Page 108 of Ballad of Nightmares

But in the next lightning strike, Death finally showed his face, and every atom in her body went rigid. The knife clattered to the floor. Saliva stuck like sap in her throat.

Fucking…

“Sam?”

Though she wasn’t even sure the name had escaped her. Breath seemed to void in her lungs. A chill shivered over her. She looked back down at the dead body, knowing her eyes had to be deceiving her.

It couldn’t be…

The shadows overlapped Sam’s warm corpse, his lifeless gaze still staring up at the ceiling. She turned back to the shadow in the corner, her heart hammering. The lamp near him flickered back on, and within its amber glow, it was confirmed.

Ana couldn’t breathe.

Samstood in the corner, shadows of tattered wings at his back. He shifted and pulled something from his pocket—a lighter and smoke, and he lit the end of it, cheeks pulling taut as he sucked in a long drag.

The glare in his poisonous gaze seethed through her. Pain stretched over his features as if…

“You know…” he began, his voice stiff, “I did wonder how long it would be before you carved out my heart like all the others.”

Ana couldn’t function.

Sam.

Sam was…

No.

But…

And suddenly, it all made sense.

Everything madefuckingsense, and she hated that she’d not realized it sooner.

The leaving her in the middle of the night. The shadows following her. How at ease she felt in his presence. His knowledge of the realms and the witches. Why he looked so tired and pained every day. Why his laugh washed over her like the sun’s warmth. And he…

Of course, he knew who she was.

A dizziness nearly made her faint. Her broken heart jumped out of her chest. Emotion clouded and twisted and wrenched every limb and muscle and bone. Teeth chattering with the tremble of her blood-covered body.

The lies. The fuckinglies.

Everything had been a fucking lie.

He’d known who she was this entire time. Known who she was and chosen to… To what? To toy with her?

Was any of it real?

Sam.

Sam.

Sam.

The cool slither of that black fog wrapped beneath her jaw and tilted her quivering chin up just as the lights extinguished on the streets. The velvet of his shadows shifted into sharpened glass, cutting and marking her skin like he meant to pull every carmine drop from inside her. Lightning chiseled the sky, the great crack rippling over the air and making the entire town tremble. His features reflected back to her in that moment, and the silhouette on the wall flinched its torn wings.

Samarius Cain.

Death.