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Sleeping was truly something wonderful.

I was molten butter, spreading and thinning in the land of dreams, where every single memory of mine hung from an endless ceiling in tear-shaped crystal bottles. I only had to uncork them, and I’d get to remember what I had done five hundred or five thousand or five million years ago. In the land of dreams, I was the master of my being and I knew exactly who I was and what I had done, just like Anunit had said.

But as lovely as this was, I needed to get back to the real world.

Oh, a conscious dream. Odd.

Anunit had given me a body of my own, yes. I felt warm. Someone was holding me. Suddenly, I became aware of my surroundings. The heavy silence, with the exception of the occasional wind whispering. The heat on my face… I’ve never felt it like this before. The hardness beneath me. It’s the ground. I’m on the ground.

My eyes opened slowly, and the dimensional aspect of everything hit me. I could see like a living being. I could smell the powdery dust in the air, tickling the back of my throat. Tristan held me close, and his smile made my whole world shine with pure joy and a renewed sense of love.

“I love you so much,” I said.

“I was looking forward to hearing you say that,” he replied, and our lips met.

Our first true kiss. It felt incredible, like… petals pressed against one another. He tasted of sweetness and blood, and it lingered on the tip of my tongue. My senses were incredibly amplified. As a Reaper, I had felt everything with my spirit, and that was the deepest way to experience anything. But as a living being, I was feeling everything with my body, with the nerve receptors that came with my flesh and bones and skin. It was so beautiful, it brought tears to my eyes. “Oh, Tristan. Can you believe it?” I laughed, my cheeks already wet.

We stayed like that for a while, kissing and hugging and whispering sweet words in each other’s ears. I couldn’t get enough of him. I couldn’t get enough of this body either, of experiencing life like I never had before. This was what I had been missing, and there was plenty left for me to discover.

“Where is she?” I asked after a while.

Tristan sighed. “She got away. Anunit knew we were plotting to catch her. I didn’t stand a chance.”

“Are you okay?” I asked, slowly getting up. He helped me, and I measured him from head to toe, just to make sure. This was the man I had married. The man I loved with all my heart. The man with whom I had spent the last twenty years of my existence. Oddly enough, I only remember the last twenty years.

“Yeah. She roughed me up a little, just to teach me a lesson, but that’s it. Out of respect for you and the help you’ve given her,” he replied. “That’s what she said. ‘Out of respect for Unending and the help she’s given me, I’ll let you live so that she can enjoy a life with her husband. A real life.’”

“Damn. Death is going to be so mad.”

“Do you care?” Tristan replied, holding back a chuckle. I offered a shrug and tried not to laugh. Yes, I felt worried, but the truth was that I had earned this moment for myself and for Tristan. “The fate of the world does not rest on your shoulders. It is not entirely up to you to fix everything that’s wrong with it,” he added. My death magic spell still protected him from the sun’s light, which meant that all the spells I had cast before were unharmed—that was good. I still felt my connection to Death’s last seal, which meant my leverage against her remained valid. Thank the universe. Anunit had absolutely kept up her side of the deal, and then some. I had respect for that. She was a renegade, but she’d done right by me in the end.

I nodded, my arms wound tightly around his neck. “Well. The World Crusher is free. I accidentally set her loose. The Ghoul Reapers are free for the same reason. And Anunit is in the wind after she got her capable claws on the Mixer and shoved me into a living body. If you think about it, this could’ve gone a lot worse, right?” My self-deprecating sarcasm was stronger than ever.

“A lot worse. But I have this to keep safe, so it’s not that bad,” he said, showing me the die Anunit had left him, the little device where all my knowledge and memories were stored, with the exception of the past twenty years. I’d have no access to it unless I chose to forsake the body, but I found comfort knowing it was safe with him.

“Good. Well, it’s still bad, obviously. Kind of shames me and my years of experience. But no one got hurt, in the end,” I replied. “And Death insisted upon handling it herself, so…”

Tristan sighed. “Anunit is smarter than we gave her credit for. That much is clear.”

“I wonder what she’ll do next.” Pausing for a second, I gazed into the distance, imagining the self-satisfied grin on her face, wherever she was. “Whether Death likes it or not, it’s time to get my siblings involved. Our maker needs all hands on deck for what comes next. I may not have my death magic or my ability to wield a scythe, but I can still help.”

“She won’t ask you to,” he said. “I do agree though, about all hands on deck. Come on, we’ve got a Reaper coming to get us soon. Of course, he’s coming with the incorrect assumption that he’s going to pick up Anunit. We’ll have to break the bad news and grovel for a ride back to… where are we traveling to next, my love?”

After everything we’d been through, I needed a long and pleasantly quiet break. The Shade had always risen to the occasion, with its eternal night and fragranced forests. We had a treehouse of our own there. A nursery to decorate.

My body was mine, but my heart was Tristan’s. We had fought so hard to get to this point. Even Death had signed off on this colossal step. My siblings would poke fun at me, but I was the happiest I had ever been. I was alive, my lungs filling with fresh air, my blood rushing, my soul singing.

A new life awaited us.

“Take us home,” I told my husband. “Take me to The Shade.”