Page 68 of A Bride for the Winter King
She saysdeath, but she meansme. Like so many others before her, she believes I’ve got the final say in all of this, and her eyes flick up to meet mine.
“And you’re surprised, so sparing me wasn’t your doing…” The veiled betrayal in her voice rakes my insides. “Would you have collected my soul yourself, if I had died?”
“No.”
She arches a brow, her eyes narrow and unyielding. “So I’m not worthy of the reaper king?”
“Your worth has nothing to do with it.”
“You leave the dirty work to your minions, then?”
Maybe an argument is exactly what I need to stop staring at her. “Usually, yes,” I answer in jest, leaning in to her prejudice. “The few odd souls that call to me are typically those of Fae monarchs, but I could make an exception for you. In fact, I have some free time later today.”
Her mouth hangs open for a second. “I didn’t mean— How can you speak so plainly about death?”
“Our entire lives are about rushing from place to place until we get enough wisdom to slow down. Death is the final destination where we finally stop running. Without it, there’d be no life.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You’re the reaper king.” She chews on her bottom lip for a moment before her eyes bore into me once more. “So it’s true? You can’t die?”
Sadness laces her words, like my title and immortality create a chasm between us that could never be crossed.
“I can’t bekilled, but I’ll still die someday, crushed under the weight of a magic I can’t bear to carry anymore,” I explain. “Which makes what you did on that dragon incredibly useless.”
“So you would have survived? Entombed in the snow?”
“Yes. But ice takes without giving back. If Sara hadn’t found me in time, I would have left the rest of my humanity out there.”
She pushes off the wall and inches forward until she’s right in front of me, in the deepest part of the pool. “What does that mean? Would you have become an ice giant like Chenu?”
My ears perk up. “You met Chenu?”
She nods. “What is he, exactly?” Water licks her chin, her head bobbing up and down because she’s not tall enough to touch the bottom. I bury my hands in the thick coat of sediment filling the space between the rocks not to reach out and pick her up.She’d wrap those smooth, sexy legs around my midriff…
Don’t go there.
Just keep talking. It’s easier when you talk.
“Some souls aren’t collected in time, or they run from the reapers and become lost. When that happens, it’s the Sun Court’s job to guide them toward the light. The soul catchers have until Alaveen, the festival of light, to bottle up the lost souls in lanterns and send them to the gods,” I explain. “The Sun Court boasts that it always catches them all, but that’s simply not true. A soul that remains earth-bound beyond Alaveen…darkens. If it was mortal, it wanders the world of the living, invisible, until it fades away, but a few immortal souls haunting the Fae continent have grown powerful and deadly. The mostfamous of such spirits is the Dark One. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.”
She inches closer and stands on the tip of her toes to reach the bottom of the basin. “The evil spirit that haunts Lorntre Hollow was once flesh and bones?”
“Yes. The blackest thorn in my father’s immaculate reputation. The Dark One has grown so powerful that even the King of Light can’t destroy him. As for Chenu, he served my predecessor for centuries as a powerful oracle. But kings hate to be told the truth about their futures, and so the old Winter King banished him and his brother to the mountains…”
“We all know how that turned out,” Lori cracks, Chenu’s infamous bout of cannibalism a punchline of every worthwhile Fae campfire story.
The corner of my mouth quirks. “He’s been haunting the Frost Peaks ever since, but he doesn’t have enough malice in him to feed on souls beyond the occasional meal he needs to survive. His meager appetite has allowed him to evade the Sun Court’s catchers for centuries.”
“Why do the stories hide the fact that he used to be a lost soul?” she asks.
“Can you imagine what would happen if all the immortals in this realm knew it was possible to cheat death? Spirits like Chenu and the Dark One are the exception, and it needs to stay that way. Lost souls threaten the balance between life and death, and the very survival of our magic. The more lost souls there are in any given year, the more droughts are born into the Fae population, and for each soul we do not return to the gods as we should, a hundred seeds wither and die in the womb.”
“That’s a terrifying thought…” Her eyes narrow. “What about the Gray Man?”
My mind flashes to the wispy gray cloak of my faceless assailant.The Gray Manis certainly a good nickname for him.“Despite his appearance, the man we saw on the mountain was made of flesh, blood, and bones, I assure you.”
“He bled and felt pain alright…” she trails off in a whisper. “You say you can’t die, but you looked truly shaken up on that mountain.” She points to my side, and her emphatic movement sends ripples over the water. “Could he have killed you with his eerie sword?”
“Possibly.”
