“I'll be right back,” I mutter, stepping out of Everett’s arms.
He gently grasps my hand to stop me. “Where the hell do you think you’re going? Out there, where the danger is?”
“Where the ghosts are,” I correct.
On the short trek to the temple after Asher transported us to this colorless city, I saw several ghosts, though they haven’t entered the temple’s hallowed ground. If I collect enough of them, maybe I can make a dent in that malediction.
Everett blinks down at me, surprise written all over his gorgeous, scarred face. “You can see ghosts again?”
“Yes. I need to go reaping.”
“Reaping?”Asher Douglas pipes from the doors where I forgot he was standing. He frowns over his shoulder at me. “There’s only one reaper, so stop blaspheming. How the hell would you—oh, holy shit. Unless…”
The mercenary is starting to put things together. Everett gives him an impressively chilling death glare as a warning to stay quiet. I take advantage of his distraction to slip away again.
Striding through the incredibly ornate temple, I pull my etherium knife out of my boot. It immediately knows what'sneeded, transforming into my new favorite weapon as I push open the big double doors.
Wow.
I clearly won’t have trouble finding enough ghosts.
Restless spirits have flocked to my presence, and now two or three hundred blurry, translucent figures hover at the foot of Arati’s high temple, staring up at me. Everett moves beside me, perplexed as he looks out, seeing nothing. Meanwhile, Asher Douglas looks more disturbed by my existence than ever.
That’s a nice thought before I descend the stairs, my elemental sticking closely to my side.
Ghosts converge on me immediately, pressing silently against each other in a rush to get to their respective afterlives. I step a safe distance away from Everett and swing my glowing scythe in a wide arc, sending that haunting whistling tune echoing through this dead concrete jungle as I reap several souls at a time.
The wash of peaceful power that flows steadily over my bones is strange.
But it's alsoright, somehow. Over and over, I reap, turning and twisting as I wield the scythe. This otherworldly dance is intrinsic to something in my very being.
Before long, my veins are buzzing with an exhilarating rush of this strange magic—and with that rush comes another current of memories that pass from my scythe to me.
I blink when I find myself once again standing with Syntyche, but the scenery is different. This time, we’re standing on the shore of a stretch of water glittering like millions of liquid stars, watching as winged angels sitting in ornate boats fish for who fucking knows what with golden fishing lines.
“If I stayed, which I won’t,”Memory Me begins, studying the shimmering lake. “What would I even be the goddess of? Baggy clothes? Trauma? Social ineptitude?”
“As my spawn?—”
“Ew. Please pick another word.”
“—your dominion would relate to the things over which I reign,” she goes on as if I never spoke. “You’ve made your choice, so we will never know the future you have forsaken in Paradise. Yet I will tell you this: I have observed death for millennia, and it always brings those who remain two things: pain and peace. As my?—”
“Don’t say spawn,” I grimace.
Syntyche’s lips twitch ever so slightly. “As she who succeeds Death, perhaps you deliver both.”
The memory blurs and ripples until I’m standing inside a seemingly endless vaulted library interspersed with rolling ladders, cozy reading nooks, thriving potted plants, and glowing crystals etched with intricate runes. Every tome, book, and scroll is organized impeccably, softly lit in their never-ending displays. In this memory, I’m already holding a Paradisian tome?—
And suddenly, I can recall precisely what I learned from it. It was full of useful spells for holy magic, but especially one in particular: the incubi muse ritual meant to be performed in Syntyche’s temples. I was memorizing it here.
“A bit of light pleasure reading?” Koa’s voice asks as he approaches, but his tone is nervous. He doesn’t like finding me here. “I do hope you’re not planning on doing something inadvisable to my library as you did to my love’s golden armor.”
In my memory, I close the tome and smile darkly. “Speaking of your love, you and Arati have been together for thousands of years. In all that time, she must have mentioned how she helped that immortal permanently return to the mortal realm eons ago.”
Koa fidgets before sighing. “What need would I have of that information when I'm quite happy to exist here with her for all eternity? I swear upon the heavens that I know nothing about it, so leave my poor library in peace.”
There’s nothing but honesty written all over his light sage green face. That frustrates me in this memory, but this scene is again interrupted when another recollection comes barrelling in, full of raised voices and wrath.
