I clench my jaw. “Then what the hell should I be asking?”
His grin stretches wider. Pushing off the table, he strides toward me with a smooth, a little too damn ingratiating ease. As he moves, I catch the way his muscles shift beneath his dark clothing—broad shoulders, strong legs, lean through the middle. He has a body built for both speed and power.
He stops just inches away, so close that if I were still alive, I’d feel his breath ghosting over my skin. So close I can see the glint in his one good eye—a deep green that, in the glow of my lantern, fades to the color of ash.
“You should be asking,” he whispers slowly, “what do wewantfrom you?”
The words sink in like hooks.
Whatdothey want from me?
I hadn’t even thought someone might want something from me. I should’ve, but I didn’t. I’ve been without self-preservation for so long that fear barely registers anymore. A Grim Reaper doesn’t fear anything. I have no predators. No hidden dangers. Nothing that can bring about my end.
Nothing but time.
Time is my only enemy. My only vice. I both crave and resent its passage—fighting to endure it while longing for it to slip through my fingers like sand.
But now—now—I’m not as invincible as I thought. Am I?
Because suddenly, time isn’t the only thing I need to fear.
These menwantsomething from me.
“What do you want from me?” I ask quietly. There shouldn’t be much to want from a being like me. At least, that’s what I’ve always believed.
Clearly, I was wrong.
Because that look on Foxface’s face? It's pure excitement.
He leans in—just slightly—just enough for his scent to cut through the blood-soaked air and coil around me like a ghostly touch. It’s musky and sweet, with the sharp bite of metal and theclean sting of soap and aftershave. The contrast unnerves me—like something innocent, tangled up with something sinister.
And then he speaks.
The way he says it makes something stir inside me. Something deep. Dark. A little too wild to be just fear, a little too reckless to be curiosity. An instinct buried deep within. A response.
“We want you to break the rules, Little Grim.”
If I could step back, I would. But instead, my breath disappears into nothing, my lips part as I stare at him—really stare, like I haven’t seen another person in years.
“Break the rules?” I ask. “What does that even mean?”
Grim Reapers don’t have rules the way the living do. There is only the pull—the inexorable call to reap—and the cold, hard truth that if we don’t do our job, we lose the only advantage we have against those who have wronged us.
That’s not a rule. That’s just… the way thingsare. The way it’s always been.
So what the hell is he talking about?
“Let's just say we need a liaison,” Cassian says. “Something that can live between the worlds the way you can.”
A liaison.
A something.
Not a being. Not a creature. Not even a damn Reaper. Just athing—a tool to be used.
A cold shock jolts through me. My fingers twitch at my sides.
This has to be a joke. Some twisted, impossible joke. I must have flickered too hard, slipped through some crack in reality, and ended up in a nightmare instead of the basement where the soul is supposed to be reaped.
