“So Sebastian wanted you to… to kill me?” I asked. “Like the woman who’d escaped his capture?”
“No. He wanted me to burn your life scroll. As I said, that is a symbolic gesture—it does not literallybringyour death. It merelyrecordsyour death, as far as the natural order is concerned.”
“But I wouldn’t actuallybedead? Justlistedas dead on an old dusty scroll that you would then set on fire?” I closed my eyes and shook my head. Hell’s atmosphere must have been screwing with my logic circuits, because clearly I was missing something. “Liam. If all Sebastian wanted was for you to record my death on paper, why wouldn’t we just do that?”
“It’s so much more complicated and devastating than that, Gray.” He paused, his eyes electrified with pain and guilt. In a voice so low I had to read the words on his lips, he said, “Remember what your death—even on paper—actually means for him.”
The full horror of Liam’s deceit hit me then, all at once, like a thousand glass rainstorms pelting me from all directions. I collapsed onto the deck, all my bones turning to dust. I couldn’t breathe.
Liam really had bargained away my soul. If I’d accepted his offer, I would have become Death. If I’d failed or refused, I would’ve been marked as “dead”, a tiny loophole just big enough for the Prince of Hell to step through.
A loophole just big enough to allow him to collect on my original contract, years—decades—before it was meant to begin.
In exchange for a shot at his own mortal life, Liam had sold me into demonic slavery.
Eight
Gray
Blurred by my tears, three women appeared on the boat behind Liam, dressed in white and carrying their silver swords, just as they had in my dream in the Shadowrealm.
We told you not to follow him,they said.
“Where is my sword?” I asked, nearly delirious with grief. “There are supposed to be four.”
I was vaguely aware of Liam kneeling down on the deck before me, his warm hands wrapping around my calves, his blue eyes scanning my face, searching for signs of life. But I looked past him, reaching instead for the women.
You must seek your own sword,they said, their voices unifying into a single, shadowy echo.Before you no longer have the strength to rise.
They vanished in an instant, leaving their swords behind, suddenly embedded in my chest. Blood leaked from the wounds, soaking my shirt and staining the wooden slats of the boat.
“Do something,” I whispered to Liam.
Tears glittered in his eyes, and he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to my temple, the scent of his skin like summer and the beach and the ocean and everything I’d come to love about him. “I’m trying, little witch. Please let me help you.”
I leaned into his touch, and just as quickly as it had appeared, the dream-haze lifted. I was whole again, my mind focused, the blood no more than a nightmare receding in the dawn.
Liam pulled back, watching me intently. Waiting for me to speak.
“I don’t know what to say to you,” I admitted. “Part of me wants to hate you. The other part can’t imagine letting you go.”
“I understand.” He lowered his eyes, shame coloring his cheeks once again. “I… I’ve utterly failed you.”
“Liam, don’t—”
“In guiding you through your magic without revealing my own secrets,” he pushed on, “I have failed you. In withholding this choice and its ramifications from you, I have failed you. But most of all…” Liam cupped my face, each of his words a struggle that seemed to wring another drop of life from his being. “In falling in love with you, I have failed you. I wanted to keep you whole and unbroken, to hold on to the sweetness I tasted in your kiss, to believe in the fairy tale I saw in your eyes when you looked at me that day on the beach.”
“Then why didn’t you?” I reached up to touch his lips, soft and lush. Tiny sparks danced across his mouth, making my fingertips tingle. “Why?”
“Oh, Gray. Your heart was never mine to claim. That is why these sparks—the lightning—why it followed our every kiss. You and I… We were never supposed to exist in that way. There was no room for that possibility in the natural order. I broke it when I tried to make it so. I brokeyou.”
My heartbeat sputtered, twin halves pounding very opposite rhythms. One half for the new love I’d only just begun to feel for him during our time in the Shadowrealm, fizzy and hopeful and as delicate as lace. The other half for the black rage still coursing through my blood, heating up all over again.
“Say something,” he whispered. Desperate. Lonely.
“I never want to see you again.” I closed my eyes. Apparently, I was a good liar, too. “Go.”
Liam sighed, but he didn’t make a move to leave. “I’m afraid I can’t. Not until I’ve offered you this final choice. It is why I’ve come, Gray.” He got to his feet, pulling me up with him. Grabbing my shoulders tight, he said, “You must hear me out. Please. It is youronlychance at leaving this realm.”
