Page 14

Chapter Fourteen

Thanatos

W eight landed in my stomach after seeing the inky mark circling my little raven’s wrist. The mark of her inevitable death if I didn’t seek assistance from someone who’d never give it. One of God’s most beloved angels. The only angel capable of purifying a human from Pestilence’s incurable sickness. But she wouldn’t go against God. Not after what she and her lover did. Not when she was banished to the human realm to prove her loyalty to God.

Fuck.

The first call of the day was a warning by War. Ares rarely involved herself in my affairs, but she’d been tracking Zelus because he’d interfered with hers. He couldn’t find his Counter Soul, so he was trying to take the souls of the other Horsemen. Limos—or Famine as the humans liked to call him—was the laziest of the group and hadn’t bothered to look for his. Nor would he if given the option. So, it wasn’t surprising that despite Zelus’s obvious fear of Ares, he’d tried to outwit her. No surprise, he hadn’t managed it. Even I was at a loss when it came to her. Should I ever be on the wrong side of Ares, I’d struggle to evade her wrath.

I quickly realized she didn’t intend to assist with annihilating humanity. Ares had outright rebelled against our function as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Despite what she saw over millennia of the wars she instigated, she loved humans. No matter what ugliness humans enacted on one another, she still believed they were worth saving. Even claimed that in the midst of war and often at its conclusion, she witnessed the true strength and compassion of humanity.

So, the Bringer of Warfare proclaimed in so many words that she didn’t want the world to end and wouldn’t take another soul to do it. Instead, she’d keep her Counter Soul safe until the danger was over.

Honestly, I was speechless.

“I won’t apologize,” she had told me in that strong, no-nonsense tone of hers. “But I won’t try to escape any punishment you see fit to give me. Once the final day comes and goes and humanity is safe from the unfair judgment God has cast down on them, I’ll return and accept whatever fate you deem worthy of my failure to do my sworn duty as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. You have my word.”

I guess she expected me to punish her for it when she revealed the truth behind why she refused to give up the location of her Counter Soul. Least surprising was she found hers well before I found mine.

If I were clever, I’d lean into my role as leader of the Horsemen and lecture her. But I didn’t. If anything, I was relieved to hear I wasn’t alone. Perhaps because after a week of promising tomorrow I’d take Asha’s soul but always failing to do so, it finally felt as though I wasn’t the only Horseman struggling to do what we’d been created for. Someone who didn’t want everything to come to an end. Rather, I didn’t want to see my little raven gone from this world, never to reincarnate.

So I divulged my weakness—my inability to let Asha go where I couldn’t. I expected War to admonish me for getting too close to a human, but it was the first time I’d heard her laugh in nearly a century.

“So, you do have a soul,” she had murmured, her voice playful. “I never thought it’d be you who’d agree with me about this, but…I’m glad, Thanatos. Maybe there’s still hope.” That was all she said before ending the call.

I’d stood outside for a time, marinating in the idea that we had the power to stop the human world from ending. I wasn’t sure if humanity deserved it, but Asha proved maybe some of them did. Unfortunately, that was the least of my problems.

It was arrogant to think I could outwit Zelus with someone to protect. I didn’t consider he’d use underhanded tactics to claim my Counter Soul, but I should’ve known he’d find a window and attack while I was dealing with another demon retaliation nearby. I suspected he’d led them there. A clever distraction, and one that worked.

Anytime danger was nearby, I lost my head a little. I didn’t think the same way I did before meeting Asha. I was reckless and reactive, not calculated and cool-headed. The number of enemies out to kill her had grown exponentially over the last two weeks. They wouldn’t believe I didn’t intend to take her soul. Death had never failed to do his job, not once. Why would this little human be any different?

The demons wanted to taste her blood, and the angels rebelling against God would drive their blades into her heart to save all of humanity. Either way, Asha wouldn’t be safe until time ran out and we’d failed to bring the end of the world. Not that it mattered anymore. They’d won. Unless I could convince Michael humans were worth saving—which was something I wasn’t even sure if I believed—then I’d lose my little raven no matter what I did.

Fuck.

More determined than I’d ever been for the end of the world, I sighed and looked down at Pestilence’s disgusting mark, knowing it was my oversight that caused it. “We can’t stay here.”

Asha’s eyes widened. “Emily—”

“She’ll be safer if we’re not here. He’ll have no reason to bother her. The only place you will be safe is…my realm,” I murmured, taking gentle hold of her face. I wanted to burn her gorgeous eyes, perfect nose, and luscious mouth into my memory. An acidic burn reached my throat, and I soothed it by kissing her.

She reacted by grabbing my shirt and yanking me harder into the kiss. When I tried to wrap her body in my arms, she took a step back and crossed hers instead, a telling sign that she was about to say something sassy. “The Underworld? Or is it Hell? I don’t know what realm a dude like you would live in. What mythology is right?”

I tried not to smile because my chest was so excruciatingly tight that it felt like it might burst into a million pieces at any moment. “Not where you’d think. As Death, I have a realm of my own, but I’ve never brought a mortal there. I’m not sure how it’ll work once you’re there, but we’re not safe here.”

“Locking me up in a gilded cage until when?” she countered, her eyes piercing mine. “Why? What was he talking about when he said you’d found yours? What’s happening, Than? I’m not going anywhere with you without some goddamn answers.”

Her freckled cheeks puffed out, and I hated how cute she looked when I knew that everything I told her would ruin how she felt about me. Would she hate me with every fiber of her being? Would she cast me away? Would she refuse to leave when I told her that everyone she loved would no longer exist as soon as we delivered a soul for the apocalypse?

I couldn’t take her unwillingly to my realm. She had to be compliant, or it wouldn’t work. That much I did know. I just wasn’t sure if she could leave once I brought her to my isolated space, or if she’d regret coming once she knew the truth—that I was one of the only beings who could keep her company for eternity.

The person I was before wouldn’t care, but Asha had changed me. I no longer took whatever I wanted. I waited for her permission. I waited for her to tell me that being with me was the very thing she wanted.

Fuck, I don’t know what to do anymore. What will it take to keep her when I know she’ll be dead in a week?

“That mark…” I started, staying as close to her as I could manage without losing sight of her face. My voice was low, entreating, and more desperate than it’d ever sounded. “If I don’t get it removed, you’ll die in a week. In four days, you’ll fall ill. In five, you’ll be in a coma. In seven, you’ll breathe your last and succumb to the illness.”

“And I won’t in your realm?”

Fuck.

“You will.”

“Then what’s the point?” she clapped back in a tight voice. She was surprisingly calm for someone who’d been told her death was imminent. “I’d rather spend the last days I have with Ems. She’s…”

The tightness in my chest was unbearable when a tear broke away from my little raven’s eye. It was only then that I realized she wasn’t calm at all; she was silently grieving.

I’d forgotten how brave Asha was. It was all there in the eyes she cast my way. She knew nothing she did would change the fact that she was about to die. The only thing she wished for was to spend her last days, hours, and minutes with her friend. Her chosen family. Maybe a part of her understood the day she crossed paths with Death that she wouldn’t leave the encounter alive. I’d never seen anyone look so beautiful as she did accepting her fate with grace and determination to make the most out of it.

But I wasn’t ready.

She might be willing to accept that her time had come, but I wouldn’t. Even should it be the last thing I did as the Reaper of Souls, I’d save her from her fate. I’d find a way. If she died in my shadow realm, I suspected that I could keep her soul there. I’d never done it, but no other being was permitted to wander there without my invitation. I could keep her for myself and bend the rules of life and death, forever if I must. But first, I had to persuade her to come. I had to give her what she wanted first.

Hope.

“There might be a way.” My eyes wandered over her face, memorizing every detail. “But we can’t stay here. It’ll endanger your friend. Pestilence will expect us to flee. We can take advantage of that. Tell your friend I’m taking you on a spontaneous getaway.”

“Just tell me one thing, Thanatos.”

I stiffened, worried she’d demand an answer I couldn’t risk giving her. “If I answer this one question, will you promise to come with me?”

I hated how desperate I sounded, but if she knew everything, I couldn’t keep her safe. She’d stay. She’d die. Her soul would disappear like it never existed. I couldn’t bring her soul to my realm if she died here on the human plane. I’d either be forced to leave her to wander aimlessly until the end of time or deliver her for the apocalypse. I couldn’t keep her. I’d lose her forever.

“Why are you doing all of this for me?”

I opened my mouth, at a loss. “I—”

“I’m just someone who intrigues you. Why would you go to all this trouble for some human who’s going to die someday, anyway?”

Why was she so clever? Why couldn’t she just blindly do as I say? I struggled to answer because even I didn’t know why I’d gone to such lengths to keep her safe, or why I refused to take her soul when it was part of my duty as one of the Horsemen to bring the end of the world. What did one human’s soul matter? Why would I ruin everything to keep her?

“If I told you that even I don’t know why, would you believe me?” I posed to her finally after a long pause, choosing honesty for once.

I hadn’t expected her to smile, but when she did, the tension in my chest eased. “Actually, yes I do.”

“Then you’ll come with me?” I couldn’t keep the hopeful lilt in my voice from surfacing.

I needed an answer so I could keep her safe and figure out how I’d argue my case to an angel who’d surely refuse it. Zelus wouldn’t remove his mark, so the only option left would be to convince Asha to come to my realm. I had four days to make the little human need me as much as I desperately needed her. Four days to endear myself to Asha so she’d give up her afterlife to be with me.

I ran a hand through my hair.

It was pathetic to think that I’d gone my entire existence not once needing anyone, and the first person I wanted was someone I couldn’t have. Someone I had to beg to stay. To think, a powerful being like myself was so quickly brought down to the same level as the humans I sent to their awaiting afterlife. But I’d lost all sense of propriety when my eyes connected with the mark that would take my little raven’s life.

Fuck who I was. That person didn’t exist anymore. Whatever I had to do to keep her, I would, and it didn’t matter how desperate I had to be to achieve it.

Asha’s hands cupped my cheeks, and the touch startled me out of my head. “I guess you and I are going on an adventure, huh? Who would’ve thought my first vacation in years would be with Death. Doesn’t get any weirder than that.”

The overwhelming rush of relief that hit after she agreed to come with me eased the tension in my body, but it was far from over. If I kept her away from Zelus, it’d give me time to call on the angel. Zelus couldn’t quicken the illness if he wasn’t around her, and those precious few days could mean the difference between whether she lived or died in this realm. It would give me time to convince her to come to mine. To make myself someone she couldn’t live without.

Then I’d figure out a way to keep her with me forever.

I’d never wanted something or someone so much I was willing to test the limits of my power, but I would for her. If I could keep my little raven from dying, I’d have time to figure out the rest. Whatever it took for more time, I’d do it.