Death.
Not metaphorically. Not symbolically. The real thing. The raw, ancient presence of it. Time stopped, because he willed it.
He looked down at Beatrice, my daughter, frozen in my arms, and tilted his head like he couldn’t quite figure her out.
Like she wasn’t supposed to be here. Like she’d confused something in his order.
“Please,” I pleaded. “Not her. Take me. Take me instead.” My voice only just made it past my lips, but he heard it. His gaze shifted to me, and I felt it everywhere—in my bones, in my teeth, behind my eyes.
He studied me and I wondered if I’d said something wrong. As if my plea had offended him. My attention fell to his clenched jaw, a tight line running down his neck. He was strong, his arms and broad chest straining against the simple black button shirt he wore.
“Astoria Devlin Tempest, what have you done?”
What I noticed first was that he knew my name…
The name passed down to me maternally. My mother’s surname. My grandmother's and great-grandmother's surname and so on. Our curse name.Tempest.
He spoke it gently, with reverence and condemnation all the same. I straightened my spine against the chill he sent down it.
What I noticed second was that his body shifted in the moonlight, the edges of him fraying like static. Maybe he couldn’t quite hold the form he currently held, as if one shift of the wind could blow him away.
He laughed when my fear spiked.
“I, of course, know of the Tempest women, with their unruly crimson hair and their skin of ice. Green eyes, crystalline like emeralds, and lips perfectly rosy.”
I froze. Not with magic nor sorcery, but with fear.
“I think you must be my punishment,” he murmured, waving a hand over me and Bea, evaporating the blood and washing the dirt from our gowns.
Finally, I worked up the courage to ask, “Who are you?”
“Not who, Astoria.What?What am I.”
He stood to his full height, holding out his hand to me. I looked him over, from his shiny leather boots to the top of his head, where black waves shimmered under the stars. He wore a simple shirt and trousers. Evening still clung bitterly to New York, hovering on the cusp of summer, yet the cold hadn’t licked his cheeks pink or tinted his nose. It was as if the season had forgotten him altogether.
Hesitantly, I took his outstretched hand, noticing for a moment that his skin was soft and warm, unlike his presence. Rising to my feet, I tried to pull Bea with me, only to feel his arms come under mine, lifting me until I was standing firm on the ground.
“Leave her,” he commanded. “She will wake in moments, and all will return.”
“What are you?” I asked, wrapping my arms around myself.
“What are you?” he countered, his eyes devouring me beneath a quizzical brow. “You are what I am not. I am not what you are.”
His stoicism unnerved me.
“If you are tempest, I am tranquility. You may call me Death.”
It hit me then… I was in trouble.
How long had I believed to be unscathed by the Tempest curse? Yet here I stood, at fifty-four knowing damn well that I’d done the unimaginable. I was a murderer and it seemed even the Devil himself knew it.
The curse had taken it too far.
But hadn't I save my daughter’s life? Brought her back from the dead?
“Death?”
“In the flesh.” He motioned over his body, holding his hand out toward me as if it would comfort me to know that he was corporeal.
