Page 3 of Dead to Rights
“Not really.” He shifted in his seat, anxiety making him restless. “I just can’t seem to settle.”
Eyes the color of storm clouds surveyed him across the table, the corners pinched with concern. “When was the last time you fed?”
Finn looked away and cleared his throat, unable to meet the prince’s gaze. “Couple of weeks ago.”
“Finn,” Orrin sighed. “We talked about this. You’re still new. You can’t—”
“I know,” he interrupted, not exactly in the mood for a lecture. “This is different, though.”
“Different, how?”
He turned back and shook his head. “I can’t explain it.” His hand curled into a fist atop the battered table, and a frustrated growl rolled through his chest, drawing worried glances from a few nearby villagers. “It started when I was on my way here, and it’s getting worse.”
“Calm down,” Orrin encouraged. “Breathe. Tell me what it feels like.”
He couldn’t calm down, though. That was kind of the point.
Looking across the table, he met the elf’s gaze and held it as he searched for the words to describe the emotions raging inside him. At first, he had assumed his encounter with Noah had been to blame, but now, he wasn’t so sure.
“Finn?”
“It feels like something bad is coming.”
Chapter two
MostresidentsintheVillage of Lost Souls feared the River Acheron—and with good reason—but Noah Marsh had always found it rather soothing.
Seated on the black sands that stretched along the shoreline, he watched the glowing blue orbs that floated in the dark waters. Thousands, if not millions, of disembodied souls drifted on the gentle current, their luminescence shining through the mist as they awaited their chance at reincarnation.
To pass the time, he made up stories for them.
A Persian prince who might come back as a social media influencer.
An impoverished farmer who would be the CEO of a tech conglomerate.
A child lost to disease who would go on to cure cancer in her next life.
He didn’t know what qualified a soul for reincarnation, but he assumed they had things to accomplish or lessons to learn. Which meant he probably hadn’t ever lived a past life himself.
Dead in his twenties without so much as a participation trophy under his belt, it seemed pretty unlikely that centuries of second chances would end so anticlimactically.
To the people who loved him, only a few months had passed since his mortal life had come to an end on that dark and winding road. For him, however, it felt like ancient history.
He’d spent centuries in the Underworld, waiting for…something.
For a long time, he had thought he was waiting for his twin brother. They had been inseparable their entire lives, and he couldn’t imagine crossing over without him.
Then Keegan had gone and gotten himself killed—idiot—but nothing had really changed. Sure, he had his brother by his side again, but he still felt stuck, anticipating something he couldn’t put a name to.
Scooping up a handful of sand, he chucked it toward the water, grunting when the grains scattered across the surface with no sound and barely a ripple. Fuck, everything just felt so damn muted sometimes.
It frustrated him, but it also worried him. How numb would he become before he eventually faded away?
When those feelings became overwhelming, when the endless dusk of the Underworld felt suffocating, he clung harder to the echoes of his old life. The scent of rain on cracked pavement, the taste of cheap black coffee, the thrum of music against the windows of his beloved old Mustang.
Yet no matter how many times he retraced those half-remembered steps, nothing changed. That was kind of the thing about this side of the river. Eventually, the monotony got to everyone.
Still, the restlessness remained, the sense of expectation for some task or purpose left unfinished. And he had started tosuspect that it wasn’t about a lesson to be learned, but rather a question.
