Belladonna

WHEN MIDNIGHT STRUCK LATER THAT NIGHT, SIGNA WAS READY.

She paced the length of the sitting room as she waited for the darkness to pull inward as Death filled her room, bringing with him the chill of late autumn. Signa was glad for the slippers she wore and the robe she’d pulled over her thin chemise. The warning of the approaching winter hung in the air, it’s chill bitter and biting across her skin.

“You did well. I’m glad you found a way to help Blythe.” Death took in the dark tresses that Signa had brushed and the cheeks that she’d pinched life into. She’d spent the past hour since Sylas had left letting her mind whirl as she readied herself, thinking through everything she wanted to ask him. Everything she wanted to discuss.

“Only because you warned me.” Signa wrung her hands. “Though the solution is temporary. Tell me… are you certain you haven’t any clue who could be behind Lillian’s murder?”

Death took a seat on the arm of the chaise. “This is no elaborate scheme. It’s as I’ve told you before—I’m limited in what I can see. When I touch someone, I claim their life. With that touch, I can see snippets of their living years, but I’m no psychic, nor am I all-knowing.”

Signa sighed. While she’d expected as much, it would have been so much easier if he knew something.

“And what of your powers, Signa?” He rose from the chaise and prowled toward her. Every step he took caused a flurry in her chest, a cold burn creeping into her lungs. “There’s something I’ve been curious about for a while. When you touched Magda, did you see anything?”

She’d buried the memory of that night deep, preferring never to think of what she’d done. But she did consider the question, and she shook her head. Death might have been able to see the lives of those he claimed, but Signa hadn’t seen a thing when she’d touched Magda.

Death made a low hum under his breath. “While you do have my powers,” he said, “it would seem that you’re not able to use them to the same extent. At least not yet.”

“What do you mean, ‘not yet’?” Signa remained still as he drew a step closer to her.

The shadows swayed on the walls around him, a back-and-forth dance that lulled her into a sense of comfort. “It’s merely a thought, though I wonder if you might be able to access your abilities better, Little Bird, if you were dead.”

Finally, she had the sense to take a step back. “But I cannot die. I don’t want to die.”

“Exactly,” he said. “You have a very long and full life ahead of you, rest assured. It’s only a theory, but I do believe that when your life is over—and it will be eventually, Signa—these powers will be awaiting you.”

Signa wrapped her arms around herself. “You think I’m like you.” Her words were little more than a puff of air, fast and disbelieving. “You think I’m… What? Death?”

Death’s shadows shifted, making him a touch smaller and less intimidating. “A reaper,” he clarified in perhaps the softest voice she’d ever heard. A lake beneath the stars, still and quiet. “Yes.”

It was a theory, he said, as though the idea wasn’t enough to make her head spin. A theory, but one that had more merit than she cared to consider.

Suddenly, the cold was enough to make Signa shiver, though this time it wasn’t because of Death’s presence. She gripped the edge of a table to steady herself, and when that didn’t work, she stumbled back into a chair as the idea pounded against her temples. “How would that be possible? Were you human once, too?”

He knelt before her. “No, I don’t believe I was. It’s impossible to remember everything, old as I am—though I’m certain I’d have remembered that.”

It didn’t make sense. Why, after all this time, would Fate decide that another reaper needed to exist in this world? Signa couldn’t say with confidence that’s what she was, but it was… a possibility. A damning one she couldn’t quite wrap her mind around, but a possibility nonetheless.

“I think it’d be wise to test the limits of your abilities.” Death spoke as though Signa were a child. As though she were a small, fragile thing that needed to be coddled. It didn’t go unnoticed, and it wasn’t difficult to think of where he might have learned to speak with a softness that felt so unlike the Death she believed had always existed. For so many years she’d seen him only as the reaper—a shadow with a lethal touch who’d pluck away any and every person in her life. But as he set a hand upon her knee with a touch that made Signa’s heart leap into her throat, she realized he was something else entirely.

Death was the ferrier of souls; he was not a demon or a monster, but the one who guided wayward spirits. She’d seen how they clung to him. How they sought him out in anticipation. And for those who were afraid… Well, he had to have learned his softness somewhere.

His was so far from the life that Signa had imagined for herself. And yet, when he offered his hand and asked, “Will you trust me?” her body moved forward without hesitation. Gloveless, she touched her bare skin to his shadows, wrapping her fingers around his.

Ice tore through her veins, stilling her heart, and she didn’t fight against him. He helped her up and onto her feet, and she felt the burn of her powers stronger than they ever were with the belladonna berries—steady and so potent that when Signa shut her eyes, she felt the reverberation of the earth beneath her.

He shifted so that he was behind her, trailing his hand up to brush it against her bare neck to maintain the connection. Signa bit back a gasp when she felt his chest press against her back, too often forgetting that Death was merely hiding beneath those shadows of his. Forgetting that there was a true man, chest and all, underneath them.

“Consider this the start of tonight’s lesson.” He whispered the words, steadying her. “What do you feel?”

Signa knew there were many ways she could answer: She could say that she felt the firmness of his chest and a heat in her belly as she imagined what that chest might feel like crushed against hers. Or she could tell him that her thoughts were wandering to just what Death could do with his shadows, but that was certainly more than she cared to admit.

She relaxed against him. As her shoulders eased, the world came into focus around her. She could feel it as though it were breathing—in the heat of the stars, leaves wilting from the trees, the chill of the earth as rain threatened from the heavy skies. Heartbeats, too—she could feel their final beats, too many each second.

“I feel… life,” she said at last.

Death made a sound in the back of his throat, low and approving. “What do you hear?” His fingertips slid from her neck to cover her ears.

She’d never heard the world so quiet—like there was nothing else in all existence other than the two of them. But then the world slipped in piece by piece. She listened to final breaths and soft words. To the murmurs of love spoken to the dying, and though there was sadness there, there was also warmth for the lives that had led them to this moment.

“I hear their goodbyes.”

Signa swallowed as Death slid his hands down to cover her eyes. When he leaned in, his lips brushed her ear. She shivered, wishing so badly to see that sliver of hair and the face he hid from her, and to finally look upon it.

“What do you see?” he whispered in a voice that made her knees weak.

The images came to her—the grass itself, beginning to shrivel from the cold. A family surrounding an elderly man as his heart stilled. She saw their faces, heard their voices, and there, dangling just out of reach, was a tether that Signa felt as though she could almost pluck from the air. One that would take her right to each of them.

Death eased his hands away, and Signa turned toward him at once. There was more to do, more tests to conduct. But in that moment she wanted only to look at this man who had spent his life seeing these things and embracing them. He was the first one the deceased saw after their eyes shut for the last time, and the weight of that settled into her.

“How do you handle this day after day?” Signa asked, one hand pressing to her chest. With his touch gone, life was leaching back into her skin, pulsing her stilled heart and forcing her blood to move.

“You become used to it,” Death told her. “Some are patient in their deaths, and their souls will wait for me to come and claim them. Others are more persistent, as you saw a few nights ago. If I don’t find them immediately, they’ll find me. But I am never far from a lost soul, Little Bird, and I am not restrained to being in one place at a time.”

He was close enough that she could imagine pulling down that hood of his, and finally looking upon him. There was a heat in her lower belly, for what she envisioned happening after that was far from chaste. Death stepped closer to take her by the shoulders, as though daring her to act on her impulses.

She was curious enough to do it, too. Not just to kiss him but also to explore other ways he might make her feel. Her robe and chemise suddenly felt like useless, flimsy things. She could feel every brush of his hands and gasped as shadows wound around her robe, sliding it down her bare shoulders and to her waist as Death crushed her closer.

He paused when she made no move to stop him, skimming his thumb along one hip. “Is this okay?”

The question broke Signa from her trance. She’d been too spellbound, too full of wanting, to even think through what all this meant. She hadn’t debuted yet, and already she was this close to breaking the biggest societal rule there was for a woman—destroying her virtue. The rules in her etiquette book were limitless on this subject, and yet here she was, and with Death, no less. She understood him better now, but that didn’t make him any less dangerous—though the danger made little difference to the ache of her body. She’d seen enough people seek out relations to know that the physical connection with a man was something she’d like to experience for herself, and by every indication of her body, she wanted to.

Besides, no one but she could even see Death—how would they ever know?

“H-how would that even work? With your shadows, I mean?” Signa asked. Rather than answer her aloud, Signa’s skin burned as one of Death’s shadows slipped beneath her nightgown and brushed against her inner thigh.

“Care to find out?”

Her body was screaming yes, ignoring the warning that rang deep within her mind. A tiny voice telling her to come to her senses and remember whom she was dealing with. Yet she stifled that voice and buried it six feet under. Listening to the most primal part of herself, Signa nodded.

Death unbound himself. His shadows wound around her, easing her down and onto the chaise as his hands lifted her hair, lips brushing so close that Signa arched toward him. He laughed, a raw and throaty sound as he lowered himself to her neck. Her eyes fluttered shut when she felt him there, trailing kisses from her ear to her collarbones—soft, peppered kisses, and every now and then a gentle suck on her skin that had Signa writhing, pulling him close. The shadows were enveloping her, brushing up her thigh in cold, smooth strokes that caused her to tilt her head back, offering herself to him.

She leaned into the feeling as Death’s shadows brushed closer to where she wanted him. Where she ached for him. His lips were at her jaw, inching up as his shadows followed suit. Her heart was hammering, her breaths coming in soft rasps as she waited for his lips. For his touch.

But the warning rang again in her head, louder this time: If she let this happen with him, what did that mean? Did it mean she was ready to accept what she was? To embrace it?

Death stilled as Signa pressed her hands upon his chest to ease him away.

She wasn’t ready yet. Wasn’t sure what sort of life she wanted for herself.

And so she scooted herself back and said, “Tell me something you like,” before she could change her mind.

“Something… I like?” He peeled himself from her. “I suppose I like you.”

She nearly choked on her own breath. “What about hobbies? Or food—do you like food?”

“I don’t eat much, though I’ve enjoyed what I’ve tried.” He sat upon the edge of the chaise with a laugh, and as he’d done the night they’d met in the woods, Death made himself smaller. He did so for her, Signa realized. He was trying to be more presentable for her sake.

“You don’t have to do that.” She bit her lip as soon as she said it, wishing that she could just shut up for a minute and think about what she was doing. “You don’t have to make yourself smaller. I’d rather see the true you, and not have any surprises.”

She felt his eyes upon her. “Does this mean you no longer fear me?”

“It means I’m not sure.” It felt wrong to say she was no longer hesitant around Death, or cautious of his power. But to say she feared him as she once had? After what he’d done for her—after he’d warned her about Blythe? That, too, would be a lie. She wrapped her robe around herself, avoiding his stare. The spell was broken now, and that tiny voice had freed itself and was screaming of virtue in her head. “I should get to sleep. Shall we continue our lessons tomorrow?”

Death nodded. “I want you to practice trying to speak with me. With your thoughts, not your words. You shouldn’t need the belladonna berries to get in touch with me.”

Halfway to her bed, Signa paused when he said, “I like animals more than most things.” She turned, watching the last wisps of his shadows slinking out the window. “I like that they can see me.”

And then he was gone, and Signa felt light enough to float.