“I’ll have her... in time.” I sighed, pulling the cork from the whiskey and pouring a generous glass. “I’ve waited a century. What’s another few decades?”
Day dropped into the chair across from me, his elbows on the table, knuckles resting against his cheek as he stared out at the gray skies. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.
“Yeah,” I muttered, taking a long swallow. “Me too.”
“So that’s it then? You’re just going to let her go?”
Another swig, just enough to ease the tension winding through my jaw. “Indeed.”
“Let her marry some other loser?”
I choked on the drink, a dry laugh catching in my throat. “Gentry’s not a loser.”
“Sure,” Day said, with all the conviction of a man lying through his teeth. “He’s aniceguy. But he’s not you.”
I shot him a look over the rim of my glass, a smirk tugging at my mouth. Since when did Time develop a sense of humor? And worse, when did I start falling for it?
“He’s what she needs,” I said finally. “What can I offer her that is more desirable than a life with an expiration date? What’smore desirable than her own second chance?” She was better off…
Without me.For now.
I was still Death. While I liked to think I wasn’t selfish, my dreams were plagued by my own greed. My treasure, a certainstar.
Eventually, Astoria would hit the dirt the same way all humans did, and I would be there to take her home.
Besides, a few decades to cool down might be best. I’d broken her heart.
It was easy to pretend it did not affect me. Millenia of schooling my emotions and guarding my thoughts had given me the upper hand, but my chest ached and burned all at once. A gaping hole grew every day, a fissure between what I wanted and who I had to be.
There would be no reconciliation.
I made the choice when I stumbled upon Astoria and Beatrice in the street—James climbing out of the car to berate his wife for all that she’d done.
There were laws the universe must honor. I was required to take a life due; Astoria only created a loophole. I could not bear to steal Beatrice from her arms after she just got her back, and James was far too easy a decision.
What I hadn’t anticipated was that Astoria would be such a formidable foe. When life turned against her, she didn’t shatter,she advanced.Quietly. Fiercely. The world was good because she believed it could be.
I cursed the trail of second chances she left behind, but the truth is that they began to fracture something in me. A code. A law. An order I once believed absolute.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped wanting to be her adversary.I wanted to be her ally.Her shield. Her witness.
Her war was relentless, but like all great uprisings, it too had to end. And for ninety-three years, I fought beside her—bled the same as her—just to grant her victory.
It turns out that her curse was as much a curse on love as it was a curse on her tormented ancestry. Alice may have thought she’d gotten the best of her sister by cursing her family line to reconcile with Death, but the laws of the universe was stronger.
Curses often persist because no one dares to look them in the eye, but Astoria had done just that.
I promised that I would help her break her curse, and I’d proven true to my word. Whether Gentry cared to eventually share that we’d worked together to discover the missing pieces, I didn’t care. Because as it turns out, Astoria never needed them. She was perfect the way she was.
Stubborn, defiant, determined, fierce…
The curse wasn’t just punishment. It wasgrief incarnate. Alice and Maggie practiced witchcrafttogether, likely saw each other as soulmates in a world that feared them and then Maggiechosestatus and power, chose the man who mastered much of their pain, over their bond. That betrayal broke something in Alice, but fear is what pushed Maggie toward violence.
The same way grief had broken Astoria, and she dared to defy everything expected of her.
One day she would see the cause behind my actions, and while she now had free will, I did not fear what she would do with the blessing of time.
Aging was a privilege, one she yearned for. It gave me great pleasure to make sure she would finally see the history written in her features—of all who came before her, and the fight they waged against the same curse that plagued her.
