He stops about four feet away from me. Close enough that I can see the way the gold in his hair catches the light, creating glints that shift and shimmer with each tiny movement. Close enough to see the faint lines at the corners of his eyes, laugh lines, maybe, or just the weight of thousands of years pressing into his skin.
Close enough that I can smell him.
The scent hits me like a physical thing. He smells like metal, brass, and copper, and gold, the sharp mineral tang of wealth made manifest. But underneath that, there’s smoke. Not cigarette smoke or wood smoke, but something older. Incense, maybe. Or the ghosts of fires that burned millennia ago in temples that no longer exist.
And underneath even that, there’s something darker. Richer. Like old books in older libraries, like wine that’s been aging in a cellar for centuries, like the scent of power so deep and so old that it’s become its own fragrance.
It’s intoxicating. And I hate that my traitorous body is responding to it, that my pulse is quickening for reasons that have nothing to do with fear.
Or maybe it has everything to do with fear. Maybe fear and attraction are just two sides of the same coin when you’re standing this close to something that could kill you with a thought.
“That’s me,” I say, and I’m proud that my voice doesn’t shake. “Here to serve my year and settle the debt.”
“Your seven years,” he corrects, his tone mild but with steel underneath. Velvet over iron. “The debt resets when the contract is incomplete. Your grandmother served two years. You’ll serve all seven. One to each house.”
Right. Seven years. Not one. Seven.
The enormity of it tries to crush me, seven years of this, seven years of serving angels, seven years of my life gone, but I shove it down. Lock it away. I can’t afford to think about that right now.
“Right. Seven years. My mistake.” I’m being mouthy, and I know it, but I can’t help myself, still running on my old standby of turning fear into sarcasm and bite, into anything except the raw terror that’s trying to claw up my throat. “Should I curtsy? I feel like maybe I should curtsy.”
Shut up shut up shut up. You’re going to get yourself killed.
His head tilts slightly, and again I notice he’s not quite looking at me. His gaze is focused somewhere near my face but not on it. Near my eyes but not meeting them as if listening more than looking.
It’s strange. Disconcerting.
“You’re nervous,” he says.
Understatement of the century.
“I’m standing in a room with an angel who collects souls for a living,” I shoot back. “Nervous seems like a reasonable response.”
“And yet, you’re hiding it behind sarcasm. Interesting.” He takes a step closer. Then another. Now he’s only three feet away, well within my personal space, towering over me with those broad shoulders and that perfect suit and those impossible gold eyes.
I have to tilt my head back to maintain eye contact. Or the illusion of it, anyway.
My hands are trembling. I clasp them behind my back so he won’t see. Won’t know just how scared I actually am.
“Most humans who enter this house are weeping by now,” he says, his voice dropping lower, more intimate. “Begging. Offering me anything I want if I’ll just release them.”
I can picture it. Can imagine how many people have stood in this exact spot, terrified and desperate, willing topromise anything to escape. How many souls he’s collected just by standing here, being what he is, letting humans destroy themselves with their own fear.
The thought makes me angry. And anger is better than fear. Easier to work with.
“I’m not most humans.”
“No,” he agrees, and something in his voice shifts. Interest, maybe. Or hunger. “You’re not.”
He reaches out then, and I tense, ready to dodge, to fight, to do something, but he doesn’t grab me. His hand moves past my shoulder, and I hear the soft rustle of fabric. When he pulls back, he’s holding my bag. The one I dropped by the door when I came in.
I didn’t even realize I’d put it down.
“You travel light,” he observes, weighing the bag in his hand. “Most inheritors arrive with trunks full of belongings. Photographs. Keepsakes. Desperate attempts to hold on to their old lives.” He sets the bag on a nearby chair with a little too much casualness. “You brought a knife, a change of clothes, and a photograph. That’s all.”
“I figured if you needed me to pack something specific, you’d have told me.”
“Really, how trusting?”
