Prologue #2
“Death comes for us all, Rebel.” He rotated the hilt slowly and watched as Rebellyn stared in wide-eyed fascination at the weapon.
It was small but precisely sharp, with a color so intensely black and vapid that it was more like a void in space.
“I am not exempt from that fate. I’m just harder to kill.
” He returned the blade to its sheath, out of sight from Rebellyn’s stare.
She spent the next several years slowly prying information from Death about the world around her—namely, about the magic that lived in the soil, the air, the ocean, the beasts inhabiting the land.
Death taught her everything he knew without hesitation, because, in his mind, Rebellyn’s fate was sealed.
He’d claim her when the time was right. When he decided the time was right.
Rebellyn drew herself closer day by day, until it wasn’t just pinkies aimlessly grazing but bodies on the verge of intertwining.
And then one evening, when their languid touches grew more insistent, more wanton, Death pulled Rebellyn onto his lap.
Her lips were bruised from kissing, her gaze heated and ready.
Death wanted her like this for the rest of eternity.
So long as she stayed by his side, she could go on living. Forever.
With a slight curl to his lips and nothing but hope in his heart, he asked, “Which path do you pick, my Rebel?”
She’d always been cunning. He assumed she knew what he was offering.
But for all his wisdom and all his magic, he never could have prepared for her answer.
Rebellyn leaned close and pressed her chest to his. Then she slid a sharp blade—a mirror to the one Death had once shown her—deep into his gut. A jagged gasp spilled from his open lips, and something warm and sticky began to seep through his shadowy cloak, coating the ground.
“How?” he gasped. “Why?”
When she looked at him then, she was not the Rebellyn whom Death knew.
She was a cold creature with an animalistic grin and hunger in her stare.
For every day since he first revealed the weapon, she’d stolen a small piece of the island on her way home.
Years and years of shale pried loose from the rocks, hidden in the folds of her skirts, and then finally pressed and melted into a blade.
A weapon she had fashioned with murderous intent and a desire to cheat Death.
“I will not be tied to anyone or anything.” Her words gutted him more than the wound in his stomach. “I’ll take your life if I must. You will not take me, too. The path I choose is yours.”
We could have been forever. His internal plea would never be heard. A burning agony, the kind fueled only by heartbreak and loss, set fire in his bones. Instead, he whispered, “Spare my life, and I’ll spare yours. Walk whichever path you please. You shall be . . .”
For . . . ever.
He swallowed thickly. “You shall be ever living.”
And then he slipped one hand into the folds of his cloak and presented her with a smooth stone of pure moonlight.
He’d never shown it to her before. He’d never talked about it, either.
In fact, he’d only acquired it the night previously, when he decided he wanted to spend his eternity with her.
A gift of love. Of promise. Of life. It illuminated him and all that he was, making it impossible for him to hide within his shadows.
He had wanted to bare himself to her and her alone.
Nevermore.
“Stay within its glow and you will never see me again.” Because she wouldn’t. Not like this. Not open and vulnerable and heartbroken. He felt no pain outside the betrayal burning through his body.
She didn’t hesitate to take the proffered gem, twisting her knife. “And for my kin?”
That question sparked a different kind of rage within Death. He’d meant nothing to her at all. She was already thinking of her next lover. Of future children. His stomach churned with the idea, and bile soured his tongue as he forced his next words out with a hiss.
“Split it. Search for more. All jewels of this nature are now bound by this promise, I swear to you.” Rebellyn smiled as she recognized the thrum of magic filling the cavern with an oppressive, heady weight. He’d, of course, taught her about vows, too. Another thing he’d regret for all his days.
“Good.” She removed her blade and with it came a gush of blood—not red but obsidian and slick like oil—as he fell to the ground.
Rebellyn paused only for a moment to glance at Death.
His chest was tight as he hoped—prayed—she’d change her mind.
She didn’t. She walked away without looking back, leaving Death to stare at the stalactites and the winking insects crawling among the stone.
He wanted to howl, to scream.
Instead, he cried. She’d infected him with a pain that he’d never be able to cure, and he burned for her to feel the same.
As the blood beneath his body neared his face, a single tear slipped from his cheek to collide with the obsidian pool.
It rippled with strange, potent magic that surged through his blood like a shiver.
Death stilled. His wound was already sealing, but the puddle continued to expand.
To thicken. It transformed into a slow-moving sludge with tiny maws that hungrily gnawed at the empty air, until it found an insect that had dared to land too close to the substance.
It coated the tiny creature in black tar and ate away at its exoskeleton, destroying its wings and sapping the poor thing of life.
Its death was swift, its body already rotting at a rapid pace and leaving behind a yellow loam that reeked of decay.
The mindless tar, the blight born of Death’s heartache and rage, continued toward the water’s edge, unperturbed. The insect wasn’t the target. It was simply in the way.
Death’s smile was cold.
Go on, then, Rebellyn. It might take years, decades, for this blight to find you. But it will. Then it will live in your blood and slowly destroy you, but not before you pass it to your kin.
And you will all suffer just like me.