Page 18 of In Death’s Hands (The Threads of Fate #1)
“It won’t affect us that much in the antechamber.
You know that,” says Nathan as he goes to grab a piece of paper and a pen from a drawer in the kitchen and quickly scribbles something.
“We don’t have a choice. It’s the one place none of us have been back to since then. I won’t meet them anywhere else.”
He hands Turan the note, and she shakes her head as her eyes move over the words.
“Fine, I’ll pass it along. But it’s the last time I’ll do so—I’m not your damn postwoman.
” She turns to look at me, and I wait for her to tell me that it’s my fault, that I’m putting her brother in danger by simply existing. But she disappears.
And I mean she disappears .
One second, she’s whole and looking at me in a way I do not understand, the next she’s gone.
I gasp, looking around and finding her nowhere. My eyes settle on Nathan’s amused face, and his expression is the only thing keeping me from a full-blown freak-out.
“Being attacked and beaten barely fazes you, but Turan Fading throws you into a fit?” His lips twitch ever so slightly and distract me enough to focus on his words.
“I—Uh.” Okay, maybe his lips distract me too much .
Especially as they now turn into a full-blown smile that transforms his whole face into something far too lovely to be associated with death.
I blow out a breath, willing the heat that’s suddenly found its way into my body to disperse with it.
I am all over the place; one second I’m worried about gods , and Death itself— him self—knocking at my door, or rather his assistant’s door, to rectify the mistake he made twenty years ago, and the next I’m swooning like a teenage girl with raging hormones at a smile .
And before that I was freaking out over Turan vanishing . Fuck. Where did she go?
“Fading?”
“Ah,” he says, his right hand jumping to smooth his hair down. “We can all do it. The way we do it depends on the Crown we serve.”
“Crown?”
He sighs. “There is a lot you don’t know. A lot that I will have to share with you if you truly decide to come and search with me.”
“Of course I’m coming with you. You said so yourself.”
“It doesn’t mean you don’t have a choice. I could find a safe place for you.” By the way he clenches his jaw, he doesn’t seem too happy about that option. “Hell, you could even stay with Turan.”
“Hell does exist?” I gulp.
He closes his eyes for a second. “We were thrown into your world with nary a memory of our own. We adapted, used your lingo.”
“So…?” It does not escape my notice that for the second time, he hasn’t answered my question.
“So, I will teach you about my world. Whatever you need to know, I will tell you. I cannot promise to tell you everything, but I promise to be truthful with what I choose to share.”
I guess that’s fair. “Crown?” I ask again, determined to learn as much as he’ll let me.
“We are set up in four Crowns. Factions, if you will. Roots, Welkin, Blue Depths and Unseen.”
I blink a few times. “Can I assume you belong to the Unseen Crown?”
“Yes.” His jaw is so tight I could break a rock against it. Shatter my lips on its jagged edge. There would be pain, but doesn’t everything in life need balance? Pain and pleasure could go hand in hand on a walk along his jaw.
I will my heart to settle. “And Turan?”
“Roots.”
“So you can also…”
“Fade?” I nod. “Yes, though in my Crown we do not turn back into roots and earthen matter, we simply become smoke and shadows. Like the life of the flame once it’s been snuffed out.”
I’m not sure what he’s talking about. I only saw Turan vanish into thin air. Maybe there are some technicalities to it. I’m quite confident I don’t have it in me to learn about them just now. Instead, I focus on my surroundings, on the noise taking so much space in my head.
“You are gods, who can… Fade.” The words taste foreign on my tongue. “And now we must go to… to this place you all woke up in.”
“Sort of,” he says, which makes me frown. “That is, if you agree to come with me.”
“What do you mean, sort of? And I already said I would go.”
“Yes, but I’m not sure you understand the situation.”
“Don’t you condescend to me. I may not be a god, but I understand just how fucked up this whole thing is.
I also understand that there is no way in hell—or whatever it is that actually exists—I’m staying behind when I can go with you and finally do something to figure out why my life is the way it is. ”
His eyes go from confusion to worry to pity. And I do not want his pity. I’m a survivor. That’s what this life made of me. I will keep on surviving and maybe put a stop to this whole damn mess.
“I only meant that Turan was right. This place is dangerous. Wrong in ways even we don’t comprehend. And you’ve been through a lot already.”
“And I’ll continue to go through a lot if we don’t figure out why these things are happening to me. Why the Novensiles are after me. Maybe we’ll even figure out why your boss decided to save me in the first place.”
Something akin to fire flashes in his eyes but is gone too quickly for me to be sure of what I saw. “We go together.”
I nod.
He walks up to me, and his sudden closeness brings so much heat that it forces my feet to take a step back.
He stops abruptly, and I want to tell him it’s not what he thinks, but he refuses to meet my eyes.
He slowly brings his hands up, wanting to show me he isn’t going to hurt me, but I already hurt him by stepping away.
I swallow once, trying to find the words to clear the tension suddenly weighing us down. A knife forms from shadows in his left hand and true fear ignites under my skin. My sharp breath finally draws his eyes to me, and he sheepishly puts the weapon away behind his back.
“I—I apologise. I only meant to offer you protection.”
I force my fear to scatter and let the truth shine. I see him, running a hand through his hair, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d say he’s blushing. But that must be a trick of the light because Death’s assistant doesn’t blush. I’m pretty sure.
I cock my head, trying to understand the last few seconds, hours, days.
And come up empty. His eyes are stuck on my leg and I’m about to chastise him when my skin tingles.
As I look down, I see shadows swarming my right thigh.
I don’t have time to be scared because the shadows disperse as quickly as they appeared and in their stead is a sheath.
I look up questioningly to find him gulping and his eyes jumping to mine. He slowly brings back the knife, which is more of a dagger now that I observe it carefully, and offers it handle first. Understanding sparks, and I take the weapon, uncomfortable and curious all at once.
“I don’t like weapons.”
Nathan’s eyes darken and his face grows cold. He takes the last step separating us and grabs my chin, pushing every cell in my body into complete shock. “I don’t care who you have to kill, love. You survive.”
I swallow and will my heart to slow. His eyes lower to my lips, which part on a rushed exhale, and everything in me starts to overheat.
He starts, and in less time than it takes for me to blink, he’s a few steps away, hands firmly pushed into his pockets, looking anywhere but at my face.
Reeling myself in, I look at the dagger in my tight grip. I thought I didn’t like weapons.
This strangely makes me feel powerful and alive.
I feel my lips stretch in a small smile, and that in itself should scare me.
I try to hand it back to him, but he won’t let me.
Instead, he drops to one knee and works on the straps keeping the sheath in place, not once opening his mouth.
When he seems satisfied, he glances up at me expectantly.
Waiting for me to slide the dagger in. All traces of what I glimpsed earlier are utterly gone. I wonder if I imagined it all.
It takes me longer than I want to admit to remove my eyes from him.
To drag my mind from the gutter it so happily jumped into once his knee hit the ground.
I will my blood to stay far from my cheeks and pray to whoever might listen, hoping the gods I recently met aren’t the ones listening, that he has no idea what the sight is doing to me.
“I don’t know how to use it,” I say, the words barely audible in the big space.
“Hopefully you won’t have to, but I’d rather you have something to defend yourself with should the worst happen.” He gets back to his feet and my breathing becomes easier. He offers me a small smile. “Only worthwhile lesson is: the pointy part goes into the enemy.”
It takes me a second to register that he made a joke, and he seems so unsure about it that I laugh.
A shocked gasp is a more accurate description of my reaction, but he seems rather pleased by it nonetheless.
It turns my gasp into a softer sort of smile, one his eyes get trapped in like a fly caught in honey.
I look around, wondering what is next. He seems to read me easily enough because he offers his hand to me, palm up. I stare at it until he says, “I’m sure Turan has already delivered my message, so I will Fade us to our destination. Do not let go of my hand.”
I nod and fold my fingers around his big, steady hand.
It instantly warms up my cold skin, a strange buzz running all the way up my arm.
I don’t have time to ask more questions because he suddenly comes flush against my front, blocking the words in my throat.
My entire body breaks into goose bumps, from the shadows wrapping themselves tenderly around us or from his other hand cradling my nape, I’m not sure.
The sunlight disappears and our surroundings fade away.
Wind tears at us and I’m glad Nathan’s hold is like iron.
Cool and unbreakable. I bury my head in his chest and slowly count my breaths.
One, two, three, four. Hold. It only takes two rounds before my feet feel solid ground again and Nathan’s grasp lightens enough to tell me we’re here. Wherever here is.
I’m about to let go of him to investigate what looks like a cave when the temperature drops to an all-time low.
Nathan shouts, and I see the shadows I still haven’t asked him about rush at something behind me.
I can’t turn because I’m back in his arms, and he twists us too quickly for me to keep my footing.
I go down, taking him with me, and when I focus on his face, it’s one of agony.
Everything quiets too swiftly, and my eyes widen in horror as I finally see his back, and the dark knife protruding from it.