Chapter 49
“Gods answer to the natural world—for they are created and bound by its energy.
Mortals carry that same energy within them, though disconnected.”
- The Old Book
It had been a week of stillness.
My hair had turned stark white.
I hadn’t left my bed once. My bones ached from inactivity, yet the thought of standing felt like lifting a mountain. Each breath rasped from my lungs as if it cost me something.
Every morning, Rowan brought me breakfast.
He barely spoke. He didn’t need to. His silence was steady, like the breeze on a summer day.
He set the tray down gently each time, sometimes brushing my hand, sometimes just sitting with me for a few minutes before leaving again.
He was always watching me as if he were waiting for something—something he didn’t want to happen but couldn’t stop.
Today, I could barely eat more than a few bites. The toast tasted of ash. Even water felt too heavy to swallow.
Rowan sat in the chair beside the bed, his arms resting loosely on his knees. I turned my head on the pillow and caught his gaze.
“Have you been paying attention to the death roll?” My voice came out as a whisper, brittle and raw.
He didn’t answer at first. His jaw tightened, and he looked away—toward the door, toward the floor, anywhere but me.
“How many are left?” I pressed.
He hesitated. “Four.”
My stomach twisted. “Including me?”
His eyes flicked up to mine, and he gave the faintest nod.
The final four. I wanted to laugh, but it would’ve hurt too much. Instead, I closed my eyes and tried to steady the quiver in my chest.
Rowan leaned forward and kissed my forehead. His lips were warm, but the words that followed were ice.
“You won’t have to fight much longer.”
The gentleness of his tone undid me.
I didn’t respond. I didn’t have the strength. Instead, I let the weight of exhaustion pull me under again, drifting back into half-sleep, half-silence, the kind that felt like floating between worlds.
Three soft raps on the door woke me.
I opened my half-crusted eyes to find the room dark, and Rowan gone. Shadows stretched long and unfamiliar along the walls. Only the flicker of light from beneath the hall door offered any anchor to reality.
I stirred only slightly, my body aching with even the smallest shift.
Another knock. Louder this time. Then a voice.
“Mavis.”
I knew that voice. It belonged to Thomas, one of the night sentries. But the way he said my name made the marrow in my bones go cold.
The door creaked open, letting wisps of light trickle in.
“Mavis.”
The voice was wrong now. Higher. Harsher. As if someone were pulling it from a torn throat.
The hair on the back of my neck lifted as my skin prickled.
Light footsteps padded closer until a figure stood at the foot of my bed, fingers locked on the frame. It was Thomas. His posture was rigid, trembling with some inner strain.
His face slackened. And then, that smile. Sharp. Too many teeth, which seemed to glow in the dim light.
His eyes went white.
No pupils. No iris. Just a blinding, moonlit void.
His smile spread wider across his face, almost inhuman.
I froze at the sight of it.
My breath caught in my chest. My hand fisted the blanket instinctively.
“W-what do you want?” I stammered.
He tilted his head.
“It’s not what I want. Though I have been waiting… such a long time.”
“Who are you?”
Because whatever it was, it was not Thomas anymore.
“You know my name.” The voice now came from beneath the skin, not from Thomas’ mouth, but from somewhere far older than the body it wore. “You can feel it.”
I did. Somehow, I knew.
It rose in me like an instinct, like a memory that had never belonged to me but lived in my bones.
“Elspeth—The Courier of Death,” I breathed.
Her smile widened. “In the flesh.”
“So I’m to die, then.” My voice was flat. Empty. “You’re here to kill me?”
“I am but the messenger,” she crooned. “Fate will take you all on its own.”
“How much time do I have?”
“Not long,” she said, with a chuckle like shattered glass. “You’ll be with Anam before the sun rises.”
A cold sweat coated my skin. My mouth was dry, but I forced the next question out anyway. “Why are you here?”
She cocked her head. “I wanted to meet you. I’ve been watching you for quite some time.”
“Why?”
“You avoid death like a flame dodges the wind,” she said, eyes narrowing with something like admiration—or hunger. “Peculiar, isn’t it? Haven’t you ever wondered why?”
I swallowed hard, the dryness of my throat scratching like sandpaper. “I’ve avoided it before. I can do it again.”
Elspeth’s head twitched. Her smile faltered.
“Not this time,” she said, suddenly sharper. “Not even you are powerful enough to evade what’s coming. Your name belongs to Him now—and He always comes to collect.”
The air grew heavier. My limbs went numb. Her words rang like a bell inside my skull.
The glow in her eyes dimmed, the blinding white fading back to Thomas’ hazel.
Thomas blinked, disoriented. He was back in control, and his body sagged as if cut from an invisible string. He looked down at his hands as if he didn’t recognize them. Then his eyes flicked to mine; confusion and fear shone there.
“Mavis?” he asked hoarsely.
I said nothing.
I couldn’t.
Because the weight of her words sat in my chest like stone.
You’ll be with Anam before the sun rises.
And for the first time, I truly wondered… not if I was ready to die—but if I were ready to be forgotten.
What if this were it? What if all the pain, all the fighting, all the fractured hope led me here…
Alone. In a borrowed bed. Waiting to vanish like morning mist.