Every time.
The weight of it crushed my chest, making it impossible to breathe.
I stumbled to my feet, half-blind, and ran for the bathroom. Vomit tore from me until my mouth turned to cotton and my ribs ached from the violence of it. Even after there was nothing left, I heaved again, clawing at the sink for something—anythingto hold on to.
Finally, shaking, I pushed myself upright. Forced myself to move back toward the globe. My hand trembled as I pressed my palm against the glass, throat raw, heart breaking. I gritted the words out like a curse, "Show me all of Death’s memories."
I didn’t watch them all. I couldn’t, I’d seen enough.
Enough to know that when Grim ferried souls, he didn’t kill. Hegentlyplucked the spirit from the body and carried it onward. Sometimes it took coaxing. Sometimes it was long and brutal. He bore the marks of spirits who didn’t go quietly.
As I laid my hands on someone, as I fought for life, Grim moved, not with violence, but with purpose. He would step into the moment, his form almost a shadow against the light, and reach out with a hand as soft as mist. And then he would pluck the wrong soul from the room, the one nearest, the one easiest, as gently as a shepherd gathering a lamb.
No shattered bones. No screams. Just a theft, silent and devastating. A life exchanged because I dared to intervene. When I saved a life, Grim balanced the scales himself. Cold hands, patient and sure, reaching for someone else and taking them away. Of course, he’d have delivered the souls of those that I’d traded, but this wasn’t that. I knew it in my gut.
I sat on the bathroom floor, my body hollow, calling out for Feo, screaming until my voice cracked, until my heart gave out under the weight of the truth.
She came on the third cry, holding me through angry, hopeless tears.
"Was it their time?" I asked her, no greetings, no preamble. Just the one question clawing at my throat.
Feodora’s arms tightened around me. "Everyone's given a length, Astoria," she said softly.
"A thread. I know," I snapped. "But that's not what I asked." I swallowed hard, rubbing my eyes with the back of my shaking hand. "Did he kill them?"
I had asked Grim once, long ago, if he killed.Only when it needs to teach a lesson,he'd said. He had told me the truth all along, but I just refused to hear it.
Feodora pulled back, her expression brittle with sorrow. "You," she admitted. "He made every choice because of you."
I flinched from her, the words carving me open. "No," I resigned. "I won't carry that." I stared at her, daring her to lie to me.
But Feodora only set her lips together in a firm line before speaking the words that shattered my world. "No, Astoria. It wasn't their time."
It broke me as the final stone fell and the flood came. Wild and breathless, I sobbed, my chest tearing itself apart on the cold gray tile. We sat like that for a long time. Time didn't seem real. My mind kept repeating the same three words:not their time, not their time.
Finally, when the tears had dried to silence, I rasped, "Why?"
Feodora didn’t answer right away. Her face had that faraway look again, the one she wore when she was speaking to no one but the dead.
"You'll have to ask him," she said eventually. "There are things I—things I shouldn't say. Things Idon’tknow."
I laughed, bitter and broken. "You think he’ll tell me the truth now?"
She hesitated, then gently tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. "Ask anyway. He owes you that much."
I let my head fall back against the wall. "What if I don't want to hear it?"
"Then you already know the answer," Feodora said. And it hurt worse than the silence.
"Please go," I whispered.
She hugged me but I couldn't return it, and so I sat there hollow as she left me alone with the wreckage. Turns out, I was never the monster. Not even a villain. It wasn’t the curse and it wasn’t some cruel bargain where I stole time from others. No, I had fought to give life, and Death had punished me for it as he stole from the ones I loved most—teaching me grief was a lesson carved into bone.
I set my back against the wall and wrapped my arms around myself, as if I could hold my own body together. As if that would be enough to keep from unraveling.
He lied. But so did I.
Because deep down, Iknew. I’d felt the weight of it—the cost. Every time I brought someone back, the world demanded a balance. I just… looked away. I told myself I was the one paying the price. That guilt was the sacrifice, and I bore it alone.
