Chapter 41
XLI.
brYNN
The shadows wove between them, tendrils that moved with purpose, creating a barrier she hadn't asked for. She could feel their touch against her outstretched hand, substantial enough to push back against her skin.
Even his power was trying to protect her from him.
Or protect him from her.
She should lower her hand. Should step back, rebuild her walls, remember that she'd come here furious and convinced she was nothing special—just the latest in a pattern of mortal women foolish enough to catch the Reaper's eye.
But she'd watched his face as he told her about Elizabeth. Watched centuries of guilt crack open, raw and so painfully genuine that her anger had faltered.
He wasn't a monster incapable of caring. He was someone who'd cared too much, lost everything, and spent lifetimes punishing himself for one moment of weakness.
And he was looking at her now with eyes full of want and terror, like she was simultaneously the thing he needed most and the thing that could destroy him.
She knew that feeling.
Idiot, the survival part of her brain hissed. He just told her that he killed the last woman who got close. And here she was, hand extended, inviting a wolf to feed from her palm.
She didn't lower her hand.
"Trust yourself," she said softly, her fingers hovering inches from his face.
Close enough that she could feel the temperature difference between his skin and the air.
Close enough that she could see the way his pupils had dilated, how badly he wanted to believe her.
"You're not the same person who made that mistake. "
His breathing went ragged. She watched conflict play across his features—the rigid control cracking, desperation surfacing beneath.
His shadows writhed between them, reaching for her even as they pushed her back. Wanting her. Fighting themselves the same way he was fighting himself.
His eyes closed.
Pain crossed his features. For a moment, she thought he might let her touch him.
Might finally trust himself enough to take the risk.
Her heart pounded so hard she could feel it in her throat. Her arm ached from holding it up so long, trembling with the effort, but she refused to lower it.
His shadows stilled. The barrier between them wavered, thinning until she could almost feel the coolness of his skin through the darkness.
His eyes snapped open.
And she saw the moment he made his choice.
The shadows surged upward, impenetrable, and the impact hit her. She staggered back, her outstretched hand meeting nothing but cold, unyielding darkness where his face had been.
"I can't."
Two words. Broken. Final.
"I'm sorry."
She opened her mouth to argue, to plead, to rage. But before she could form a single syllable, he disappeared.
He vanished into shadow and darkness, using his power to flee what terrified him more than any enemy ever could.
Brynn stood frozen, hand still outstretched toward empty air. The garden pressed in around her. The beautiful garden he'd created while convincing himself he was only capable of destruction.
Slowly, she lowered her arm.
Her fingers were trembling.
He ran.
The anger came first. Easier than the hurt threatening to crack her chest open.
"Coward," she whispered to the empty garden.
The word echoed off the stone walls, swallowed by roses that bloomed backward.
She pressed her hands against her eyes, breathing through the tightness in her chest.
She'd let herself believe that maybe—maybe—she was different.
Stupid. She was so stupid.
The tears came without permission, furious and unwanted, and she hated herself for every single one. Hated that she'd let him close enough to hurt her. Hated that even now, standing alone with his rejection ringing in her ears, part of her understood why he'd run.
She wiped her face roughly, pulling herself together with the same grim determination that had gotten her through her parents' deaths, through years on the streets, through every betrayal and loss.
She was good at surviving.
This would be no different.
Brynn looked around the garden one last time. The roses. The fountain. The bench where he'd sat looking so lost before she'd arrived.
A place where even the Reaper could be something other than death.
And he'd fled it rather than let her touch him.
"Coward," she said again, but her voice broke on the word.
She wasn't sure if she was talking about him or herself.