Page 10

Nika

J olting awake, a cry left my mouth, and Silas immediately scooped me up into his arms. He checked me for injuries while his magic swept the room, on high alert. I quivered and sucked in air like I couldn’t breathe.

I was hyperventilating, I quickly realized.

Fear inched its way through my body, ever so slowly.

Sensation crawled over my limbs, and I quaked inside Silas’s arms. The whisper of voices hadn’t left my head.

They were still there, calling, seeking me out, reaching for me.

I’d heard a similar chorus of whispers in that hallway before we found the dead woman. Their growing murmur was a warning.

A foreboding.

Silas’s eyes searched mine, his giant hands moving to cradle my face. “What is it, love?” Silas’s voice was soft and soothing. “Are you hurt? Did you see something? Was it that bastard again?”

My hands absently covered his as I tried to get control over my frantic breaths. The voices faded, and I could finally think again. “No. I’m…it was a dream.”

Slightly disheveled with his silver hair a mess around his face, Silas let loose a relieved sigh and wrapped his arms around me again. “A normal dream, or one like you had of Bane?”

I swallowed, voice shaky. “I’m not sure.”

“Not sure?”

“It felt different…like the one with my father, but it also didn’t. Nothing in it made any sense. You weren’t—the voices, they were here when I woke up. I still heard them whispering.”

I tried to turn my head to look around the room, but Silas reached for my face again and held it in place.

“I was in this one, was I?” The muscles in his chest contracted violently.

“What did I do to you, Nika? What did I say? Don’t skimp on the details because you’re afraid of hurting me. I need to know everything.”

I wasn’t sure if I’d made any sense, but I recounted what I could remember down to the minutest of details. Silas’s expression didn’t change, but I sensed his alarm.

“I don’t know what it means,” I admitted to him in a soft whisper. “The voices, the person in the fog, the things you said—I don’t know what any of it means.”

Silas hummed and leaned back against the headboard. Gently running his hand through my hair, he brought my head to his chest and wrapped a secure arm around my back. The steady pound of his heart was against my face.

He might not realize it, but whenever he was worried, he’d always hold me close as if he could protect me from everything and everyone. And in his arms like this, it really felt like he could. I truly believed Silas was the reason I was alive at all.

“You said I called you Death?”

Nodding, I settled against him and let loose a sigh.

“My mother said something to me before…” I started, latching onto the memory before I sent my parents into their afterlife.

I remembered every word she’d murmured inside my head, so verbatim, I repeated, “’You may think Rilas is Death, but Death is balanced and just. If anyone’s Death, it’s you’. ”

Lifting my eyes to Silas, I watched his brows furrow. “She said that to you? Those exact words?”

“I didn’t really understand it at the time, but…

it feels connected somehow. You remember when I told you she said that I’d cross paths with the Soul of Life and the Soul of Death?

In my dream, you thought the figure in the fog was the Soul of Death.

Said it was what I claimed, but you thought he was an imposter.

What if he’s one of the people she mentioned?

What if he’s the person we’ve been looking for? ”

“You mean what your mother mentioned before? The souls whose paths you’d cross?

But you’re saying that in this dream I thought he was an imposter and didn’t want you to go to him?

” Silas mused, the muscles in his chest tautening.

He was agitated by the thought. His heart thundered under my palms. “You’re saying that one of us had it wrong in this dream of yours?

But you still feel as though he was the Soul of Death? ”

Thinking quickly, I lifted my head. “That’s exactly it. The voices were calling me there. To him. It felt like I’d been searching for him.”

“But one of these so-called souls will determine whether the world is saved or ended, is it? That these so-called Soul of Life and Soul of Death are the end all be all, yeah?” Silas suggested before I could mutter the words myself.

Another piece clicked into place, and somehow I knew we were onto something.

Maybe these were the souls my mother mentioned.

Maybe whoever it was in my dream was one of them.

Mother couldn’t be certain Silas was one of them, but she did think he was.

Maybe this other person was someone I needed to find to save the world, as weird as it was to admit such a thing to myself.

“I don’t know how to explain it, but I know for certain I was in the right place. He was who I was looking for.”

Silas went rigid under me. “Rilas…?”

“I can’t be sure it was him.”

His voice was dangerously low. “He called you his Fated One, little rebel. If he’s the Soul of Death, then I was right to keep you from him. I’d bury my own sword in my chest before I let him have you.”

Something in my gut told me it wasn’t Rilas.

“It wasn’t him.”

“You can’t be—”

“It wasn’t him,” I said again, punctuating every word. “I know it wasn’t him, Silas.”

“So what do you mean this bit about balance and corrupting your gem with darkness?” He pried.

“I can’t be sure,” I mumbled.

Silas hummed and twisted my hair around his fingers.

“If it’s about balance, then embracing both parts of you, the light and dark, that’s something very few can do.

That sort of balance is hard to strike. Death isn’t meant to be either side of the coin.

It’s always been portrayed as impartial. Both light and dark.”

“Grey,” I whispered.

Silas smirked and dropped a kiss on my mouth. “That’s it, little rebel. Death is neither light nor dark. Death is grey.”

I sat up and looked at the gem hanging around my neck. Tiny specks existed in all the white, but otherwise it was relatively unscathed by the choices I’d made. “I sought him out to corrupt the gem, why? Why would I want to corrupt it?”

Silas reached out and cradled the gem in his palm. “To find balance, yeah? Muck up all this clear white with a little darkness? Maybe it was meant to bring a little more balance to your power. Not sure why you’d need that bloody faceless cockwobble to do it, though.”

“The only thing is, Grandmother told me not to let the gem become corrupted,” I argued. “This was meant to warn me because I couldn’t undo the corruption of my soul.”

“Or it was meant to guide you,” Silas rebuked. “If this dream wasn’t a dream at all, princess, then maybe this gem helps you find the perfect balance of both light and dark.”

Grandmother had been very pointed in her comments about the gem and corruption, that I couldn’t repair it once I’d stained my soul. What if she gave me that warning knowing one day I’d need to use it as a guide?

It wasn’t a totally crazy thought. Mother had made it clear they couldn’t mess with fate.

Fate always found a way of rebuking efforts made to alter it.

Much of what they’d done came at different points, never all at the same time, and what happened in the future fell on me to decide.

They could only give me the tools to make the right decision when the time came. What if the gem was another tool?

I stared at the glistening surface. “Do you think the text calls for balance? Do you think casting it requires me to draw out the darkness inside me and corrupt the gem?”

My eyes went wide, and I scrambled off the bed.

Silas barely caught up with me by the time I got downstairs and flipped through the journal.

It was a very small section, but both mother and grandmother circled it several times as if to emphasize its importance.

I wasn’t sure what it meant, but now I had an idea.

I found the page and read it off for confirmation.

Silas hovered close to my back, his head dropping into view as I pointed to a small section.

“Using the old magic requires the balance of both life and death. One cannot be without the other. There is always a cost when summoning this magic, and it always requires the darkness inside you.”

Rilas mentioned the darkness inside me enough times for the words to feel ominous, but in my grandmother’s writing, even more so.

Doing what I was about to do came at a cost—the light in my soul.

It was why she warned me to avoid corruption, because I’d need to balance it when the time came to send him back. If I didn’t…

The world would end.

But how would I know when I’d reached the right balance? What if my soul suffered too much corruption or not enough? What then?

My head swirled with the reality of what I’d need to do, the tight rope I’d be forced to walk to do what needed to be done when the time came.

“You think the dream is because of the text the lad was mentioning?” Silas slid around me, his naked torso catching strays of moonlight. “Finding the two souls is a step toward balance, are they?”

I was momentarily distracted by the dark edge of his tattoos.

He’d mentioned how each one signified a moment in his life, often dark, to serve as a reminder whenever he looked at it.

Or in many cases, as a warning. He admitted in the privacy of our bedroom that he despised the person he was when he killed his brother.

The person he was in the Brotherhood. And while he still lived in the grey, he never wanted to go back to black.

If anyone knew what it was to be grey, it was Silas. For some reason, I was confident when the time came, he’d be the reason I could strike the perfect balance. He’d be my guide. He’d be the reason I could find the perfect shade.

“I’m not sure, but I think anything to do with sending a demon back might require a little more than a few symbols.

Everything comes at a cost, no matter if it’s meant to help or destroy.

” I paged through the journal until I reached another spot.

“Grandmother talks about dark souls that escaped the After in this part here…how they’re much harder to deal with. ”

I hadn’t read everything in the journal yet, but I was sure that there was more about them later on. I’d seen a few mentions in passages I hadn’t decoded and studied yet.

Silas might bemoan the days I’d spent studying this five-hundred-page journal, but weeks wouldn’t be enough with how much information it contained. I’d eventually need to build an index alongside the notes I was taking to aid me in the future, because I was determined to have one.

“She didn’t call it a demon per se, but I imagine it’s similar to Rilas.

He went a step farther than the ones she describes who escaped the After.

He gained a physical body. Nothing in this section talks about a resurrection.

I’ll look through and see if I can find anything about it.

I’m not sure if a body changes much because the soul is the same, but she talks about balance here, too.

The balance of life and death to send them back, and the fact that it takes an especially powerful Soul Collector to do it.

Right here it even says: ‘Even one soul for a soul is a heavy price to pay, but a price we must’. ”

Brushing his hair back, Silas eyed the text.

“Maybe whatever book the lad was talking about has something in it about all of this. Rilas can’t be the first demon they’ve summoned, seeing how Reaper knew how to do it.

Others would’ve done it before. Even I’ve heard of demons once upon a time, though never been daft enough to summon one.

Suppose your nan faced enough to write about it.

Maybe she has something in there that’ll help you. ”

“You’re right,” I murmured, determined to find something. Without looking at him, I headed for the couch again. Silas was quicker, though. I was scooped up, the journal plucked from my hands, and up the stairs before I knew it.

“I know you’re eager, love, but you’ve barely slept. You can pick it back up in the morning,” Silas chastised.

“And whose fault is it that I’ve barely slept?” Despite my snark, I didn’t fight him. I couldn’t when he’d already settled in next to me on the bed and wrapped his arms around me.

“I haven’t any clue what you mean, little rebel. I was as quick as I promised.” Silas chuckled and spooned me like it was perfectly normal. And in a way, it was.

Smiling to myself, I closed my eyes and snuggled closer. “Three hours is quick?”

“For me it is.” He scoffed and kissed my shoulder. “No more dreaming unless it’s your handsome rogue, and even then, tell dream me to bugger off. You’re mine.”