Page 9 of Veil of Death and Shadow (Order of Reapers #1)

9

MAREENA

Approximately Nine Years Ago, Three Years Before The Undoing

O ur short bus to Fremont and the following ten-minute walk to the canal was stilted and awkward on my part, though Sora worked her magic and ate through most of the silence.

She detailed her short, dramatic breakup—unsurprisingly, Penny didn’t take the news about us moving in with her ex well—and then spent most of the time running through color palettes and decor options for the new apartment.

Levi, though quiet, didn’t seem disinterested, and he did a decent job of offering opinions whenever Sora shoved pictures of various rugs and art prints under his nose. None of them, of course, were items we could actually afford, but Sora loved digital window shopping.

By the time we reached our favorite spot on the canal—between two thick trees that were perfect for setting up a hammock, my earlier tension about Sora trying to force something romantic between me and Levi had eased. She was good at making friends, and maybe that was all she was hoping for from this evening—a distraction from Penny. By her estimates, one person out of our life probably just made room for another to enter.

There was a cool breeze coming off the water, and we stood there for a moment, watching as a family of ducks and a kayaker drifted past us.

“It’s beautiful here,” Levi said.

“It is.” I sat down on a smooth, dry patch of dirt, and let my legs dangle over the side of the ledge, feet hovering above the soft current.

The canal was a long, narrow stretch that connected the lake downtown with Puget Sound.

My favorite part of Seattle—and one of the reasons Sora and I chose it in the first place—was that it was nearly impossible to find a neighborhood that wasn’t a short trip from the water. When I closed my eyes and focused on the smell of salt in the air, I could almost feel myself back with Amto Amani, the memory of her salt-and-pepper hair in the wind as we collected rocks along the shore suddenly vivid and clear.

“Best city in the world, didn’t I tell you?” Sora plopped down on my left and took another long pull from the bottle before shoving it into my hands. “You lucked out finding us when you did you know—we can show you around. We’ve gotten pretty good at scavenging up cheap and free stuff to do in the city. At the very least, we can save you time going through the trial-and-error period.”

Sora had a habit of spotting and befriending strays. We had a difficult first few months when we moved here, and she seemed convinced to make sure others had it easier.

“So,” I took a small sip as Levi sat down on my other side, trying to ignore the gentle pressure of his arm against mine and the way it shot warmth through my body like a lightning bolt, “I take it you’re not from around here then?”

He shook his head. “Just passing through.”

“Where’s home?” I passed him the bottle, glancing out of the corner of my eyes as he pressed his mouth to the glass and took a swig.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged, something unreadable in his expression. “Is that weird? I’ve kind of lived all over the place.”

“No, not weird.” I’d moved a lot over the years, and each time, it felt like that feeling of home had to be rebuilt. It was often very grueling work. “Sometimes home isn’t a place.”

Mine had always been people. First, home was with Amto Amani in her cottage by the water. And then, eventually, it just became Sora. Still was, regardless of where we ended up crashing.

"Damn right,” she said, her shoulder bumping playfully against mine. “How long are you planning to stay?"

He considered for a moment as he watched a duck dip its head beneath the water for some food. “Not sure yet. I’m in the area for a work thing."

“Well then, you’ll absolutely have to come to our housewarming party if you’re still in town,” she said.

“I think we should sign a lease and move in before you send out invitations,” I said, though I couldn’t help but grin. Her excitement was contagious. We were this close to getting out of Oleg’s shed and building the life we’d been dreaming about for years.

“Yeah, yeah.” she scrunched her nose, glancing at me from the corner of her eyes. “You think I should invite Penny?”

Levi made a sound that was stuck somewhere between a laugh and a cough.

“Are you guys going to try being friends?” I asked. It wasn’t unusual, not for Sora. I didn’t know a single person who’d managed to stay mad at her for long, even when she broke their heart. She was just one of those people you did everything you could to keep in your life for as long as you could, even if that meant swallowing your pride.

“Maybe.” She shrugged. “She makes a mean spinach dip and she’s great at party games, so friendship isn’t off the table as far as I’m concerned.”

I snorted. “Give her some time to fall out of love with you and to make sure Becca’s cool with her stopping by the apartment. They’re exes, too, you know? We can’t all be as,” I thought for a moment, “evolved, as you.”

Levi took another sip of tequila, his expression somehow smooth, as if he was drinking water and not liquid fire.

“Maybe I can set her up with one of my friends. Fastest way to fall out of love with someone is to fall in love with somebody else.”

Levi chuckled again, the sound low and oddly melodious.

Sora studied him for a moment. “What about you? You ever been in love, Levi?”

He coughed, choking more at the question than he had at the booze, and handed the bottle back to her.

“Jesus, Sor.” I massaged my temples, feeling almost bad for the guy. Sora didn’t do subtlety; she saw no point in it. I turned towards him. “Feel free to ignore her. She does well with boundaries. Sometimes.”

He was quiet for a moment, then said, “No, I haven’t.”

“You should try it some time.” Sora sighed, leaning back. “I love being in love.”

I felt his stare on me. “And you?”

“Me, what?” I asked, tossing a twig into the water and watching the impact ripple.

The sky, a stretch of deep pinks and oranges, so vibrant it hardly looked real, was starting to darken.

“No,” Sora snorted, “Mars doesn’t even do romance, let alone love.”

I shot her a glare.

“What?” she shrugged. “It’s true. You’re all dark and moody and anti-love.”

“Not true.” I flicked some dirt at her. “I love you.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, and do you know how much work that took—worming my way into your life? Good god, I can’t imagine even rocket science being more difficult than that.” She leaned forward, turning towards Levi. “But fair point, I stand corrected. Mars loves me, but only because I forced her to. She otherwise acts like it's an affliction and refuses connection on any and all levels.” When I started to protest, she pressed her hand over my mouth. “She won’t even adopt a dog despite being obsessed with them.”

I licked her hand, and she tugged it back towards her chest with a half-disgusted, half-amused squeal.

“Well, we also couldn’t afford one. And it’s not like there’s room in Oleg’s studio for a single other thing. We can barely even fit in there.” I straightened my posture and shot her a look. “Some people might call the no pet rule a responsible choice.”

“Shut up.” She snorted. “You know that’s not why you have a no pet rule.”

Levi’s lips twitched, and I saw the light outline of a dimple from the corner of my eye. “Why would someone refuse love . . . or dogs?”

“Because,” Sora wiggled her brows, eyes dancing with mirth, “she’s cursed.”

“Sora.” I shot her a warning look.

“Well?” she pressed. “Do you deny it? Because if I’m wrong, tell me I’m wrong.”

Heat crept up my neck. Hopefully the shadows cast from the trees surrounding us were dark enough that my blush wasn’t obvious.

Other than Amto Amani, who’d vehemently opposed my developing theories about the death curse, Sora was the only one I’d ever voiced the fear to out loud. Partially because she’d been around for its resurgence in my adolescence and had witnessed the heavy weight of that guilt firsthand. How else could I explain the fact that my first girlfriend, at age thirteen—a sweet, brief romance in the way romance often was at that age—died from a heart issue, or that my first boyfriend, at age fourteen, died in a hiking accident less than three weeks after we started ‘dating.’ Safe to say that after that, I gained quite the reputation at our school.

And then of course, there was Rina—the death that struck deeper than all, save for Amto Amani’s. It burrowed into my chest, setting up a permanent residence there. Any lingering doubts I had about my curse disappeared entirely that night, even with Sora’s insistence that if I ever were actually cursed, that was the night it was broken. Since that night, she’d made it one of her lifelong missions to prove it to me.

Rina was my best friend, but she was Sora’s sister. Still, even with the evidence stacked up against me, Sora refused to blame me for her death. She also adamantly resisted every single one of my attempts to refuse her friendship, to push her away. Eventually, I grew exhausted trying, and allowed myself the hope that the universe saw fit to let me keep her.

I hadn’t let myself add any other close relationships since—platonic or romantic—nor did I have any plans to. Sora was alive and here—a reality I still couldn’t quite let myself feel safe in—and that would be enough. I didn’t need anyone else. I wouldn’t risk anyone else.

“What kind of curse?” Levi asked, the stretch of silence oddly heavy now, where it had been light and playful just a moment ago.

“She’s convinced that everyone she loves is doomed to die an early death.” Sora dropped her head on my shoulder. “I’ve never really believed in curses myself, but I can’t imagine a more tragic one than that.”

“Well,” he shifted next to me, and I felt his stare like a flame against my cheek, “you clearly managed to get past her defenses, didn’t you? And from what I can tell, you’re still very much alive. So, if there was a curse, surely, it’s broken, no?”

“You’d think.” She tried skipping a stone, but it landed with a heavy plop, just two feet in front of us. “At least that's what I’ve been trying to tell her. For years. But apparently not. And she refuses to let anyone else in to test my theory that if she was cursed, she’s not anymore. Frank’s the closest thing she has to a friend outside of me, which is just absurdly depressing.”

“How’d you manage it?” he asked, the two of them carrying on with the conversation as if I wasn’t here, even though I was quite literally lodged between them. “Get her to be your friend, I mean.”

“Sheer stubbornness,” I muttered, “and a relentless lack of self-preservation.”

“Pure persistence, an iron will, and an absolute rejection of every attempt she made to push me away.” Her voice was full of pride, but I could read the layer of sadness in her expression when her eyes briefly met and held mine.

For the most part, Sora was an open book, at least when it came to the joyful and adventurous parts of herself she wanted to share with people. Her response to everything we’d been through was to love with abandon and wear her heart on her sleeve—the exact opposite of mine. It was like the moment she lost Rina, she became determined to live her life to the fullest for the both of them.

Still, open as she was, it was rare for her to be quite this forthcoming, least of all with someone we’d been on a first name basis with for all of an hour. Usually, her lack of filter was one of my favorite things about her. Right now, I’d give my left kidney for her to stop talking.

When she opened her mouth to say something else, I pressed my hand across her lips—the vibration of her groan tickling my fingers.

“I think you’ve hit your tequila limit tonight.” I grabbed the bottle from her, taking a long pull from it myself—a failed attempt to dispel how uncomfortable this conversation was starting to make me—and then set it down next to Levi, where she couldn’t reach it.

She pulled my hand away, her nose scrunched in a pout. “No I didn’t. That bottle is still practically full.”

“If it helps,” Levi said, his voice almost a whisper as he picked up the bottle and started to pick at the label, “sometimes it feels like I’m cursed too.”

When I turned towards him, I expected to find a teasing grin on his face. But when I studied him, the final rays of the tired sun delicately framing the shadows in his expression, I swallowed back my retort. He wasn’t mocking me or poking fun.

All I saw stretched across the sharp contours of his face was a familiar, suffocating grief. He wore it the way I did—a well-loved uniform that he could disguise or temporarily transform, but at the end of the day, when you took off the mask, the base of him was this.

“What kind of curse?” Sora asked.

“I don’t know.” He considered for a moment, likely trying to temper how much he should share in a way that Sora had failed to do. “The kind where my entire life leads in exactly one direction—no matter how hard I try to veer it in a different one.” His eyes held mine with a determined focus. Something about the way he looked at me felt like he could see through me, like he could shuffle through the pages, reading every thought—even the ones that I fought to keep hidden from myself. “And that particular path is, unfortunately, a lonely one. Not one that I can drag anyone along for anyway.” He let out a humorless chuckle and shook his head, an attempt to brush the thought away, or maybe just frustration with himself for revealing a wound he wasn’t ready for strangers to see. “I guess that’s not really a curse. Maybe more so fate.”

Fate.

The word brushed against my brain like a caress. I’d never really believed in fate or destiny. My life has been a series of simply trying to survive one moment long enough to reach the next. But now that he mentioned it, the lines between fate and a curse appeared rather fragile.

If anything, fate seemed worse—inevitable and inescapable—more suffocating even than a curse.

A curse, at least, could be broken.

Shrugging, he peeled away a thin layer of the label, his focus locked on the nearly translucent strip of paper like it held the answers to the universe’s most confounding questions. “Sometimes fate can have a way of feeling as hopeless as a curse, I guess. Unavoidable, like I’m a pawn in my own life.”

I felt a strange urge to reach out for his hand, to ease the heaviness that seemed to suddenly shroud him, to pull him back from wherever his thoughts had carried him away to.

“Who says that you don’t have agency in constructing your own fate?” Sora sat up, her eyes clear and firm—any sign of the tequila’s effects dissipating instantly. Her jaw clenched as she studied him, like she was angry on his behalf. “Your life belongs to you, Levi, and you alone—don’t let anyone box you in somewhere you don’t want to be. If there’s something you want, go after it—fuck anyone who gets in your way. Even fate.”

She delivered the speech with the focus and determination of a general leading a crew into battle. I felt the familiar flare of her protectiveness. Her iron will and stubbornness extended far beyond her own benefit.

A heavy silence fell over us all for a moment.

“Maybe fate is real,” she said, her voice quieter now. “I don’t know, and I suppose I never will. But if I do have a fate and it leads me somewhere I don’t want to go, at least I know I won't go down without a fight. Sometimes just the illusion of free will can be enough.”

For most of her life, Sora had been dragged through the mud, held there by rules and people who fought to keep her down. In some ways she had it far worse than I did.

I was lucky enough to have Amto Amani for the first decade of my life, to feel the power of that kind of love and protection—but Sora had been shuffled through the system longer than her memory could place. Still, she always had such a clear vision of what she wanted, and, even more impressive, the belief that she’d achieve it. For as long as I’d known her, she’d devoted every ounce of her being to chasing after the life that she wanted, the life that she deserved. It was a devotion she extended to those less fearless in cultivating the same kind dreams.

“Is it possible,” Levi said, his words slow and tentative, as his stare found mine, “that maybe you aren’t cursed? That maybe these people you’ve known were always destined to die when they did? That they were lucky to have you in their lives at the end—a final nod of gratitude from the world they were leaving?”

Sora gasped, her eyes wide. “Now that is a reading of the situation I can actually get behind.”

Breath lodged in my chest as his words rolled over and then through me. It wasn’t a frame I’d ever considered before.

But at the end of the day, did it even matter?

Curse or not, I still always ended up in the same position every time—alone, with the people I cared about gone.

The three of us sat in silence for a few minutes, until Levi stood up and brushed the dirt off his pants. “I should get going.”

“You sure?” I asked, feeling partially responsible for the turn in conversation. “We didn’t mean to scare you off with Sora’s Ted Talk. If you want, we can officially veto any more fate or curse conversation.” I grimaced. “That would be my preference generally, if I’m being honest.”

“No, you didn’t scare me off. This was—nice, actually. I should get back though. I’ve been out for a while and people will be looking for me. Thank you for inviting me to join you both. I had fun and this was certainly a better turn from where my day started.” He smiled down at us, though there was something almost sad in the downward dip of his eyes as they locked on Sora, and then on me. There was an intensity in his stare that seemed to crawl over my skin. “You won’t remember me or this night, but I hope you both get everything you want out of life. And good luck with your move.”

There was a strange finality in his words, but he was hiking back up towards the trail before either of us had a chance to respond.