meant night, right? When the sun left the human world, night came, and people called it dark.
There was nothing terrifying about the night.
Not unless you met something that wanted to make you… its prey.
Yeah, the dark meant something different for me.
My darkness was an entity of its own, and I called it Shadow—because that was all it was.
And it never came out unless I was alone.
The family thought I was crazy as a child when I talked about it, so I learned to stop talking. Shadow preferred that, too.
From the darkened corner, the blackness suddenly stretched out. I bit into my Slim Jim as a gangly, smoky arm morphed from the shadows, then another, until a scrawny figure slipped free. The tall shape stalked closer until it stood before me.
I didn’t have the heart to smile that day. Usually, I teased the thing, but every time I left my room I saw my father, and how his body had started to fade in places. My stomach cramped, and I shook my head as if that could erase the image of his sunken eyes.
An icy feeling hit my arm as Shadow tapped it. When I shrugged away from its touch, it moved to my nightstand, where I kept a pen and notebook for it to use. A minute later, Shadow tossed the notebook in my lap.
On the page, it wrote:
“You don’t acknowledge me?”
I snorted. While it might be a skinny male figure with no features, it was tall and imposing.
“This is my room. You’re a puff of smoke. How about you greet me instead of standing there like a thundercloud?”
Shadow’s form rippled like a black ocean wave standing upright. For a few seconds, its figure became erratic—no longer resembling anything human. That was when I’d triggered some kind of emotion, probably anger. Shadow snatched the notebook from my lap, then tossed it back a minute later.
It wrote:
“When was the last time you ate anything besides Slim Jims?”
I thought about his question and realized it might have been more than a day. Although gluttony was my curse, the sin didn’t care what I consumed—as long as it was something every couple of minutes.
“Yesterday, I think,” I admitted.
Inside the notebook, it wrote:
“Go eat.”
I scrunched my nose. “I don’t feel like going out there right now.”
Shadow rippled again before it wrote:
“Nothing will change, no matter how much you stay in this room. You might as well embrace what’s coming. You won’t be able to hide forever.”
Shadow sure knew how to strike a nerve when it wanted to. That was the problem. The thing knew me after sticking by my side for years. Not forever, though. It abandoned me for many decades, and I never let it forget.
I scoffed and turned my head away. “What am I hiding from?”
I dreaded reading the notebook again when it landed in my lap. Hesitantly, I glanced at the paper.
“Your father’s fate…. And yours.”
The sinking feeling in my stomach worsened. I stood, and the notebook slid to the floor. “You have so little faith in my family.”
Shadow flowed in front of the door, blocking my way.
I arched a brow. “You said I should eat. Well, move.”
Shadow pressed his hand to my throat. I felt a slight pressure, then the cold sweep of his touch drift over my face before moving aside.
Goosebumps pebbled my skin, but my stomach heated.
I hated when it touched me in certain ways, reminding me why I stopped calling it a male and started referring to it as a thing instead.
All I could think about was the short period it spoke to me so long ago…
and how quickly I was abandoned after those few days.
Shadow returned to me the day Harvest began the end of everything. I never mentioned the day it left. If I did, I knew I’d only prove it right. Maybe it was right back then, but I’d never admit it.
As I ventured downstairs, I heard a loud commotion and quickened my steps.
The family was gathered in the ballroom, and my heart tightened when I saw my father.
He looked haggard. So unlike the giant man who once taught me how to save humans, only to never let me help them as much as my siblings did.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Sebastian smirked. “We know where Harvest is.”
Something like hope fluttered in my chest at everyone’s infectious smiles.
“This is huge.”
“With Derrick gone, he can no longer block our powers from finding him,” August explained, pulling Nova close.
“We need to leave now, before he finds another way to hide his location,” Barron added.
My siblings and their mates agreed.
But before I could say a word, Dad’s voice rang out. “I expect everyone to go—except Kitty.”
I felt my face flush as I scowled.
The conversation continued, everyone unbothered by Dad’s announcement.
No one cared that I was being left out. It was normal.
The family always treated me differently.
Honestly, most of the time, I didn’t mind being the baby.
Cursed with gluttony, my power refused to materialize food.
Someone had to feed me or materialize something for me to eat. I never stopped eating.
But, more often, in those days, I resented being the youngest Reaper.
Dad didn’t like me venturing out to do Reaper work like my siblings.
If I helped the family, someone was always with me.
No one questioned Dad’s behavior. None of us ever wondered why I was the only one not allowed to work as a Reaper like the rest of the family. I was the baby, after all.
The world was falling apart. We had finally discovered where Harvest was.
But Dad didn’t want me to leave the woods to help capture him.
He had loosened his rein for a while, letting me join my siblings in battles and fights during the human festival.
But that went up in smoke when Harvest started coming after my sisters.
I’d been locked away again—more so than the others . .
“I’m coming too,” I announced again. That was the fourth time I’d told Dad. I squeezed the Slim Jim in my hand. My mouth watered, and the hunger pangs worsened, but I waited.
Dad shook his head, and my temper flared.
“I’m stronger than all of you,” I said. “I don’t understand why it’s so terrifying every time I leave the woods.”
“Harvest still wants you,” Dad’s voice sounded like thunder when he raised it. He was translucent around his neck and one arm. The dark circles beneath his eyes showed his fatigue, but his voice still carried strength even when his body didn’t.
“We don’t know that,” I muttered. “All we know is he wanted one of us, but seemed to stop trying after Joy was kidnapped.”
Then August’s mate, Nova, spoke, and everything she said sounded absurd. She claimed she knew why Harvest wanted me. It all sounded like nonsense, especially when she mentioned the Devil had a mate. Funny, considering we had those, too, thanks to the curse he’d plagued us with.
“Harvest wanted the Devil’s mate,” Nova went on.
“What?” I couldn’t resist laughing, even as a strange icy chill swept over my arms.
“I’m serious,” Nova said. “I think the angel turned into something else before he could tell Harvest exactly which of you was the Devil’s marked mate. Considering you’re the only one without one, it must be you, Kitty.”
Yada, yada, yada. That’s what I heard.
August grabbed Nova’s hand. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “I thought you guys knew, or I would’ve said something sooner.”
“What Nova said makes sense,” Dad whispered, palming his forehead. “No wonder…”
“No wonder what?” I asked as the floor seemed to spin beneath my boots.
My heart pounded in my ears, and the room suddenly shrank—like I was staring through a microscope.
My dad looked like he’d seen a ghost, but he’d been dealing with those since time began.
Whatever shook him was far worse than silhouettes floating in corners, hiding from the Reapers.
Dad passed out. Luckily, Payne had been helping him stand, so he didn’t fall.
My stomach cramped, but I ignored the hunger. I could hold off for a couple more minutes.
I was still trying to figure out how Nova had strung all those words together. How my name ended up in the same sentence as the Devil’s mate.
“Dad’s not going to survive until the end, is he?” Joy asked, tears pooling in her eyes.
The cramps in my stomach felt more like a sickly churning.
“He’s as old as time. He’s not going anywhere,” my oldest sister, Maureen, added. But the way she looked at Dad seemed fearful.
“Your father didn’t want to worry anyone. And he’d be upset if he saw you getting scared now.” Mom said to Maureen, wiping her eyes. “We knew things were going to get bad. The worst is here.”
“I’ll stay with our parents and keep them safe,” I announced, grabbing Mom’s shoulder, anchoring her, as Payne carried Dad for us. I gritted my teeth and said, “Just capture Harvest for good this time. That’ll be one less monster we have to stop at the end.”