Page 117 of Reaper's Ruin
Love.
What I felt for him, the emotions surging through me like wildfire burning across a dry prairie were... love.
And now I couldn’t imagine any life, any afterlife, without him.
But you’ll find your door. You’ll move on. That’s how this works.
And the truth was, I didn’t know what I wanted anymore. Of course I wanted to see my mother again. Of course I wanted the peace of knowing what lay beyond that door.
But I also wanted the man sitting several feet away, his back deliberately turned to me. I wanted his touch, his rare smiles, his fierce protection. I wanted to break through the walls he’d built over centuries of solitude.
I wanted the impossible—to have both worlds, both futures.
But only certainty remained: whatever happened next, whatever choices lay before me, nothing would be simple.
Especially now that I realized it wasn’t lust.
Wasn’t some reckless need to feel something—anything—before I vanished.
It was more.
It was real.
It was undeniable.
I’d fallen in love with Death himself.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Rhyker
Two days of riding with barely a pause had taken its toll. My mortal body ached in ways I’d long forgotten—muscles protesting with each stride of the Stormsteed, hands blistered from gripping the rope I’d fashioned as reins. Exhaustion settled in my bones like a weight, dull and constant. A weakness I hadn’t experienced in centuries.
I cursed this fragile form. In the Shadowveil, I needed no rest, felt no hunger or thirst. Death didn’t tire. Death didn’t feel the burning in his lungs or the stiffness in his back.
But now, in this mortal vessel, I felt everything.
Soraya hadn’t complained once, though I knew she must be suffering far worse than I was. I’d ridden into battle countless times in my mortal life, but she had never spent more than a few hours on horseback, if the stories of her world were any indication. Yet she remained straight-backed and watchful, her eyes constantly scanning the horizon behind us.
“We should stop soon,” I said, studying the darkening sky. The Storm Court’s mountains loomed behind us in the distance, their peaks still visible against the dying light.
“I’m fine,” she said, her voice clipped. “We should keep going.”
She’d been like this since Thunderspire—quiet, distant, not looking at me unless she had to.
And gods, it gutted me more than any blade ever could. I told myself it was for the best. I had to believe that. Whatever madnessovertook us in Lord Cassius’s chambers—that storm of hands and mouths and desperation—could never happen again.
It was a mistake.
A beautiful, soul-shattering mistake.
No matter how much holding her in my arms all day shredded my sanity and unraveled my resolve, I fought every second to bury the memories.
The feel of her skin beneath mine.
Her ragged breath in my ear.
Her body meeting mine thrust for thrust, as if we’d been made to break each other open.
