Page 166 of Veil of Death and Shadow

Strong and ferocious as she was, she couldn’t fight off two towering men, especially not in her current state. They pulled her away, her limbs kicking and flailing, as they carried her towards their brigade of cars.

Until it was just me and Agony left in the clearing, her body still at her feet, just as Thorne’s was at mine.

“What happened?” She turned to me, finding her voice again, her eyes widening when they fell on the set of rings at the base of her fingers. Those same eyes shifted up, wild and full of fear as they met mine.

“Fuck.” I pressed my tooth into my bottom lip as I studied her, hardly believing it myself. “I’m so sorry, Agony.”

I should have been excited by the prospect. The old me would have been thrilled. The object of his obsession wasn’t gone forever. A new toy to play with in a world that was always so dark.

But all I felt was a barrage of fear and anger and resentment—because a normal death would have been kinder, freer than the world she would now have to embark on. My kind were ruthless. Parasitic shells. The world’s darkest desires warped and contorted with unabated greed. Our world would break her—strip away everything that lit her up, that made her so goddamn magnetic—until all that was left was a relentless hunger and merciless struggle to survive.

And I’d have a front row seat for the entire process. Would have to watch, nothing more than a bystander, as the girl who’d made me feel alive for the first time maybe ever was sapped of everything that made her who she was.

33

MAREENA

Present

“Kieran?” I asked, my voice strangely hollow as I pointed to the all too familiar body at my feet. My fingers felt heavy, weighted by the new, odd metal caging them. “Am I . . . am I what I think I am?”

His face shifted in surprise, and for a moment he didn’t say anything. Just stared, as if he saw me and yet didn’t.

I took a step towards him, frustrated by his sudden silence. “You literally never shut up. Now is not the time to start. In case you couldn’t tell,” I gestured at my dead body on the ground, “I’m kind of freaking out here, and could really use that snarky voice of yours to clarify that I am not, in fact, what these,” I shoved my ringed hand forward, “suggest that I am. Thorne said it was impossible. That when I died, I’d go into the beyond or—whatever. I don’t know, he very stubbornly refused to get into specifics. But suffice to say, he was very fucking clear that I would not become one of you.” I glared at him, then took another step closer when he continued his silence. “Speak. Saysomething. Anything. Please. I’m literally begging you. Tell me I'm wrong?—”

But he only closed the distance between us and tugged me to him in an embrace that was both warm and comforting. One of his hands wrapped around my waist, holding me close, the other laced its way into my hair, tugging my face against his chest.

He felt . . . strangely warm. And it wasn’t until confronted with the surprising solidity and intensity of his body against mine that I realized how different he’d felt before. How, though corporeal to me, he’d been like a shadow of the man I’d encountered that first night at Incendiary.

After a moment of resistance, I fell into his embrace, molding to him like clay. Tears formed along my waterline as the truth of it all crashed into me like a freight train, but for just a few seconds, I let his presence comfort the swell of overwhelm clawing against my brain.

Sora was gone. I didn’t even get to say goodbye.

And Menace? What would become of him?

Or Frank?

The absolute deluge of grief threatening to suffocate me if I looked at it for another moment became too difficult to linger on, so I took a deep breath of Kieran, letting the familiar mint and morning dew settle around me, grounding me. I wasn’t alone.

Apparently, the dead could in fact breathe, which was an oddly comforting realization. A small piece of this life I could take into the next.

He hadn’t released his hold or moved even a single muscle since pulling me into his embrace, but I tilted my head back, straining to get a look at him.

His eyes were laced with a film of liquid, and wild with shock, the sharp lines of his features rigid and tense.

“Kieran? Are you okay?”

He made a deep sound in the back of his throat, then pressed his nose to my neck, as if he, too, needed to ground himself in scent to prove that I was here.

“You remember me?” he asked, his words muffled against my skin, cracking with emotion at the surface. “Do you—” he cleared his throat, “Do you have all of your memories?”

“I—” Right. Reapers were supposed to wake up detached from their former lives. I searched my thoughts, cataloguing what I did and did not remember, but it proved a futile, useless pursuit. I wouldn’t remember what I couldn’t remember, and while I wasn’t certain that I held onto every single detail of my life, I certainly remembered all of the important ones. The ones I’d carried with me up until my death, at least. “Yes, I think I do.”

He let me pull back from his hug a few inches, compromising by cupping my face in his hands as his eyes searched mine.

Kieran wasn’t an easy person to maintain eye contact with. Besides the fact that his eyes were just obscenely beautiful, there was always the threat that he’d see too much. More than I could see, even. And after safely locking away all the pain and panic I wasn’t ready to deal with right now, I didn’t want anything else tugged to the surface.

“Okay,” he nodded, as if convincing himself of something, “this is going to be difficult, but we’ll figure out how to get you through the trials. How to keep you safe. Whole.” His thumb stroked my cheek, the gesture oddly adept at calming the simmering fear in my gut. “You can’t tell anyone that you can remember your life, okay? That will spell instant death for you. The permanent kind.”

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