Page 44 of Grim
“Good evening, Asher,” Kane growls, barely keeping the venom from his voice.
Asher doesn’t flinch. Instead, his smile widens.
“Well, well …” he savors each syllable as he speaks.
“They let just about anyone into these little soirees now, don’t they?
Pity, that. Big D used to hold himself to such high standards.
” Asher delivers this insult directly to Kane, his legs wide and eyes locked on to his fellow reaper.
Kane does not dignify him with a response. He doesn’t need to. His stance does all the talking—shoulders tight, jaw set, hands flexing once, like he’s picturing them around Asher’s throat.
Asher’s attention turns to me. “You, on the other hand”—his voice drops an octave as he bows with a courtly flourish—“are a vision.”
Before I can pull away, he takes my hand, sliding two fingers behind mine, lifting it just enough to press a kiss to my knuckles. The act is measured, intimate, and very deliberate.
Kane steps in with unnatural speed, and a split second later, he’s squeezing Asher’s wrist in a steel-clad hold. His voice is flat, but it simmers with threat. “That’s enough,” he rasps possessively.
Asher’s brows rise in mock surprise. “Enough what, Kane? ”
Asher and Kane square off, a pair of undeniably attractive brutes.
Asher continues, “Hospitality? Affection? I knew you lacked culture, but did they not teach you manners in France either? Sacrebleu .” He butchers the word with a grin, teeth flashing behind the mask.
He doesn’t pull away. “Jealousy doesn’t suit you, Doc.
Thought you’d evolved past that particular weakness. ”
“And I thought you’d evolved past being a lecherous little leech,” Kane mutters, releasing him with obvious reluctance.
“Ooh. An alliteration. How poetic.” Asher’s eyes flick to me again, teasing. “Tell me, darling, how does our Kane look when he’s undone? All that brooding control—does it crack, or does it shatter ?”
“Just leave the girl alone, Ash. Go find another of your forlorn souls to keep you entertained.”
“And what if I want to play with this one?”
“She’s off-limits,” Kane responds.
“Why? Because she’s wormed her way into what used to be your heart, Kane?”
Kane doesn’t answer. But the look he gives Asher is a grey cloud warning of a powerful storm.
I don’t like being spoken about like I’m not in the room, so I cut in, my voice sharper than I intended it to be. “You two know I have ears, right?”
Asher bows slightly. “Apologies. Just admiring your gravity. You pull focus in a room full of immortals, Rue. That’s no small feat.”
I glance at Kane. His hands are curled into fists at his sides.
“She’s my responsibility,” he says finally, voice like stone. “Until she crosses.”
Kane doesn’t look at me when he says it; he’s too busy staring down Asher like he’s ready to draw blood. And maybe he doesn’t even realize the impact those words have on me.
The words land like a slap. Clinically clean and completely dismissive.
“Until tomorrow,” I mumble, my voice quiet.
Asher watches me a moment longer—something devious flickering in his eyes—before turning his attention back to Kane. “Well,” he drawls, stepping back with a mocking half bow, “you two enjoy the rest of your evening. I’ll leave you to your responsibilities .”
He doesn’t wait for a reply. He straightens his coat, tosses me a half smirk, half apology and vanishes into the swirl of masks and shadows.
The silence he leaves in his wake reverberates between the two of us.
I keep my eyes on the dancers still spinning through the last notes of the current sonata, refusing to look at Kane. If I do, I’m not sure what I’ll say. Or worse, what I’ll let show.
But of course, he’s still watching me.
Still close enough that I can feel the heat of him. Still quiet in that maddening way of his.
“You don’t have to keep following me around,” I say, my voice flat. “I get it. The clock is ticking. I’ll try not to fall in a hole or trip into a reaping scythe.”
“Rue—”
“Or maybe you can give Asher the reins. Seems like he’s more than happy to handle your responsibilities .”
That gets his attention. His shoulders stiffen. I meet his gaze now, mask to mask, daring him to argue. He does not. But his eyes flare, sharp and stormy.
“That’s not what I meant,” he says, low and tight.
“No?” I force a smile I don’t feel. “Sounded pretty damn clear to me.”
His jaw flexes. I watch the muscle twitch, that familiar mask of control slipping for half a second before he reins it back in. He doesn’t speak right away, but instead studies me like he’s searching for the right words in a language neither of us speaks fluently.
I don’t wait for him to translate.
“That’s not—” he starts, but I’m already shaking my head.
“Don’t,” I cut in. “Don’t you dare try to soften it now. You meant every word. Until I cross. That’s how long I matter to you.”
His expression shifts—something wounded flickering behind the ice—but still, he says nothing.
And it hurts. Not the nine-day countdown. Not the looming veil of death. This . The silence. The holding back. The refusal to name us .
“I didn’t ask for any of this,” I whisper. “Not a second chance. Not the dress. Not the dance. I sure as shit didn’t ask to fall for someone who can’t even look at me without reminding himself it’s temporary.”
He steps forward—slow, dangerous, measured.
“You think this is easy for me?” he asks lethally. “You think I don’t want to tear this whole system down just to buy you one more wild and precious day?”
A voice cuts through the murmur of conversation, clear and commanding. “Ladies and gentlemen.”
All eyes turn toward a spectral man who stands near the musicians, wrapped in layers of regally tattered silks. He claims the space he occupies. His belly protrudes slightly under his coat like a nobleman who hasn’t missed a single banquet in several centuries.
He raises one hand. “Please clear the dance floor and make way for our performers,” the herald calls out with a sharp, resonant voice. “It is time now for the Dance of the Descent.”
Once the center of the room clears, the band strikes an ominous opening chord, the cello moaning notes through the room, the viola answering in a melancholy sigh.
Eight dancers take the floor in metallic shades of black and grey. They move fluidly to the sad music, a dance that feels more like memories collapsing in on themselves. Their movements evoke feelings of loneliness and loss in me, and I have to force down the lump growing in my throat.
The masked movers seem pulled through the space by each languid note.
Their arms lift, as if stretching for something just out of reach—something they once had maybe.
Something they’ll never touch again. They circle one another in cruel harmony, never connecting.
Always missing. Always a second too late.
They dance synchronously, though separate. Each a mirror of the other, yet neither seems to recognize its reflection.
They drift and fold, jerk and sway, like puppets unraveling from the inside out.
Each motion holds the shape of grief. Throughout the song, each dancer fills their claimed space with gestures of struggle and motion that seem to almost whisper their foreshadowing— this will all come to stillness soon; this will all inevitably end .
And end it does, on another heartbreaking chord, as each of the dancers melts down into broken piles on the floor.
One collapses mid-step, knees buckling. Another stumbles and folds in half like she’s been broken at the hinge. One by one, they crumble.
In the final moment, half of the dancers transforms, as if by a trick of the eye, into mounds that look exactly like grey dirt, while the other half turns into grey stone. I bring my focus from the individual performers to the tableau of the whole and see it immediately.
They have morphed into tombstones and piles of ash, echoing life’s close in a haunting visual image.
As the final note fades from the room, I feel a single tear betray me and begin its own descent behind my masked face.
It snakes its way down, escaping off the bottom of my chin and colliding with the onyx floor below.
The silence in the room is broken by a resounding sonorous clap that emanates from a single source at the top of a staircase, made of iron and bone that spirals around the entire room. Atop it, alone, stands a being that could not be mistaken for anyone other than who he is.
“Is he—”
“Yes,” Kane says under his breath. “That’s Death.”
He’s clothed in a suit that shouldn’t make sense—torn velvet, stitched shadows, gold thread crawling across the lapels like vines—but somehow, it works. His mask is bone white, like a blank canvas that could morph into anything he desired at any time.
He stands alone, above and apart, commanding the entire room.