Page 87 of Reaper's Ruin
But if I was half-fae, who was my father?
These questions swirled in my mind, dizzying and impossible to answer. Not yet, at least.
Elira’s voice pulled me from my thoughts. “I’ll follow them tonight,” Elira promised, a new determination in her voice. “I’ll find out everything I can about the list, about why they killed us.”
“Thank you,” I said. “For everything you’re doing to help us.”
She smiled, the expression transforming her features. “You’re the first people who’ve seen me since I died. Who’ve talked to me. Who’ve cared what happened to me.” Her voice caught. “I can’t tell you what that means.”
“We’ll help you find peace,” I promised. “Once we know why they killed you—why they killed us both—maybe you can find your door.”
“My door,” she echoed softly. “Do you really think it’spossible?”
Before I could answer, a strange sound filled the air like silk tearing underwater. The space just behind Elira shimmered and split.
A thin line of glowing light fractured the air, jagged and pulsing like a heartbeat. Slowly, it widened, peeling apart the world as if reality itself had been nothing but a veil waiting to be drawn aside. Streaks of soft silver and gold light spilled out through the crack, illuminating her face with a warm, weightless glow.
Everyone stilled. Even Rhyker.
The glowing fracture fluttered at the edges and began to shift. The light folded in on itself, lines sharpening and reshaping until an arched doorway emerged from the glow.
For a moment, I wondered if it was my door—if somehow, learning about the connection between Elira’s death and mine, of identifying our killer, had been enough to grant me peace. But looking at the design of the door, with its ornate carvings and warm golden light, I knew instinctively it wasn’t meant for me.
Elira gasped, recognition flooding her face. “The library,” she whispered. “My favorite place in the castle. The royal library where I spent every spare moment as a child.” Her voice trembled with emotion. “I was always happiest there, lost in stories and histories. This was what the door to it looked like.”
Rhyker’s voice was softer than normal, barely above a whisper as he said. “Doors appear differently for everyone. Usually a door you recognize from a place that brought you happiness.”
Her hands trembled as she reached toward it. “So, is this... is this my door? To the afterlife?”
I nodded, eyes burning with unexpected tears. “It’s for you. You found your way.”
“I’ve been stuck. But... something changed. When you listened. When you promised to help. It gave me hope again. It changed something in me. I’m not afraid anymore. I have peace now.” Eliraturned, searching my face. “Thank you. Both of you. For seeing me. For helping me be more than forgotten.”
Rhyker inclined his head. “You changed your fate. You earned your peace.”
She stepped toward the glowing doorway. Light curled around her form, lifting her hair like a gentle wind. For one final moment, she smiled at us—a smile full of gratitude.
She closed her eyes and stepped through, the door dissolving behind her like mist in the morning sun.
I stood in silence, staring at the empty space where the door had been. A mixture of emotions swept through me—joy for Elira, who had found her peace; hope that someday I would find my own door; and a strange, unexpected dread at the thought of walking away from this realm.
From Rhyker.
It was suddenly, startlingly real. I could get my door at any moment. All I needed was to find the answers that would grant me peace. Apparently Elira only needed to know who’d killed her. For me, it seemed I still needed to know why.
How was I connected to the Storm Court? Why was I targeted for murder? And who was my father? Perhaps Lord Cassius himself? A Realm Walker who’d been in my world twenty-four years earlier, meeting my mother and fathering me? Why would he return decades later to kill his own half-human child?
My stomach churned at the thought of the man who’d driven a dagger into my chest being the father I’d always wondered about. Sometimes I’d make up stories that he was an astronaut exploring new worlds or a firefighter who’d died valiantly saving children from a burning building. My mother had never told me about him, but my mind had always made him into a hero larger than life. Never in my wildest dreams would I have conjured up the idea he could be an evil fae from a different realm who would murder hisown offspring. It caused a surprising ache in my chest wondering if a father, any father, could truly hate their child so much as to kill them as cruelly as he’d slaughtered me.
The questions swirled like the storm outside, dark and electric with possibility, with fear, with a desperate need to know the truth of who I was. I had more questions now than when we’d started.
But standing there, watching a door to the afterlife dissolve before my eyes, I was struck by the realization that part of me didn’t want those answers. Because finding them meant leaving.
It meant saying goodbye to the Reaper who had somehow become my anchor in this strange half-existence.
Because even though I was dead, I’d never felt more alive than I did now. My whole life had been spent on the sidelines, playing it safe, telling myself I’d start truly living soon. After my degree. After establishing my career. After paying off my student loans. Always after.
But I’d never done it. And now, ironically, in death, I was living. Fully. Completely. Even in this borrowed body, I was feeling more—experiencing more—than I ever had in twenty-four years of actual life. I was taking risks. Dancing at balls. Galloping through magical lands. I was confronting assassins. I was kissing Death himself beneath a storm-swept sky.
