KSENIA
I run over to Kharon,everything still feeling dreamlike. But the blood dripping from my face and staining his blue skin seems real enough. As did my Uncle Pavel’s shocked face five minutes earlier when I yanked my favorite knife out from underneath my pillow, shoved it upwards into his throat, and twisted.
Then, running on pure instinct and my life’s training, I used his body as a shield while the rest of his men began to shoot, and I dived behind the bed.
Then, like a miracle, Kharon was there.
My beloved Death appearing out of thin air right when I needed him. But not in some unearthly paradise that barely felt real. No, he was here. And now I was in his arms again.
“How?” I gasp, clinging to him all the tighter.
“I felt your call,” is all he says.
Sirens sound in the distance. Right. Gunshots going off in the heart of Helsinki aren’t something that can go unnoticed.
“We have to get out of here.”
“You’re coming back with me. I don’t care if it’s a life of drudgery in a castle in the middle of nowhere.”
I shake my head. “There’s nowhere else on earth I want to be. Please. You’re my only family now.”
His top two hands clutch my face gently. “Beloved, that is not true. You are with kit.”
I blink, shaking my head. “What does that?—”
Another of his hands lowers to my belly. “Child. There is a child here.”
I choke in astonishment. I never once in a million years ever considered having a child. My life, my line of work— It was unthinkable.
“Get us out of here. Now!”
He nods and holds out his arm. “I will run us out of the city in shadow.”
I nod, yanking my bag with the cell phone out from underneath the bed that’s remained remarkably intact and jump into his arms.
As soon as they wrap around me, I realize there’s nowhere that’s ever felt safer in the world to me.
“I love you,” I say because I can’t stand not saying it for another second.
Kharon freezes, but only for a moment because the sirens are getting louder. “You have given me my name, and now this even more profound gift. I will love you and our kit until the end of eternity.”
His arms close around me, and then I shut my eyes as we bound towards the door and into the glittering frost of the Helsinki night.
THIRTY-EIGHT
KHARON
It should not bepossible for Death to be so. . .happy. I am a monster who has committed too many sins to ever be redeemed. And yet. . . as I look across the table full of my family and then over to my side where my beloved Ksenia sits, her belly round with my child, I feel emotion well up thick in my throat.
The trip back to the castle was not as arduous as the earlier one. For one, there was a chance break in the weather, and since she allowed me to run her the entire way, we made exceptional time. She joined me in my rooms and has been getting to know my family more each day as she recovers from her father’s death and rests during the pregnancy, which has not been quite as easy as Hannah’s. She’s been ill some and taking her time to recuperate.
When we can, we spend time in the bright fields, where she sits with her mother in the sunlight.
I do not believe in gods, yet I do not know what else to say except that they have been kind to me. Me who least deservedtheir kindness. I would crawl on my belly in supplication and thanks if I knew who to thank.
And so I show my thanksgiving every day to the woman who somehow has deigned to love me and swear to do my best to love, serve, and give her all that she needs all the days of her and our child’s existence.
I gaze at her with all the love in my heart.
