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“You will forget them soon,” he said. “You will probably be put in Amaranthus. That’s heaven, you know. Nirvana. That’s the place everyone wants to go, and you’re lucky enough to warrant it. In Amaranthus, you will want for nothing. You will feel no pain, no sorrow, no grief. You will be happy.”
“And what if I’m not?”
“Then that would mean you’re in Inmost, and you certainly don’t deserve that.”
She shook her head, the tears spilling. “I have so much life left. I’m only twenty-five! I’m just getting started. This can’t bethe end for me, it can’t. There was so much I wanted to do. I wanted to make a difference in the world, I wanted to find my purpose…I wanted to fall in love.”
Tuonen’s chest felt tight at that admission. “I’m sorry.”
She pulled away and turned her back to him. “I will not die,” she said under her breath.
She started running down the length of the ship, and before Tuonen could reach her, she jumped over the side into the River of Shadows.
The water was shockingly cold, which was strange because Aven hadn’t felt any of the falling snow or icy temperatures until that point.
But when she sank under the dark water, it chilled her to the bone.
In some ways, it woke her up.
She was dead. She had died, been hit by a bus crossing the road on the way to work, and for a split second, she saw the vision of her bloody and crumpled body beneath the front of the bus, bystanders gathered around her, yelling.
But that wasn’t enough to stop her. She wasn’t just going to accept her death. She was going to do everything she could to fight it.
If she could escape Tuonen, the Son of Death, if she could get back to where she came from, maybe she could find her way back to the world. After all, it wasn’t like he was transporting aprisoner. She had a feeling everyone else who died never put up a fight.
So she kicked toward the surface until her head broke through.
She gasped for breath, thinking how interesting it was that she was dead and yet still had to go on breathing.
Then she started swimming for shore, as fast as she could go.
There was a splash behind her, and she knew Tuonen had jumped in the river after her, but she had to keep going. She had to try.
She had too much left to live for, even dead.
The shore came quickly, but the snow that gathered on the banks of the river were high. She tried to climb out, but the snow fell in around her. Still, she kept going, pulling herself out of the water, feeling more frozen by the second, then moved as quickly as she could through the packed snow until she was on her feet.
She knew Tuonen was behind her, knew that with his long legs and his strength and the fact that he was an immortal God of sorts, he would catch her soon, but she kept on going, as fast as she possibly could, one foot in front of the other. She didn’t even know if she was running in the right direction; there was only snow as far as she could see. Off in the distance, there seemed to be a herd of white reindeer, only they looked rotted, and she could see their bones through their fur.
Land of the Dead, she thought to herself.This can’t be my future.
Seconds after that thought, she was tackled from behind.
Tuonen pushed her into the snow and then flipped her over on her back, pinning her arms down with his hands. She stared up at him, at his otherworldly face, at the white snowy sky behind him, the way he looked like a black stain against it.
And yet there was something so beautiful about it all, something beautiful about him.
Beauty in death.
Beauty and death.
“What are you doing?” Tuonen snarled at her, and for once, she saw fear in his eyes. “You can’t do that.”
“I’m trying to go back,” she said, struggling for a moment before she realized it was completely useless. He was impossibly strong. “I’m trying to live.”
“You could have died again,” he said, a harsh gleam in his eyes. “If you die again in this land, you will be sent to Oblivion, where you float in darkness for eternity.”
She blinked in shock for a moment, her stomach sinking. “Well I didn’t know that!” she sniped.
