“Liam?” I looked up and met his gaze, startled at the force of what I saw there. Happiness. Longing. Sorrow. Regret. Love. All of it flickering through his ancient blue eyes, completely disarming me.
He was back in his shadow form, an uncanny reminder of the angel of Death in the Tarot card, but he was still Liam. I saw the humanity in his eyes—a depth and nuance that wasn’t there when I’d first met him in this form. I wondered if he’d always carry Liam with him. Always carry our time together.
He sat down in the grass next to me, not too close. He was giving me space. Testing the waters.
“I haven’t captured Jonathan yet,” he said. “He’s eluded me at every turn. If he attacked you here, I…” He trailed off, gazing out across the meadow, no longer looking at me.
“You’re… still tracking him?” I wasn’t sure why that surprised me, but it did.
“I’ve been hunting him since I returned from burning your scroll at the Great Hall of Records, Gray. This is your realm, and Sebastian has granted you temporary freedom. You shouldn’t be kept away by the threats of a madman, or by anyone—or anything—else.”
“I agree, but you didn’t have to—”
“I wanted to. Iwantto.”
We sat in companionable silence, the breeze caressing my skin. After my day at the beach, this felt warm and pleasurable, like the very end of summer when it’s no longer hot and humid, but before the air turns chilly. The scents of lavender and lilacs filled the air, as sweet and clean as I remembered.
“I miss it,” I said. “Being here. Back before I knew about… well, anything, really.”
“That’s the thing about knowledge,” he said. “Once you know a thing, you can’t unknow it. Unless, of course…”
He trailed off, and I knew he was thinking of Darius. The memory eaters.
I ran my hand over the grass beside me, the soft blades tickling my palm. “Well, here’s something I now know. I have three sisters. Also, I’m the witch of prophecy. And my mother tried to murder us when we were babies.”
Liam didn’t say anything.
“I suppose you already knew all that,” I said.
He nodded. I wasn’t surprised, but it still stung. He’d kept so much from me. Not just as Death, but as Liam. As my friend. As a man I was starting to love. He wasstillkeeping things from me. Things about my future. About all the possibilities. Things about my past.
But maybe that was part of what it meant to love someone, too—shielding them from the painful truths. It wasn’t always the best policy, but sometimes, you carried their pain so they wouldn’t have to.
My heart hurt. Being this close to him… I wanted him back in my life. Back in my world. But that could never happen now. He’d failed to pass on the Death mantle to me. Now, that was his eternal calling. His prison.
“Will you seek them?” he asked.
“I already know about Haley,” I said. “But as for the others… How could I not? We’re supposed to band together and unify the covens.” I drew my knees up to my chest. “I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what that would look like. I don’t even know where to start.”
“You’ve already begun, little witch.” Liam smiled, his eyes shining with pride. “You’ve managed to get the upper hand with the Prince of Hell. I’d say that’s a very good start.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. Sebastian had given me an extension, but he could call it back whenever he felt like it. For all intents and purposes, I was living on borrowed time, and a loan from the Prince of hell came with the highest interest rates around.
“I need to ask you something,” I said. “The woman whose soul you were supposed to bring Sebastian—the one who’d bailed on her contract. It was my mother, wasn’t it?”
Liam met my eyes again, his smile fading. If he was uncomfortable with this line of questioning, though, he didn’t show it, and I knew that whatever he said next would be the truth. I couldn’t explain why, but in that moment, it felt like we’d come to a new understanding.
Liam wouldn’t lie to me about this. I knew it in my bones.
“It was,” he finally said. “She made a deal with him many years ago, but when it came time to collect, she vanished.”
“My grandmother says she’s still alive. A fugitive from hell.”
“Oh, Trinity is very much alive. Undetectable, though I’m fairly certain she’s still on the material plane. It’s likely she has powerful allies protecting her.”
“Powerful allies, like who? Who could be that powerful—or that stupid—to harbor a fugitive of hell?”
“If we knew, I’m certain Sebastian would’ve found her by now. There are many factions, Gray. Many groups and subgroups and beings who believe things should be different, and any one of those groups may have been sympathetic to your mother’s cause, especially if they believed she could eventually connect them with the Silversbane heirs.”
