Belladonna

ELIJAH DIDN’T ASK FOR AN EXPLANATION. HE ASKED ONLY TO BE LEFT alone with his sleeping daughter, and Signa was more than willing to oblige.

The veil over what she’d done began to dissipate, clarity sinking in. Percy would recover, and Blythe would live to see another day. The murderer was found, and all would soon be well again at Thorn Grove. But to make that happen, Signa had condemned another soul to death. She’d sacrificed another life in place of Blythe’s.

She chewed her nails to the skin as she paced down the hall, mind reeling. She knew she should care more, she should have regrets. But she’d make the same choice again and again if she had to.

God, what was she becoming?

When she reached her suite, the chill warned her that Death waited inside. He was pacing the drawing room floor when she opened the door, shadows dragging behind him like a cloak. The moment he caught sight of her, the shadows in the room rushed forward, hovering mere inches from her.

“Come with me.” It wasn’t a question, yet hesitation laced the command.

“Where?” was all she could think to say.

“It’s time for you to see what I do.” He extended his hand, beckoning. “It’s time for you to see that there’s more to death than you believe.”

The hand he stretched toward her meant so much more than just a hand. She knew that taking it would mean opening herself up to him and his world. It would mean accepting what she’d done and embracing this side of herself once and for all.

This wasn’t Death the killer who stood before her. This wasn’t the demon she’d built up in her head, spending too many years hating. This was the man who ferried innocent souls to their afterlife. This was Death, whose powers she shared. Who understood her better than anyone else ever could. She was tired of running from him.

Signa laced their fingers together as she tipped her head back to observe the souls floating around them. The more she watched them, the more she could make out glimpses of faces within. “Why don’t they look like typical spirits?” She gripped Death like a vise. He was bending the space around them as they moved, shifting to somewhere new. It felt like slipping through a pond and emerging dry.

“They would have that form had I reached them sooner,” he said. “They’re eager to pass, and traveling is simpler as a soul. Spirits are weighed down by the emotions and memories they cling to. Spirits linger, souls pass on.”

“Pass on to… here?”

Wherever they were, it wasn’t Thorn Grove. They’d crossed over into a place where time stood still. Signa was glad she no longer had to breathe, for the air here was too thick. It sat upon the base of her throat, making it impossible to swallow. She stumbled over soil as Death pulled her ahead. The farther they pressed forward, the antsier the souls around them became. They no longer hovered so tightly around Death but rushed ahead before inching back, fearful of getting lost in the forming mist.

They came to a magnificent blue-and-white bridge built over an endless lake. Though it was covered by fog, the sheer number of souls that were crossing over shone a hazy light upon it.

Some floated along in small spheres while others shifted back into their spirit selves, hurrying through the throng toward the call of something wonderful that waited for them on the other side. Something that Signa felt deep in her core, warm and rich and consuming.

She started to follow them, needing to find out what it was, but Death gripped her tightly. “Cross that bridge and you’ll no longer be of this world,” he warned her. “It’s not your time.”

They sat upon the bank of the lake, watching the souls from a distance.

It’d been ages since she’d visited a church, and she didn’t remember any lessons about the afterlife. She’d always believed it was a dark, lonely place. But whatever resided beyond the bridge didn’t feel like an end-all—it felt like a beginning. Like a journey beckoning to be taken. “What happens once you cross?”

“There are many possibilities.” He loosened his grip and leaned back to watch her. Perhaps it was to avoid spooking the spirits, but Death was softer here. “Some souls choose to give up the memories of their life on Earth and to be reborn as someone new. Others keep their memories and remain in the afterlife, awaiting those they left behind.”

“What of those who do not live a just life?” she asked. “Is there a punishment?”

Death’s voice was dark when he spoke next. “The afterlife is my domain, Little Bird, and I take care of my people. It’s no easy decision, but I do not welcome those who will taint my home. I claim those souls for myself, and I get rid of them. For them, there will be no afterlife. There will be nothing.”

It was a cold fate, but Signa already felt a fierce protectiveness of this place, and knew without even seeing it that she, too, would do whatever it took to preserve all that waited across the bridge. “Do you know everyone there?” she asked as she watched one of the souls bob across the bridge.

“I’ve met all residents of the afterlife.” There was pride in those words. “Though I admit that some stand out more than others. Your mother is one of the many reasons I don’t care to journey into that place often, you know. All she does is pester me with questions about you.”

Signa curled her fingers in the grass, a smile warming her lips. “Everyone’s been making her sound so fierce. I always imagined her a bit like Marjorie, I suppose.”

“Like a murderer?”

Signa swatted him on the chest. “Of course not! I meant someone who always seemed very proper.”

Death nodded, considering. “She has more manners than you, certainly, but that’s not saying much.” This time when Signa went to swat at him, his shadows caught her hand and tossed it back at her with a laugh. “Your father is a kind and tender man, very soft spoken. Rima is more like you, so loud with her opinions and always butting in. She knew her position in society well and abused it for her benefit. With as much money and influence as your family had, no one dared to criticize them, for fear that they might lose the possibility of an investment by the Farrows.”

Signa leaned against his shadows that stilled for her, soft as she imagined a cloud would be. “You seem to know a lot about them.”

“Of course I do,” he said with such seriousness that Signa stilled. “They’re your parents. I wanted to know everything I could about them. And you’re just as brazen as she is, you know. In all my years, no one has ever spoken to me with such hostility as you do, but she comes in a close second.”

Perhaps her mother wouldn’t be so disappointed in her after all. All the years Signa had spent obsessing over fitting into a particular mold—into what she’d believed everyone expected of her—perhaps it was all for naught.

He couldn’t know how grateful she was for him in that moment. He couldn’t know that, as glad as she was to hear him speak of her parents, she was reminded deeply of her own loneliness. But at Death’s side, slipping her hand in his, she realized she needn’t endure that alone. There was no pretending. No lying about what she wanted or molding herself into someone else. With Death, Signa could be wholly herself.

With him, she wasn’t so lonely.

She lowered her head upon her shoulder, smiling as Death tensed with surprise. “Tell me what it’s like across that bridge.”

He rested his chin upon her head. “If you really want to know, I’d be more than happy to invite you in and keep you to myself for eternity.” When she nudged him on the shoulder, Death laughed. “It’s a place that’s kinder than the living world. There are no needs, no wants, no fear.”

“So why don’t you spend more time there?”

Death brushed his thumb across the back of her hand, and her skin burned with want. “I will do whatever I must to protect that place and its people. But being there for too long is exhausting. I cannot share in their pleasures, Little Bird. There is no family waiting for me, and it’s possible some of my wants will never be settled, no matter where I am. Seeing them—being in that place—is a reminder of that. Besides, I find the living world far more entertaining.”

As someone still struggling to find her place, Signa could relate. Death was the most hated man in the world, and even here in the afterlife, he didn’t fit in. It was no wonder he came across as so prickly. She probably came across the same way.

“I chose a man in his eighties.” Signa knew at once what he was referring to, and the words were a bruise upon her mind. “He would have had another ten years, though they would’ve been ones wrought with pain in his bones. He’s there, on the bridge.” Death nodded ahead.

Signa didn’t want to look at the man she’d condemned to save Blythe, but he deserved at least that much. She hugged her arms around her stomach and forced herself to acknowledge the stout, short man whose life she’d stolen. Ten years was a long time. Even with pain, what things might that man have done with his life? What memories might he have made? What joy might he have felt?

“I don’t like doing that, Signa.” The shadows drew around them like a curtain, shielding the bridge from view. “We’re toying with Fate, who is not someone to be played with. Do not ask me again to take the life of someone who’s not ready to be claimed.”

The words sank into her and burrowed deep within her soul. She became smaller, curling in on herself.

“I’m sorry I asked that of you.” She trembled when she spoke. “But if you hated it so much, then… why did you do it? Why did you listen to me?”

When he turned to her, the moonlight shone upon him in a way that reminded Signa of a painting, wisps of shadows like brushstrokes upon a canvas. “Because I have waited an eternity to meet you, Signa Farrow.” The words were a balm she clung to, relished. “To me, you are a song to a soul that has never known music. Light to someone who has only seen the darkness. You bring out the absolute worst in me, and I become vindictive toward those who treat you in ways I don’t care for. Yet you also bring out the best in me—I want to be better because of you. Better for you.

“In all my existence, I’ve asked only for one thing—for one person who might understand me, and whom I could let myself touch. When I touch someone, I see the life they’ve lived in flashes of memories as they die. But the first time I touched you, it was your future I saw. A glimpse of you in my arms, dancing in a beautiful red dress beneath the moonlight.” He tilted her chin up and Signa shivered, savoring the touch.

“You are what I want.” He drew his hand away. “I know I cannot force you to want me in return, but say that you do, and I promise that I am wholly and unequivocally yours. Say that you do, and I will make this world everything for you, Signa.”

The words struck hard. For so long she’d wanted nothing more than to be a normal girl, without Death lingering in the shadows of her life. She’d dreamed of how sweet it would be, only to find the taste bitter on her tongue. She could spend her life at Everett’s side, keeping one ear out for gossip, feeling trapped and weak and stifled. And all the while she would remember that there was something—someone—that had once made her feel so alive.

A normal girl wouldn’t be able to save her cousin’s soul.

A normal girl wouldn’t be able to sit upon this bank, staring at the bridge into the beautiful afterlife.

For so long she’d been fighting who she was, in favor of who others wanted her to be. She’d had enough.

The answer was there—it had always been there. She turned her head up to him, lips a breath from his. “I believe that I have always been yours, Death. As you were made for me, perhaps I was made for you. For I want to feel the way I feel when I am by your side forever. I want to feel the way I feel when you touch me.”

He let out the softest breath as the darkness within him ignited, and he became the night itself.

He was the fire of the stars. The dazzle of the moon. The darkness of the shadows, and the caress of wind against her skin as that darkness drank her in like she was the finest wine.

Signa knew before she wound an arm around his neck—before she pressed her chest against his—that there would be no turning back. When they kissed, his touch broke something within her. Something small and timid. Something that had been holding her back for too long.

It didn’t matter who other people believed her to be. It didn’t matter what they thought of her. This was who she was, and she was ready to embrace it.

“You are no soft thing to be coddled.” His voice was soothing as the season’s first rain, and she shivered from the way it glided upon her skin. “You are bolder than the sun, Signa Farrow, and it’s time that you burn.”

Death pulled her into the forest and laid her upon the cold ground. His lips kissed down the length of her neck and to the top of her corset. She tried to steal a look at him, but the mist and the shadows obscured him. She could have tried harder, but in the end it didn’t matter to her what Death looked like. What she felt for him—how she wanted him—was bone-deep and aching.

In her almost twenty years, she’d never felt so alive. She was without abandon, her hands slipping through the shadows to curl in his hair and on his shoulders, her lips on his mouth, his neck, every bit as starved for him as he was for her.

Lace by lace her dress was undone, the silk slipping from her skin. He leaned back to admire her laid bare beneath the stars, dark hair unbound and spilling over her fair shoulders.

Never had Signa been so exposed, yet she didn’t hide herself from him, nor did she shy away from the shadows that encircled her bare thighs. Signa guided his hands over her waist. Over her breasts and her hips, and then lower, shivering with pleasure beneath his touch.

“You’re sure you want this?” he asked, almost as though he couldn’t believe it. As though he expected her to come to her senses and force him away.

But Signa no longer viewed Death as someone dangerous. He was thrilling and freeing, and she wanted him more than she’d ever wanted anything.

“I have never been more sure of something in all my life.” She cupped her palm against his face, easing him down so that his body covered hers. Her kiss was tender but firm in her desire, hoping she could ease his worry. That she could show him she wanted this every bit as much as he did.

Whether it was the kiss or the words that undid him, he groaned and kissed her full on the mouth. He didn’t hesitate after that. His lips were on her thigh at once, kissing up the bare skin until she gasped, head falling back as her body melted beneath his touch.

His shadows traced her hip bones, slipping to the sensitive place his lips had once been. She exhaled a soft breath, any tension she’d felt loosening itself. Every touch was fire upon her skin, searing into her and commanding her attention. For once nothing else mattered. No inheritance, no spirits, nothing but his body as it covered hers, and the deep aching of want that filled her.

He groaned as he pressed into her, and Signa soon felt herself coming unbound. She was the darkness of the shadows, now. The one making him bend and stretch and twist, taking all he offered, all she wanted.

She wrapped her legs around him as the yearning built, keeping him close as something within her mounted. It wasn’t just him she felt. It was the night itself, shadows and darkness and stars that exploded within her as she came undone.

A growl escaped his throat as she arched beneath him, and he fisted her hair in one hand. His muscles tensed as she pulled him close, kissing his neck and lips and all she could get of him until he growled her name and lost himself within her, shadows curling around her as he collapsed beside her.

Signa unwrapped herself from him, satisfaction on her lips. She was the one who made Death twist to her whim. She was the one who made him whisper her name as she tipped her head back to the sky, and she rather liked that.

Signa laced her fingers through his, and he brushed his thumb over the back of her hand in long, content strokes.

“I have waited for you for millennia, Signa Farrow.” There was a silky husk to his voice now, too pleased for his own good. “Since the dawn of this earth, I have waited. You are mine, and I am yours. And together, this world is ours.”