Page 4 of The Deathless One (The Gravesinger #1)

He would destroy them all with a single breath, a single wave of his hand. Why was she here?

But his thoughts were scattered. It was hard to think past the rose-red bow of her lips and the strange dark slashes of brows that were a little too thick. She was so serious in her slumber.

He ghosted his fingers over the lock of hair across her throat and discovered it was not slumber but death, after all. The deep cut of a sword through her pale flesh had been made with violence, and he could easily see the threads of red that vibrated around it. She’d been murdered.

If he wanted salvation, then first he would need to save her.

“But saving a soul like yours isn’t so easy, little nightmare,” he muttered. “You cannot be so willing to die.”

Pressing his hand down on the center of her chest, he drew out her soul. He expected to find a light, ephemeral thing, and was surprised to be greeted instead by darkness.

“A delicate casing for a much harder soul,” he said. “How intriguing. Now let’s see what kind of monster you are willing to become.”

Rolling her soul up into a ball, he tossed it into the darkness and watched as it splintered into hundreds of pieces, memories she held dear to her heart.

He walked among them, peering into the pieces like the shattered edges of a mirror.

Her mother. Her laboratory. A book of magic.

A dog that wagged its tail so fast, it frequently hit the appendage on walls and doorframes.

Silly memories of a girl who had not seen enough of the world to know evil.

So how had this soul become so blackened?

Then he came to her wedding to a man who left bruises on her skin long before she’d agreed to the marriage. The loss of a kingdom. The loss of a mother.

“Curious,” he mused as he stepped through the shards of her memories to peer into the futures that might be. Some of them were blank, revealing nothing at all. Her death, perhaps, or an afterlife that rejected her.

But then he saw the futures he’d been searching for.

A woman with a dark crown made of black glass.

A throne splattered with blood. Men and women afflicted by a plague that turned mortals into weeping husks of what they had once been.

It was a tragic future, full of pain. But there was another.

A similar crown, a similar throne, and two hands upon the armrests. Two hands from two different people.

Plucking that shard out of the air, he stared into it a little harder. Her delicate, pale fingers were covered in rings and clasped a man’s hand. It was difficult to tell, but he recognized it as his own. They were seated upon a throne slowly sinking into a sea of blood.

It was perfect.

“Ah,” he said. “So you are a gravesinger, after all.”

He carried this future back to her, then stood over her limp body and pondered his choices.

He could let her go. He could easily piece her soul back together and let it sink into her body.

She’d drift through the beyond, out of his realm and into another, where she would join the dead.

Perhaps she would never even know that she could have once been great.

Or he could use her, free himself from this place, manipulate her so she had no idea what his real plan was.

When he was finished, when he was finally home, he would make sure she could not send him back.

And so he kept the piece of her future that she would never know could become a possibility, and the rest of her soul he allowed to sink into the depths of his realm.

Hands reached out of the inky darkness, each one clasping a piece of her and disappearing into the murk.

Perhaps someday she would want those pieces back.

Perhaps someday he would let her fight for them.

But not until he got what he wanted.

Crouching above her again, he gently ushered the water away from her eyes.

The liquid poured down her temples like black tears.

Though he should have felt pity for this poor creature, all he could feel was a sudden sense of relief.

She had made it to his side. The witch who had betrayed him was not lying.

There would come a day, very soon, when he would finally be free.

He placed her future in his pocket, then pressed his thumbs against her eyes and breathed out an ancient word, unknown in her language or any yet spoken.

It meant “life.”

She arched into his hands like he’d struck her with lightning. Wide, horrified eyes stared up at him, eyes so dark he could almost see the lack of a soul in them. She opened her mouth, perhaps to scream, but he placed a single finger over those bloodred lips.

“No screaming,” he said. “You will listen.”

She nodded, clearly too terrified to speak.

“You are dead. And you will not remember this in a few moments. But I am who you think I am. Your soul has traveled to me, the Deathless One, and I will feast upon it if you wish. Or I can give you back your life so that you may fight another day.”

He drew his finger away from her mouth, trailing the scarred tip over her plump lower lip.

She met his gaze without fear this time, a hardness settling inside her. “I want to fight. I want my kingdom back.”

“Revenge is a dangerous game, little nightmare.”

Still, she glared at him. No fear in her eyes any longer. Not even hope. Just anger and rage. “I want him to suffer for what he did to me. I want him to know how it feels to watch everyone he loves die, and then to see me standing above him with a knife.”

“I will give you that.” What a feral creature he’d found. He drew his hand along her jaw. “But you will give yourself to me. There will come a time when I have need of you, and you will not be able to say no. You will not like what I ask of you.”

“Anything,” she spat with surprising heat in her voice. “I will do anything.”

“And so you will have a chance.” He had never met a soul filled with such rage. He could hardly wait to understand what had given her such power. “But I want to see you burn your kingdom down and rebuild it in my name.”

Without hesitation, she ground her teeth together and replied, “I will.”