Page 120 of Reaper's Ruin
“Please,” I whispered, not knowing who or what I was begging. The Veil? The universe? Whatever Gods may have existed? Whatever cruel power had brought us together only to tear us apart?
I felt Soraya press against me, her body warm and real and terrified. Her hand squeezed mine, a silent plea.
And then I felt it—a stirring beneath my skin, a cold, familiar power awakening. I reached for it desperately, begging it to respond.
And then, they broke free. My Veilwings, our dark and shadowy saviors.
I rose, ready to go to war to save her, slice through them with lethal precision. But as I saw them through the breaks in the leaves, I also realized there were more than a dozen. Twenty at least.
Could I take them? Likely.
Could she be hurt or killed as I did? Also likely.
And with no idea what would happen to her if she died in this body, I knew I needed another way to keep her safe.
The Shadowveil.
The thought slammed into my mind with blinding clarity. If I could pull us into the Shadowveil, no hunter, no matter how trained, how clever, could find us.
Is it even possible?
I had no idea if I could pull our mortal forms through the veil even with my Veilwings, but I had to try. I opened my hand, my eyes conveying my need for her to come to me. She rose, and I pulled her into my arms, my body heaving a sigh at her closeness, a relief of feeling her against me again. Where she belonged.
“Hold on to me,” I whispered against her hair.
Her arms wrapped around my waist without hesitation, her face pressed against my heart.
I pushed against the veil, my wings straining to slice straight through it while it tried to push me out, refusing to open to my mortal flesh. I was no longer a soul but flesh and blood, and it rejected me as surely as the body rejects a foreign object. Pain lanced through me, white-hot and searing, as I forced my will against the ancient barriers that separated life from death.
It wasn’t supposed to work like this. It didn’t want me. Tried to deny me entrance.
The pain was like a thousand blades tearing through every nerve.
But I didn’t care. I had to get her safe.
Gods help me, I’d defy every law that held this world together if it meant keeping her alive.
“Did you see that? Something moved,” one of the Storm Warriors whispered, and I heard them moving closer.
Silently, I absorbed the agony, holding her against me as I drew on every strength I had, every will inside my body to fight through. The Shadowveil wasn’t meant for mortal flesh, and it fought back, clawing at my skin, ripping me apart nerve by nerve, but I forced the Shadowveil to submit to my will, and I dragged us both through.
I roared internally with the effort, holding Soraya tighter, refusing to let her go as reality tore and shifted around us.
And then—silence.
The endless quiet of the Shadowveil enveloped us, familiar yet strange. We stood in the same forest, but now it was a shadow of itself—colorless, muted, like an old painting faded with time. The trees were ghostly silhouettes, the ground beneath our feet insubstantial.
I looked at Soraya, still clutched against my chest, and froze.
She was no longer wearing the fine dress of the Storm Court. Instead, she stood in the bloodstained nightclothes she’d worn when I’d first found her—tattered and stained with the evidence of her murder. Her skin seemed paler here, almost translucent, and her eyes were wide with wonder and fear but human again. No shine of the fae glamour remained in those beautiful, mortal eyes.
I looked down at my own form, seeing the familiar black leather, the silver fastenings that had been my constant companions for centuries.
Like our mortal bodies had been stripped away in an instant, and once again, we were as we were meant to be.
Death and the ghost he had fallen for.
“Rhyker,” she whispered, her voice echoing strangely in the silence of the Shadowveil. “What happened? Where are we?”
