Page 44 of Grim

“No turning back now, little one.”

He closes his eyes, a low rumble begins to grow from the ground, and my entire world gets flipped upside down.

ButYouCan’tStayHere

Free fall. I’m not sure which sensation is more alarming—the disorienting weightlessness of moving through unknown dimensions of time and space or the violent surge of power I feel from Kane’s protective embrace.

One thing I am sure of: transporting sucks.

Not in themild inconveniencekind of way—like running out of coffee or accidentally liking someone’s social media post from six years ago—but in thefull-bodied betrayal of realitykind of way. It’s an existential violation, a cosmic crime, a deeply intimate experience that I would like to never endure again.

One second, I was standing in the morbid comfort of my family cemetery, literally leaping into my new life. The next—

BAM.

I am somewhere else. Somewhereother. Talk about an out-of-body experience.

The world jerks violently like it’s been yanked out from under me, flipping me in every direction at once in some cosmic blender of suffering. My stomach performs a full gymnastics routine, settling into what I can only describe as pure, unfiltered terror. Everything spins, and I cannot latch on to anything. My heart rate spikes, along with my anxiety. I don’t think I’m goingto make it through whatever this torturous tunnel has left to give me.

“What is this?” I scream into the dizzying void as we continue to descend, ascend, spin, and finally stop from the fuming tornado of disorientation to total stillness.

My body feels like it’s been stretched, frozen, cracked, burned, then reassembled in some haphazard manner. I close my eyes, resist the urge to even think about the growing nausea, and seek solace somewhere.

Immediately, I reach out, my instincts screaming for something stable, something real, something to hold on to before I break into a million fragile pieces.

That something is Kane. He is solid. More than solid.

Kane feels unnervingly real, like something moored deep in the universe itself, an immovable force of cold certainty, wrapped in expensive fabric and disdain.

“Anchor in the infinite,” I whisper in the swirling madness.

My fingers dig into his infuriatingly muscular, very well-structured arm, and for a brief, disorienting second, I feel grounded. That moment of comfort does not last, however, as my OtherWorldly benefactor morphs in front of me.

Gone is the man who held me tight through the madness. Returned is the broody reaper who still appears to be repulsed by me. Kane reacts like I set him on fire. His entire body goes rigid, his muscles tensing so violently that for a split second, I think he might actually turn to stone.

In a dramatic display of physical revulsion, he yanks his arm free so fast and so forcefully that I almost crumble. His disgust is as palpable as it is inexplicable.

What is his problem?

He clears his throat twice, like he needs to physically purge the experience from his body.

I watch, confused, as he takes two deliberate steps away, straightens his impeccable cuffs, and smooths down his lapels, like he’s trying to reassert his dominance. For someone who literally escorts souls to the afterlife, he is unreasonably bad at human interaction.

“Did you say something a moment ago?” he queries with an intense stare.

“No,” I deflect immediately.

His eyes seem to say he doesn’t believe me, but he mercifully moves on.

“You asked for this.” His voice is flat, bored, and barely masking whatever existential crisis he just had over being touched.

I tilt my head, filing this little reaction away for future torment. Because right now, I am busy processing my own reaction.

If I’m being honest—and I loathe being honest with myself—touching him wasn’t terrible.

I mean, sure, I’m dying, so maybe my standards are dangerously low, but Kane is warm, which is the opposite of what I expected. He isn’t cold or lifeless, as I imagined a reaper would be. His body isn’t hollow. It isn’t spectral. It’s strong and not all that terrible to hold on to when your entire sense of self is spiraling through time and space.

I pretend I don’t miss his nearness since he pulled away.