Page 22 of The Deathless One (The Gravesinger #1)

He didn’t know what was happening, but the longer he was around her, the more real he felt.

Perhaps it was part of the magic that came with siphoning off some of his power to her.

She was absorbing that, which in turn meant that he could steal some of it back from her.

It allowed him to stay in the living realm longer, feel more alive.

As long as she called him, at least. And she called him often, if his understanding of time was correct.

Time was so difficult to keep track of, especially when he spent so many days in his dark realm. The ink and the memories were always so convincing that it felt like ages, not days. It made him long to be around her, closer to her, and the other gravesingers whispered to give in to her allure.

A witch had made him trust her once before. He’d forgiven her every fault, because he’d thought himself in love. Countless times he’d ignored the warning signs as he played the fool who had hoped that to her, he wasn’t just a monster. That he could actually find someone who saw… him.

But those gravesingers whispered that he didn’t even know who he was. How could he? The only time he’d spent trying to discover himself had been under the watchful eyes of a witch who had guided him toward what she wanted. An end for both of them, filled with blood and power.

Shaking himself free from the dark thoughts yet again, he searched the void around him. He had come to realize that he now waited to hear Jessamine’s voice. He would stand still, for days on end, he feared, listening.

Sometimes it was just her voice bleeding into this realm as she took lessons from Sybil.

Or maybe it was her dreams. She called out for him in that dreamscape, and it took everything in him not to place himself in her mind during those moments.

Did she think she was dead again? Or did she cry out for him for other reasons?

Dangerous thoughts for a creature like him. Especially when he knew how this ended.

Now, though, he didn’t hear her at all. There was a strange stillness in this place.

Like even the inky darkness held its breath, waiting for the moment when he would sense a change.

Because there had to be a change, otherwise he wouldn’t be listening so hard.

He wouldn’t feel all the hairs on his arms rising as he…

Waited.

“You’re a godsdamned fool,” he muttered to himself. “Waiting for her to call on you like she’s already turned you into her pet, just like the cat you made her. You could just go yourself.”

But he couldn’t do that either. He didn’t want to be her puppet, waiting with bated breath for the first order she would give him.

The other gravesinger, the other witches, they had all tried to wield him like a weapon, and he had let them.

For an ounce of their attention, for a drop of genuine affection, he would have ended the world.

These feelings had nothing to do with her, he told himself, and everything to do with his desperation to feel something other than pain or abandonment.

In her memories, when she said he appeared to have more of a shape, he’d realized that was dangerously true. Even when he’d watched her from the shadows as she scrubbed her eyes afterward, there was more definition to his body, a sensation of weightiness that he hadn’t experienced before.

His mind and time were all scrambled. When had he shown her the memory? It felt like years, but in truth was only a few days ago. The memory of the boy she’d called Benji.

The timeline straightened out, and that was when he saw a reflection in the inky blackness at his feet. Not his reflection at all, but a dark-haired woman with haunted eyes, leaning against the side of a building.

Frowning, he stared down at his feet as Jessamine bolted forward and was gone.

“Wait,” he muttered, following her through the watery pools.

Puddles, he realized as his foot matched hers and stomped through the water so hard it splashed up in his realm as well. She was running, racing, flying through the streets, and he had no choice but to follow her.

Bitterly, he felt his body move without his permission.

The darkness took on form around him, stretching into the vague shapes of buildings with darkened windows as he ran with her.

Sprinting through the black streets, watching as she turned a corner and his realm mimicked hers, conjuring reality out of nothing.

For a while they ran, their feet matching in the puddles. But then he could see her to his right, just below his shoulder. She truly was a slip of a thing.

“Why are you running?” he asked, his voice a low murmur.

She startled, looking through a mirror at him. “What are you doing here?”

“Following you.”

“I don’t need you to follow me right now.”

“Tell me why you’re running.” He didn’t understand why she was acting like this. There were far too many reasons for her to run, and nearly all of them required that he get involved.

“You can’t see them?” Her cheeks were bright red with exertion, and her breathing was ragged. “You seem to know everything else, so I assumed you could see the damn infected trailing me.”

He looked behind them and watched as muddy creatures appeared in the darkness. They trailed ink drops, plopping down from their fingers in long tendrils of madness.

“Ah,” he muttered. “That is a problem.”

“You’re telling me. I’ve been trying to lose them for a while.” She leaned to the right, out of his sight, before returning into view. “Can you do something about them?”

“I am dead, nightmare. Did you forget?”

“Right.” She cursed, surprisingly raunchy for a princess. “Time to keep running, then.”

“I don’t believe they can climb.” He had no idea where that memory came from, but there was the faintest flash of another life. A life when he had tried to prevent these creatures from spreading. “Perhaps try to find a way higher.”

“Right. Worth a try.” Jessamine seemed to scan her surroundings before she caught a glimpse of something. “That might work.”

A ladder appeared beside him, dripping more of that liquid that coated everything in his home. But he found himself climbing it, rung by rung, all the way to the very top of a building. Once on top, he felt like he could see the end of forever.

His realm stretched so far beyond his reach. There was nothing there. Just a horizon with the vague sense of light to show him just how far away from everything he really was. So far. So beyond what he could ever dream or hope to find.

Between him and forever stood nothing at all.

“How far does it go?” he murmured.

“The city?” Jessamine seemed to still be with him, at least. “I don’t know. Seems to stretch as far as the eye can see.”

“It ends.” He wasn’t talking about her city. “Everything does. So there must be an end to this as well.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

The Deathless One looked down at the puddle he stood in, seeing her reflection instead. She wasn’t looking at her city anymore. She was looking at him and the darkness beyond. “What makes you say that?”

“Just a hunch.” She crouched, and his body was forced to mimic hers, as though he was her shadow. Her hand was so close to the water, they were almost touching.

“What are you doing out here, Jessamine?”

“I can’t go anywhere looking like this. Clothes that don’t fit, trousers falling off, a bodice that’s clearly the top half of a wedding dress.

It’s not like Sybil had anything to give me.

She only has the clothes on her back.” She touched a hand to her snarled hair, then winced.

“A hairbrush wouldn’t be halfway bad either. My fingers aren’t cutting it anymore.”

“Sybil has all that.”

“Actually, she doesn’t.” Jessamine looked troubled by the thought before she sucked in a breath through her teeth. “So I’m going to get myself something better.”

“You plan on stealing? Princess, I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“I have money,” she hissed. “And whenever you call me that, it sounds like an insult.”

He grinned and wished she could see that grin. She certainly shivered like she could. “It’s never meant as a compliment, I’ll admit.”

She stood, forcing him upright as well. Perhaps he’d insulted her.

She didn’t say another word for a while as she walked across construction planks, stretching from rooftop to rooftop, sometimes backtracking to find a plank and drag it with her.

Anyone living on the top floor would know what she was doing, but perhaps the people of this city were so used to danger that they ignored someone scurrying around on their roof like a rat.

Eventually, she reached a roof where she could climb down a fire escape. The stairs on the side of the building must have been ancient. Even in his realm, he could feel them swaying under his weight.

But then she opened up a window and slipped inside, and he lost her.

With no puddles to show him her surroundings, his illusory building just…

dissolved. He placed his hands in his pockets and rode the dark ink as it flattened back to the ground, where it eventually conjured a floor-length mirror.

Oval in shape, it revealed her image on the other side and matched a mirror in the living realm where she stood.

She was desperately trying to remove her bodice, her arms straining as she reached behind herself to yank viciously at the ties. They were so soiled and knotted, however, they might as well have been one sewn thread.

And he stood there, tongue-tied, watching the lovely line of her neck and the hollows of her collarbones.

She was… beautiful. He could see a small cluster of freckles on her right shoulder, and a little scar underneath her chin.

Small imperfections of a princess who had always striven to be perfect.

No matter how many times he looked at her, he knew that was the intention.

Every memory he’d pawed through said the same thing.

She was a paragon, a vision of perfection, a goddess come to life.