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“I would never do this to someone—” I started.
“You never told me about your bargain with the Fae Queen,” Reaper said.
I let out a vicious snarl. “What about her? You and I also had a bargain.”
“Had I known none of our relationship would be private, perhaps I would not have entered it,” Reaper huffed. “So much for no secrets.”
“Perhaps you never should have entered it when you thought I was a murderous monster!”
He scowled. “I knew you weren’t the moment you escaped the fire dog.”
“What?”
“If you were the gumiho, you would have just transformed to fight it.”
“And you still kept me in the bargain, knowing that?”
He chuckled darkly. “The bargain was perfunctory, seraphim. It didn’t even do anything. Would your Gaksi allow me to hold you in danger? It was just an excuse to keep visiting you.”
“You are… a manipulative devil,” I said, pulling a vortex of power out of him and combining it with my enraged cyclone.
“I am a manipulative devil who is devoted to you!” Reaper roared. “I am heartless. I am diligent. I am stubborn. But don’t you dare claim that I am disloyal when I would tear apart heaven and hell to get to you!”
“Your own duty imprisons you, Reaper,” I countered. “You’re heartless. Powerful. Beneath someone like me. Why trust you? Spend time with you? Do you even know me?” Tears streamed down my face. “I can be more free when I’m away from you than when I’m with you!”
“Do I even know you?” His voice had gone hollow, dark.
“You claim that you came here to be yourself, to be free, to be your own person, yet you are ruled by what others think of you! Is that free?
“And you’re desperately chasing after Fae house, not even because you like the fae, but because you want to please your mother so badly! Is that free?”
“Making bargains with fae to be popular? Pushing away your friend to fit in? You’re worse than heartless! Ninetails may eat out men’s hearts, but you carve them out with a rusty knife.”
“You think you have no power? You made a bargain with the Ice Queen! You killed the Bulgae! Your shadows control the weather and move trees! Top of the class, and you’re still trying to prove you’re above everyone by becoming fae, when you exist far below—you’re an underworld demon descendant!”
“Keep tearing me down,” I spat. “You do not know what it means to be… trapped. To live every day, knowing you can never be yourself and be enough. To be at war with you are to be and who you live to become.”
“I know you better than you know yourself,” Reaper countered. “And I have never pulled you down. I have only ever dragged you, kicking and screaming, up into your own self. I offered you that bargain because I saw a version of you that you could never actualize alone.”
I whirled my shadows closer. “Why would you withhold information?”
“Because I was afraid of your wrath when you found out.” He waved at the incoming storm clouds, at the torrent forming from my emotions. “You are your own worst enemy.”
My heart shattered. Slammed against the walls of my chest in such a painful and agonizing collapse that my blood went aflame. A cyclone erupted, and his head snapped up when I stole the last darkness from him and wrapped it around me.
A breath passed, both of us silent, shaken.
Two large, black wings of smoke and shadow beat behind my back.
I was a seraph, fallen from heaven after all.
I could see my wings in the reflection of his eyes. They were smooth and feathered, like a black swan’s, and they arched up above my head to elegant points.
I panted, muscles in my back flexing, dark magic pounding. My soul felt wicked. Free. Empowered.
My body tensed as I lifted off the ground, wings flapping.
Reaper looked at my flight, at my determination, my magic molding with the last of his to lift me off the ground.
