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I glared. “Don’t fucking touch me.”
“Why do you look at me as though I’m the villain? Look at the room. Look at the faces. You damned them, not me.”
I barely heard him over the roar in my ears. “You made me your monster! I never meant for any of them to die.”
The group of harbingers behind me all began to laugh, the cacophonous sound snaking through the room until it ignited a fire in my veins. I wasn’t like them, and I never would be.
“Such a temper.” Death clicked his tongue, so cool and collected while I felt like I was falling apart.
You never, ever lose your fight. You never let someone defeat you. You never falter. You stand. You step. You rise.
Ro’s voice rattled in my mind as I thought about the way he’d pursued her. What it must have been like to be the object of his obsession after all these years. An obsession that spanned lifetimes and twisted worlds. The very pit of who he’d become was nothing more than a desperate man, a being, chasing a woman who didn’t want him. I made him weak in my mind. As small as I possibly could, until I stared down into those black eyes with pity. There was only one way forward. I would become his villain. And I would do it silently. Because even gods could fall.
“Feel like a little reunion with mommy dearest?”
He snapped his fingers, and from the shadow of a giant pillar stepped Drexel Vanhoff, pallid skin full of sweat, red hair a mess, and smelling like the piss stain on his pants. He shuffled forward, lifting a key from his neck and holding it out to Death with trembling hands. The man who’d been such a villain had fallen to meek compliance.
“What’s the matter, Maestro?” Death purred, rolling the word. “Cat got your tongue?”
Drexel said nothing, casting his eyes to the floor. I chanced a glance at Orin, to see if he cared about the fall of his uncle, but he hadn’t moved an inch, gripped by the darkness that claimed him. My heart hammered, and my skin crawled. I’d never felt so trapped within my own body, wanting to go to him, to save him, and also biding my time. Still, the invisible bond between us hummed, but only on my end, it seemed.
Without a word, Drexel slunk back to his shadows, and Death held the skeleton key toward me, letting it swing back and forth between us, that fucking smile never leaving his face, begging me to slam a fist into it.
The knife on my belt grew heavy, an urging to pluck it free and bury it into Death’s heart. But he could not die. None here could. The power that made me his in Requiem turned to ash in eternity.
“Take the key, Deyanira. Free your mother.”
I fell into mock compliance, gripping the key and snatching it away before walking to the base of the steps, staring a familiar stranger in the face, and freeing her of the chains around her wrists.
“Be careful,” she mouthed.
No ‘hello’. No ‘nice to meet you’, no hint of emotion. Simply a warning before she glanced over my shoulder, locking eyes with my father once more. How she must have wished she could get to him, just as I pined for Orin, steps away, locked in darkness.
I whipped around, walking back to Death as if I didn’t care for the woman at all, and tossed him the key.
“Say thank you.”
The challenge in his eyes lit me on fire. I couldn’t. Wouldn’t. No matter how much I’d sworn to bring him down. I’d never bend for him, and he knew it. Likely counted on it. So, I stood, chin high, mouth pressed shut as the audience grew restless, uncomfortable. Because who was I to challenge Death?
“Say thank you, Deyanira.”
One steady breath in, one breath out.
He leaned in, so close I could smell decay on him, the truth behind his beauty. “Do not make me look like a fool before our special audience,” he growled into my ear.
A blink. And another.
His breath was fiery hot along my skin, causing my flesh to rise, as the familiar pulse of power radiated from him. But when he reached for my face, to grip my cheeks as he’d always done, his fingers hissed against my skin. Yanking his hand back, he tried to hide what had happened. Tried to keep his composure, though he looked at me in utter shock. It wasn’t his power I’d felt at his proximity. It was mine.
“Orin,” he said, his self-control wavering. “Take our new guests to the pit. Both of them.”
Chapter 61
Ididn’t buckle when Orin descended the steps like a minion and stopped before me. I didn’t waver. I held my chin high and my body rigid, though internally I struggled.
Look at me, I begged him, stroking the end of our bond.
But he did no such thing. I inched away, convinced he would reach for me, that my power would break the trance on contact. But he didn’t move.
