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Astoria

T he shape of a man stood just off the side of the road, half-hidden in the trees. For a second, I thought he wasn’t real—just a trick of the shadows or the crash rattling my brain. But then he stepped forward. Calm. Unhurried. As if he’d been waiting.

I knelt in the middle of the road with Beatrice in my arms, my knees soaked in blood that wasn’t mine. She was breathing. Somehow, impossibly, she was breathing.

My husband wasn’t.

The world cracked open.

I tried to wave the stranger down. “Help,” I said, but my voice cracked. I couldn’t make it loud enough as I pointed toward the wreckage. The car was smoking and James’s body was slumped over the steering wheel, head turned at the wrong angle. I didn’t let myself look too long.

Beatrice whimpered. She was covered in blood, but alive. I tried to wipe her clean, scrubbing at her gown with my palm as if that would somehow erase the stains. Guilt built rampantly in my chest, as I worried the stranger would see me for what I was.

A murderer . Isn’t that what I had done? Murdered my husband. One second he was climbing out to help me, the next he was slumped over, in a pool of crimson and glass.

When I looked up again, the ghostly shape was gone.

I blinked, frantically scanning the tree line. Maybe I’d imagined him. Maybe there’d never been anyone there. Maybe none of this was happening.

Then he appeared again—closer this time.

And Bea went still.

Her body tensed, locked in place. No breath, no heartbeat. Like someone had pressed pause on her life.

I screamed.

And he knelt in front of me.

His eyes were dark, bottomless things that pulled the world out of focus.

The smell of blood vanished. The bite of the wind, gone.

Even the pain, my torn arms, the glass lodged in my leg, faded to nothing.

There was something not quite human about him, something that made my skull throb as I met his unblinking stare.

His lips curled into a sneer, revealing a mouthful of sharp, pearly teeth.

Slowly, he dragged his tongue across them; a predator savoring the moment before the kill.

That’s when I understood who he was.

Not a man. Not a bystander. Not a rescuer.

Death.

Not metaphorically. Not symbolically. The real thing. The raw, ancient presence of it. Time stopped, because he willed it.

He looked down at Beatrice, my daughter, frozen in my arms, and tilted his head like he couldn’t quite figure her out.

Like she wasn’t supposed to be here. Like she’d confused something in his order.

“Please,” I pleaded. “Not her. Take me. Take me instead.” My voice only just made it past my lips, but he heard it. His gaze shifted to me, and I felt it everywhere—in my bones, in my teeth, behind my eyes.

He studied me and I wondered if I’d said something wrong. As if my plea had offended him. My attention fell to his clenched jaw, a tight line running down his neck. He was strong, his arms and broad chest straining against the simple black button shirt he wore.

“Astoria Devlin Tempest, what have you done?”

What I noticed first was that he knew my name…

The name passed down to me maternally. My mother’s surname. My grandmother's and great-grandmother's surname and so on. Our curse name. Tempest.

He spoke it gently, with reverence and condemnation all the same. I straightened my spine against the chill he sent down it.

What I noticed second was that his body shifted in the moonlight, the edges of him fraying like static. Maybe he couldn’t quite hold the form he currently held, as if one shift of the wind could blow him away.

He laughed when my fear spiked.

“I, of course, know of the Tempest women, with their unruly crimson hair and their skin of ice. Green eyes, crystalline like emeralds, and lips perfectly rosy.”

I froze. Not with magic nor sorcery, but with fear.

“I think you must be my punishment,” he murmured, waving a hand over me and Bea, evaporating the blood and washing the dirt from our gowns.

Finally, I worked up the courage to ask, “Who are you?”

“Not who, Astoria. What? What am I.”

He stood to his full height, holding out his hand to me.

I looked him over, from his shiny leather boots to the top of his head, where black waves shimmered under the stars.

He wore a simple shirt and trousers. Evening still clung bitterly to New York, hovering on the cusp of summer, yet the cold hadn’t licked his cheeks pink or tinted his nose.

It was as if the season had forgotten him altogether.

Hesitantly, I took his outstretched hand, noticing for a moment that his skin was soft and warm, unlike his presence. Rising to my feet, I tried to pull Bea with me, only to feel his arms come under mine, lifting me until I was standing firm on the ground.

“Leave her,” he commanded. “She will wake in moments, and all will return.”

“What are you?” I asked, wrapping my arms around myself.

“What are you?” he countered, his eyes devouring me beneath a quizzical brow. “You are what I am not. I am not what you are.”

His stoicism unnerved me.

“If you are tempest, I am tranquility. You may call me Death.”

It hit me then… I was in trouble.

How long had I believed to be unscathed by the Tempest curse? Yet here I stood, at fifty-four knowing damn well that I’d done the unimaginable. I was a murderer and it seemed even the Devil himself knew it.

The curse had taken it too far.

But hadn't I save my daughter’s life? Brought her back from the dead?

“Death?”

“In the flesh.” He motioned over his body, holding his hand out toward me as if it would comfort me to know that he was corporeal.

It hadn’t, because Death was not someone, but something.

We were told stories as children—dark tales whispered beneath blankets and behind trembling fingers. Of a cloaked figure with hollow eyes and a scythe made of bone. The reaper, they called him. The one who ferried souls across some unseen river, who knocked once and waited patiently, never rushed.

But that wasn’t Death. Not really.

Those were stories, crafted for sleepless children and over-imaginative minds. Warnings dressed in bedtime rhymes. Myths that made Death feel manageable, something you could picture, maybe even bargain with. Something that could be soothed with a nightlight and a lullaby.

But Death…

Death was the omen that plagued all of humanity at birth.

It was the ticking embedded in our ribs, the expiration sealed in the soft spot of our skulls. It was an inheritance, silent and absolute. Not a man with a blade, but a law. A rule that never changed.

He doesn’t come for you. He’s always been with you.

He is the absence you carry, the shadow stitched to your spine, the cold when your skin is warm. He is the mirror that stops reflecting, the breath that never returns, the name no one calls out loud. The quiet. The waiting.

Yet here he was, and I didn’t need to question him for the truth.

I knew it.

He was Death and he’d come for me.

“You don’t look surprised,” he stated.

“I’ve just watched my daughter die, and my husband take her place. I am fifty-four years old, yet time stands still for me.” I worried my lip between my teeth, clutching my wrap tighter. “No, I don’t suppose much surprises me any longer.”

He shrugged, shoving his hands further into the deep pockets of his pants. “Best to not question things, I suppose.”

“Are you here for him? ” I pointed back to James's body, peering around Death's shoulders.

“No, I’ve already collected him,” he said with a stern voice, never breaking eye contact. “I’m here for you.”

“But I am not dead. Can Death kill?”

“Only when it needs to teach a lesson.”

I didn’t need to be taught a lesson, I needed to call for help, to get my daughter home, and prepare funeral arrangements. “Here to kill me then?”

He chuckled, tipping his head up toward the moon. “Not yet, Star. Not yet.”

I suppose anyone else would have been relieved to hear Death did not appear for them, but instead of a downright no , he used the words not yet . Those few words were spun into a threat.

“Do you realize what you’ve done?” he said.

“The curse." With no other explanation for what was done that day, I admitted my truth, “I do not age.”

“That, I have no care for. What you did, Astoria, is of the greatest importance to me.”

I glanced back toward Bea—her shape half on the cold ground, half suspended in the air where I had extracted myself from beneath her.

“Yes,” he said, glancing toward James’s body, “and him. You’ve meddled in something you have no right to. The universe is fragile, and your spirit is a disruption I must cleanse.”

I stumbled, his hand catching my elbow as I tripped over his words.

“You do want to kill me,” I choked out.

Death laughed. “Alas, I cannot. The curse is firm.”

“Firm?” I echoed. So, I will live forever. The notion was dizzying.

"Not if I have something to do with it. You cannot be left to do this."

I gaped, my hand flying to my forehead as I felt a signature of magic linger somewhere it had not been seconds before. “I didn’t mean to kill him or save her. It just… happened," I stammered, narrowing my eyes on the thing that just spoke in my mind.

“Nevertheless, you did so. Our precarious balance has been put off and now I must ensure it's set right. Humans age and die, Astoria. You must, and will—”

“Die?” I interrupted.

“Precisely.”

“You’re angry I stole your glory and killed him?” I argued, dropping all pretenses. Of course, Death would have no propriety, so why should I?

“I do not relish in killing, and you shouldn’t either.”

Taking a step, and another, I stood chest to chest with Death. My anger building as he glared down at my small frame. “Do not berate me on morality," I seethed.

“You are no one to decide the fate of others. I am not angry. I am displeased. You are fifty-four, yet you stand here not a breath over twenty-two. You are an enigma that must be brought to heel.”

“I could not let her die—”

“You must!” he argued, his temper peeking through his otherwise apathetic resolve. “You must, Astoria. You do not decide the timeline of others. It was her time; it was not his .”

For the first time since laying eyes on James's dead body, my heart clenched. I was not a monster. I did not wish him dead. At one point we loved each other, and even though my love faded over time, he was still my husband. I began to cry, falling to my knees at the feet of Death.

“I am a mother,” I sobbed, as if it was a fine excuse for what I’d done.

“The heart of a mother is a fierce weapon to behold.” His voice softened, as he crouched before me. “Still, you must refrain from using this power. Break your curse. Do not force me to visit you once more.”

Death stood then, brushing his hands down his pants. He pulled a coat out of the air then, the item materializing from nothing as he pulled it on and flicked the collar up.

“Where are you going?” I argued, pulling Bea’s frozen body closer to mine.

“Home," he said, glancing back at me.

“Aren’t you going to help me?” I narrowed my eyes at him, squinting to see him through the misty fog that began to settle deep in the valley. His figure mixed with it as he walked away.

His lips ticked up in a feral grin, eyes creasing with judgment. “Clean up your own mess, Astoria.”

With a loud snap of his fingers, Bea groaned beside me, bringing my attention back as she fell to the dirt. I looked for Death, only to find he was gone. Vanished.

Yet his voice broke through my mind once again, “She is still marked. Balance comes for us all; you cannot delay the inevitable. Make peace with it.”