Page 9 of A Waltz with Lord Death
“And if I say no?”
“I am a very patient, very persistent man. There is nowhere you can hide that I can’t find you.” His half-smirk turned her body to ice, and her legs collapsed beneath her. She had no choice but to oblige. Even if her very bones quaked beneath her skin.
Death sat beside her, though he kept several feet separating them. His presence chilled her as if she’d dipped herself in the lake itself.
“I don’t have much time,” he began, staring out over the water. “I will be honest, open, and brief. My closest friend is dead, so to speak. He was Lord Life before a mortal challenged him to a duel and killed him. I believe the only way to save him is to find another Life to take his place, and to heal him.”
The intensity in his eyes billowed outward, smoky shadows radiating from him. She shied away when a shadow crept too close. “Why have you sought me out?”
He turned to meet her gaze, and as if he realized how frightening he looked, the shadows retreated within him, and his eye color returned to a normal gray. “Because of something I saw in you. I want… No, Ineedyou to become Lady Life. Without my other half, the balance of the world will tilt, and everything will die. It is already tilting, and even I cannot stop it.”
He scooted closer until his fingers brushed against hers. A tingling sensation burst through her hand, swirling to the center where he’d caressed her yesterday. She pulled her hand away and clutched it to her heart. Words refused to grace her mouth. He seemed to take her silence as an encouragement to continue.
“Should you accept, I will need a kiss from you.” He paused as if to gauge her reaction. The only reaction she managed was a gawk. “The moment a babe takes its first breath, life begins. The moment someone exhales their last breath, life ends. A kiss is more than a kiss. It’s an exchanging of breaths. A transferring of power.”
Her gaze involuntarily darted to his lips.Kiss…Lord Death?
She shook herself out of it and stood, albeit on shaky legs. “I will never kiss you.”
“Did you not just hear what I said?” He stood as well, keeping his distance again, much to her relief. “Without Life, everything and everyone will die.”
“Then find yourself another Lady Life.”
“Give me a good reason to take my efforts elsewhere.”
Her glare penetrated the thick tension between them. “I will not dally beside a murderer. You killed those young men!” She gestured with an arm in the direction of the baron’s keep.
Death shook his head. “Killed or escorted them into the afterlife, there is no difference to me. People often say I’m cruel, but what would be crueler? To allow those boys to live in the eternal torment of drowning, their bodies exhausted from fighting against the flood, to never find reprieve from their pain? Or for me to fish them out of the water and end their suffering?”
Eyebrows furrowing, she paused, the argument dying on her lips. “But…but you started the flood.”
He raised an eyebrow high. “Have you not noticed all the rain lately? I have a lot of power, but controlling the weather is not one of them. I am a bridge between the mortal world and the afterlife. And after the four people I escorted—”
“Four?” she squeaked. “But there were only three boys.”
True, genuine sorrow entered his expression, and he turned away from her. “The fourth was a baby.”
“No!” she cried. Without another thought, she picked up her skirts and ran into town. Shriveled weeds attempted to trip her, and her wobbling legs nearly collapsed in her haste. She pounded on Radolf’s and Margery’s door.
No answer.
Her heart leaped higher than a fortress wall, and she struggled for breath as she sprinted to the next location, praying they weren’t there.
But as she entered the graveyard to be met by the sound of weeping, her heart toppled in on itself. Margery knelt beside a small grave, Radolf’s arm around her shoulders as he, too, looked stricken with grief.
No…
The dirt was dark, freshly overturned. Meira remained rooted to the spot, able to do nothing more than stare.
Margery turned slightly and cried louder at the sight of her.“We should have listened to you!” she wailed. “My sister delivered him against your warning. This is her fault!”
Radolf’s expression turned murderous, though he didn’t tear his gaze away from the dark soil. The woman’s wailing seemed to grow louder, grating against her ears in the tortuous grief of mourning.
The air stirred beside her, but she didn’t look up. She knew who it was.
“You don’t understand what’s at stake here,” Death said quietly. “Birth is the miracle ofLife. Without Life, there will be no births.”
Meira averted her gaze and turned back the way she’d come. She wanted no part of Death’s scheme. Most of her life, she had looked after herself, and that’s what she would continue to do. There were plenty of other people in the world. He would have no trouble finding someone else.
