Chapter 21 Thanatos
All night.
All night, I watched her sleep, listened to her breathe and the rhythm of her heartbeat, and I…couldn’t.
I couldn’t take a blessing from her family. I couldn’t rob her of sunlight dappling through oak trees or the scent of wildflowers carried on a spring breeze. It’s not that the Underworld is not beautiful in all its splendor. It’s just different from the world she knows.
I couldn’t stand in the way of her living her life to the fullest just because she thought she loved me. That was my doing—I didn’t leave her to make any other choice. I told her she was mine and filled her with me until all she could see was me.
That wasn’t fair. But it was as if I needed to prove to myself that she could feel the same as I do. That she could love me despite my affliction.
And yes, being the God of Death is an affliction, an infirmity of the highest order, a heavy shroud of obsidian that burns cold against my shoulders.
I don’t want that for her. So, I pressed my lips to her forehead one last time, whispered ancient words that unwound the threads binding us together, caused by my mark. They would have worn off on their own, but I didn’t want her to have to see them when she looked in the mirror.
My fingers trembled as I traced the air above her sleeping form, watching as our fleeting bond dimmed, flickered, then vanished completely. Even if it wouldn’t fix the ignition of our bondfyre, I hoped that it would give her some relief.
She stirred, her brow furrowing momentarily before smoothing out again.
And with one last look at her, I stepped through the veil, my chest hollow where her heartbeat had once echoed alongside mine.
By now she should awake, maybe to heartache that might fade with time, but to a life unmarked by death’s touch—unsullied by my lechery.
She could never be made for such a foul creature as me.
I remember her smile. It haunts me even in this realm, where shadows bow and darkness parts before my every step. The Underworld feels emptier now, darker somehow; the stars above lack their luster without her.
My subjects sense the change in me; they avert their eyes more quickly, speak in hushed tones that die when I approach.
Only Noir has the gall to speak. “Where is she?”
“Where is…who?” I don’t bother looking up from the dark river that swirls in front of me.
“Don’t fucking play dumb with me, Thanatos,” she hisses.
“What do you want from me, Noir?” I sigh.
Her heels clack against the obsidian stone along the River Styx, each step sending ripples through the dazzling waters.
“Why did you leave her!?” Noir’s voice echoes off the cavernous mountains, sharp as a blade between my ribs.
“Thanatos!” she shrieks, the sound piercing through my skull like a hot needle. “Go back for her!”
I stalk away, my shadow stretching long and distorted across the glittering black stone walkway until I hit the black marble floor within Mortis Hall.
Without a thought, I let every atom of my form dissolve into smoke, reforming within the towering walls of The Noctryn Legeris, where all my ledgers of every essence since the beginning of time lives.
The ancient chamber smells of dust and forgotten souls, its ceiling stretching into the stars above.
Perhaps losing myself among the shelves where centuries sat bound in leather would help me escape the memory of Mackenzie’s gaze.
But my peace lasts mere heartbeats. Noir materializes in a swirl of midnight silk, her golden face tight with fury beneath her crown of raven hair.
“Why can’t you just leave me alone?” I grumble, my fingers leaving frost patterns on the ledger before me.
“Oh, stop it!” she huffs. “We’ve spent millennia together. Why would I start leaving you alone now? Especially when you’re making stupid decisions.”
“You don’t even fucking like her,” I scoff, watching the essences pulse beneath my fingertips like dying stars. “Why are you here pleading her case now?”
“It’s not her that I don’t like.” She sighs, standing close enough that her warm aura mingles with mine.
Her slender fingers trace the air above the glowing essences awaiting collection.
“I hate that with a single word, she could send you back into that dark place that Monroe left you in.” Her hand, smooth as stone, falls on mine.
I look up to find her gaze fixed on me. “I just can’t watch you go through that again. ”
“Well, Monroe was right not to come with me.” I pull my hand away, closing the ledger with a sound like a final breath. I carry it across the room to my ebony desk, where skull-shaped candles burn with blue flame. “What kind of life is this?”
Her footsteps pursue me like the last heartbeats of the dying.
“I am going to be your friend,” she hisses, grabbing my wrist with fingers that burn like brands, “and hold your fucking hand when I tell you this. That smell scorching your skin, the one you’ve been desperately pretending doesn’t exist, that’s bondfyre consuming you alive. ”
“You don’t know that!” I roar, my voice cracking the nearest shelf of soul-ledgers.
“I DON’T KNOW THAT?” She slams both palms against my chest. “I KNOW IT! The walls themselves know it! Every damned soul in this place can smell it on you! It never even sparked with Monroe, and now…” Her voice drops to a venomous whisper.
“Mackenzie is drenched in your essence, abandoned, unmarked. She’ll claw her own skin off trying to make the scent go away. ”
“The scent will fade if we aren’t tethered," I whisper, but frost spreads from my feet across the floor.
“And you would let it?” Her eyes flash molten gold. “Don’t you love her?”
“IT IS BECAUSE I LOVE HER THAT I WOULD LET IT!” My fist shatters through my desk, sending wood and bone fragments exploding across the chamber. The room darkens as my form expands, darkness bleeding from my skin. “LEAVE. NOW. NOIR.”
Noir rolls her eyes as she thrusts her face toward mine, unflinching in the face of my darkness. “Oh, SPARE ME your theatrics!” she snarls, baring teeth that gleam like polished bone. “You think I haven’t seen worse in the millennia we’ve existed? You pathetic, COWARDLY FOOL!”
I flinch, my darkness receding like a wounded animal. Her words strike deeper than any blade could reach.
“I’m protecting her,” I insist, though the conviction in my voice wavers. “What would you have me do? Drag her into eternal darkness? Have her watch as I collect souls day after day, year after year? Watch her wither under the weight of it all?”
Noir’s laugh is bitter, cutting. “You think a girl like Mackenzie would wither like some delicate flower?” She chuckles as if it’s the best joke she’s heard in a while.
“And yet you’ve doomed her to something worse.
A half-life. She’ll never understand why she feels hollow, why she wakes reaching for someone who isn’t there.
” She steps closer, her voice softening dangerously.
“The bondfyre doesn’t just disappear, Thanatos.
It burns. It consumes. And right now, it’s eating her alive while you hide down here, pretending you’re noble and you know it. ”
I turn away, unable to face the truth blazing in her eyes.
“I didn’t mark her fully,” I whisper, as though saying it quietly might make what I’m about to say true. “She’ll recover.”
“You absolute idiot. That’s even worse,” Noir says, her voice dropping to a dangerous whisper.
“You think the mark is just some formality? Some quaint tradition? It’s protection, Thanatos.
It shields her and you. You can’t just go back once you’ve found your mate.
It doesn’t work like that. Do you think you can just erase what the Fates have set in order?
Even a fool such as you must know—you can’t fuck with fate.
” She stalks around me in a slow circle, her silk gown hissing across the floor.
“Without your mark, the bondfyre burns unchecked, consuming everything in its path—both you and her will be two hollow souls, wandering different realms, with the same rage until it burns out, and no one truly knows how long that takes.”
My stomach twists. I know this. Of course I do. But a life with me is far worse. “What would you have me do?”
“What would I—” She scoffs in disbelief. “You’ve left her defenseless against what’s already begun.” Noir stops directly in front of me, her golden face solemn. “And you want to know what I’d have you do?”
“Yes,” I answer solemnly. “You’d have me doom her to a world of darkness, because I want her here with me?”
Noir’s face softens just slightly, the first hint of sympathy I’ve seen from her in centuries.
“You don’t want her here with you, Thanatos.
You need her here with you. You both need each other.
She’ll grow distant from those around her.
Mortals call it depression, but it’s so much more than that—and you, Nethrian gods, I don’t want to think about how unpleasant your presence will be. ”
"You're trying to manipulate me," I whisper, but the words sound false even to my own ears.
“Am I?” Noir gestures at the frost spreading from beneath my feet. “Look at yourself, Thanatos. You’re already feeling it. It has begun.”
I glance down at my hands, noticing for the first time how my skin has taken on a translucent quality rather than its normal pale, as though I’m already becoming a ghost. My essence is fraying at the edges, unraveling like a poorly woven tapestry.
I sink onto my chair, the obsidian seat cold even against my deathly skin. “What have I done?” I whisper, more to myself than to Noir.
“What you always do,” she answers anyway, her voice gentler now. “You convinced yourself that your love is a curse rather than a gift.”
“Just go, Noir.” My voice fractures, each syllable splintering as my thoughts collide like dying stars.
She seizes my shoulders, her fingers digging in until I feel bone might crack.
“ARE YOU INSANE?” she roars, her golden eyes blazing with such fury the air between us shimmers.
“While you wallow in self-pity, she’s clawing at her own mind, one heartbeat away from being STRAPPED TO A BED AND FORCE-FED MEDICATIONS THAT CAN’T POSSIBLY CURE HER! ”
As Noir’s fury rains down, something else pierces through—a voice threading between my thoughts like smoke through a keyhole. My spine goes rigid.
“Noir, shut up.” The words scrape from my throat.
“No! Don’t you fucking tell me to shut up!” Her rage intensifies, but the whisper returns, louder now—a desperate, distant keening that freezes the marrow in my bones.
“NOIR, STOP!” My roar shatters every glass surface in the chamber, plunging us into darkness as the voice becomes a sound branded into my consciousness, and I know who it is instantly—
Mackenzie.