Page 3

After a hundred and forty-seven years of practice, I prided myself on calculating a person’s thoughts, motivation, and behavior with only a few seconds of observance. But trying to make sense of Death was akin to attempting to catch a shadow. Impossible.

“Attempting to understand me is a futile venture, Astoria.”

My heart clenched. It had been a long time since I heard my name spoken out loud. How long had it been since I’d given someone my true name? Heard it called by a loved one? Too long…

And it was a damn shame to hear it from his lips.

“I would never assume to know you, Death.” A lie, spoken if only to save myself the heartache.

“You’d sooner grow wings.”

My eyes fell on Ishani, her sweet rosy cheeks and thick dark lashes. As intimately as I knew him, I could never guess when he’d show up. Grief was my constant companion, its echoing halls my home. The place where love once dwelled, before Death was cruel enough to steal it from me.

“It’s not time,” I argued, knowing damn well she wasn’t getting any better.

“Astoria…”

“No, it’s not time.”

Nobody had defeated Death, until me. There was not one person in history who had come face to face with him and lived to tell the tale.

There were plenty of stories of those who had died and come back to life, but many of them were not gone long enough to meet the reaper who would come to collect their souls.

I know, because I asked Nemo to look into it.

I was an anomaly. One that disrupted the worlds grand design, and he hated that.

His features softened for a moment, just a flicker, until the walls of his dark and steely fortress grew high once more.

How many times had we performed this dance?

The answer was plenty. Over the years I was almost resolved to let him win, he had worn me down and damn near beaten the defiance out of me with his trickery and guilt.

I was tired of the game we played, and yet I found myself stuck in the same cycle, repeating the same movements.

“Astoria…”

I was smarter than to make a fool of death. I had done it once and here I was, almost a century later, still paying the price. “She’s not ready, she’s barely started the–”

“Astoria,” Grim spoke firmly, crowding me back against the wall.

A single tear traced the curve of my cheek.

He was the last entity that I had ever wanted to share a piece of myself with, yet here we were.

Again. Because no matter how far I ran, he was a breath away from nipping at my heels once more.

His chest brushed against mine as he gripped my chin between his cold fingers. His ashen skin stopped scaring me a long time ago, as did his dark eyes that were as deep and murky as the seas abyss. He was beautiful in his own right, but a monster still the same.

“Astoria!” Grim was forceful, as he leveled his gaze with my own.

“You—”

“Can’t? You know more than anyone that I can.”

The tears stopped then. I sucked in a determined, ragged breath. “I’ll save her.”

“Can your soul handle another mark?” he asked, cocking his head to the side with scrutiny.

He spoke of my soul as if it hadn’t already been stained black. What was another smudge, if not for those I loved? “I’ll do it.”

Letting go of my chin, his hands came down on my shoulders. I didn’t need to speak, he knew my thoughts, and his exploration of them made me burn.

“I’ve come out of kindness,” he said, tilting his chin back toward Ishani, “to warn you.”

“Kindness?” I spit, shaking out of his grip. “Death is not kind.”

“Yet here I am.”

He was here. But he was here as the reaper, not the peacekeeper. He was the end all, be all. And it wasn’t her time. “Leave.”

“I’ll be back, Stori. Soon . She’s ready and so am I.”

“Just go.” My shoulders shook, but as swift as his presence had danced with mine, it disappeared. Ink releasing from pen. Gone, but staining.

With no time to collect myself the door pushed open and Piper peered in, her phone washing her face in a blue film as she first looked toward where her daughter slept in the hospital bed and then to me, and back to her screen.

“Mind if I step out for a few hours? I have a few work things I need to take care of,” she asked, her nails tapping against the screen of her phone.

“Of course, coffee’s there on the table.”

“You’re the best, thanks Elizabeth. I’ll be back with some later dinner.”

One second her long arms were coming around me in a tight hug and the next she was rushing out the door, her phone already held against her ear, and the coffee I had bought for myself in her hand.

I had worked for the Kapoor family for the last ten years, ever since Piper gave birth to Ishani. As their full-time nanny, I rapidly became a fixture in the family. At the time of my hire, they had believed me to be Elizabeth Rhodes , a nineteen-year-old college student.

It wasn’t as if I could tell them I was one hundred and forty-six and that I had been cursed to never age.

Every piece of my life operated with an expiration date, a time stamp.

If I stuck around too long, people would notice and then they’d talk.

Even if it took a while, eventually, someone would discover I did not age.

Magic was something humans could not make sense of, and I did not feel like becoming a test subject, even for the sake of science.

Ten years was perhaps too long to work for the Kapoors.

Just the other day, Piper asked what skincare I had been using, but the thought of leaving them was painful.

Especially considering what they were going through.

I thought I could afford a few more years, even if it meant lying and pretending to be working on my doctorate.

I knew though, that my time with them was coming to an end.

Almost two years ago, a tumor was discovered in Ishani’s spinal cord.

It was fast-growing and cancerous. We’d spent many nights this way, taking shifts as she slept and went through various treatments and surgeries.

She was in remission, proven by a long stint at home and life returning to a level of normalcy.

Until she had another seizure a few weeks ago, landing her back in the children's hospital.

The room number sloppily written in marker on the whiteboard mocked me as I dwelled on Grim’s warning. I took a sip of the coffee meant for Piper, the one Death put his lips to. How long would she have? A few days? A week?

Death was coming for her, and I was the only person able to stop it, except that I knew firsthand the cost of such magic.

Someone would have to take her place.