“I forgot him,” he rasped. “On purpose.”
“And now you remember him,” I said. “Because now you can. And that’s okay. And who knows, Grim? Maybe… sometimes the Fated… There’s so much we don’t know about how this all works. And, well, couldn’t it be possible that sometimes the Fated are sent here to live instead of die?”
“Beautiful soul,” Grim said, that skeleton’s hand coming to my cheek.
Grabbing it, I squeezed and pressed it into my skin as more shafts of light broke through, shooting every which way, uncontainable.
“What has happened to you?” he asked. “Are you an angel now?”
I smirked, peering up at him. Then I smiled. “I’m not sure what I am now,” I admitted. “If I’m dead or still alive. A ghost or even, like you say, an angel. The only thing I want to be, though… is yours. Your love. Your fate…”
Grim leaned down, placing his bone forehead to mine. “I’m stuck here.”
“You were,” I whispered. “Come with me, Grim.”
“Where?”
“Home.”
“The Hallowed Halls?” he asked.
“Your place or mine,” I said with a wistful smile. “I’ll totally let you pick.”
“How?” he asked.
“Just hang on to me,” I said, grabbing his hand and wrapping it in mine. “And whatever you do, don’t let go.”
Grim didn’t answer. He did, however, release his hold on the dream scythe, which misted away like all the other elements of this strange realm, this Basin with no true warden or guardian. None butthe one created by each of its tenants, all of whom had, like Grim, sentenced themselves here.
“Hold on,” I repeated, “don’t let go, and believe what I told you. That it wasn’t your fault. That you did the best for him. And… that I love you.”
Grim grabbed me and pulled me to him, crushing me against his skeleton’s frame.
I wrapped my arms around his shoulders again as the last of the Black Basin potion wore off, my essence eating through the darkness, banishing it. Mine at least.
Some invisible force, too strong to fight, lifted me into the air, and because I kept Grim in my grasp, he went with me.
In an instant, we reentered that black nothingness. Instead of free-falling, though, I went sailing backward. This tore us apart.
Almost.
I kept one hand clenched around Grim’s, drawing him after me, with me.
He gripped mine in return even as he peered up at me, those empty sockets seemingly full of uncertainty and fear—fear that he wouldn’t be able to leave with me. That he shouldn’t.
Ultimately, that choice would be up to him.
But me? I would never let go.
But just as the atmosphere began to thin, Grim’s fingers seemed to lose strength.
“Grim,” I said, my voice pulsing through my now-amorphous being. “Seat belt.”
Right away, he unfurled to vapor. But those tendrils, still dark, wrapped and held on to me, clinging to me like vines around a sun-soaked trellis.
Then the two of us, together, broke the surface tension of liquid black, our entangled souls propelled upward, nearly to the pinnacle of the dome in the Basins’ chamber.
I kept my hold on Grim’s soul even as mine began to free-fallagain, hurling back toward Johann, Flora, Pluto, and the body I hoped still breathed.
