“Go,” I said again. I needed him to leave. I needed him to stay. I needed him to undo all of this so we could avoid this soul-crushing pain and skip to the good part. The falling in love, learning about the universe together part. The kissing part.
“Go,” I repeated.
Liam ignored me. “Now that your soul is trapped here, you are no longer free to accept the mantle of Death I was meant to bestow upon you. You are Sebastian’s possession, and I am meant to continue eternally as the Great Equalizer, Lord of Shadows, Bringer of Transformation. Death.”
Fresh anger welled inside, and I jerked out of his grip, shoving him hard in the chest. “You’ve condemned us both, all because of your stupid ego! You’re supposed to be above all this human crap!”
“I am supposed to be a lot of things, Gray. As are you. Yet we keep defying those expectations at every turn.” The smoldering look in his eyes brought me right back to the beach. Our kiss. The lightning. He said we broke the natural order, and maybe we did.
But in that moment, breaking the natural order had made me whole.
The part of my heart that still cared for him beat harder, and I almost reached for him again. Almost pressed my lips to the hollow of his throat where his shirt opened up, licking the salty taste from his skin. Almost felt a thousand tiny sparks exploding between us.
With every image, every fantasy, my heart started to shift, making room for the possibility of forgiveness even now. Was that what it meant to love someone? To accept their flaws and fuckups, no matter how disastrous, as long as they were willing to bare their soul in front of you? To strip everything down, admit their mistakes, apologize? Mean it? Was it enough? I had no doubts that Liam was sorry. That he’d do anything to take back his actions and heal this great rift he’d opened up between us.
But did that mean I was strong enough to cross that rift?
My heart thought so. My skin, my eyes, my body, all the places that wanted to drink him in thought so.
But in the end, my brain just couldn’t be convinced.
I broke away from his fiery gaze and backed off, folding my arms across my chest to keep him from getting any closer. “What do you want, Liam?”
“There is a final choice for you here, as I mentioned on my arrival. This time, I’m giving you the options equally and honestly, as I should’ve done before.”
“Honestly?” I laughed, but the harshness of it hurt my ears. “Well,honestwould be a good start, coming from you.”
“A good start? No, little witch.” He dropped his voice to a whisper, his face falling into a look of utter devastation. “It’s the end.”
“Of course.” I sighed. I was out of anger, out of rage. Out of patience for his melodramatic declarations. “Just… just tell me, Liam. Get to the point.”
“Option one,” he began, the heaviness of his words pressing on my heart before he’d even finished his sentence. “We concede to this loss. I will return to my eternal work, donning the cloak of shadows for all time, and you… remain.”
“Remain what? Where?”
“Here, Gray. Exactly as you are now, only without my company.” He looked out across the vast emptiness surrounding us, the black sea still wholly unbroken by land or other vessels or even a cloud on the horizon. “This moment, this place, this view, this life, these memories, endlessly haunting you.”
“In other words, live out eternity trapped in the most fucked-up Groundhog Day in the universe?” I shook my head. “Hard pass.”
“You might reconsider, once I’ve shared the rest.”
A tremble rolled through my body, head to toe, but I held it together. “What’s behind lucky door number two?”
“I burn your life scroll, as Sebastian intended from the moment we made our first deal.”
“First. So this is part of a new deal, then?”
“It is. We have no other choice in the matter, Gray. This is his domain.”
“What does he want?” he asked, though I suspected I already knew the answer.
“He’ll allow me to escort your soul back to your body and reunite the two, restoring your life force. You’ll be physically alive and integrated, just as you were before you entered the Shadowrealm.”
“And my magic?”
“Shall be restored as well. Your power will continue to develop—to whatever extent you are allowed to continue your magical training and studies—and you will grow and age and transform as you normally would. Upon your natural death, you’ll… you’ll remain in his possession, per the terms of your original contract.”
I closed my eyes, the last of my hope evaporating. Of course Sebastian had thought of everything.The devil is in the details.For the first time in my life, I was starting to understand what that actually meant.
