“Vitality.” I gasped the word as Wren’s hand lit on my shoulder… and the soul hovering in front of me lingered, looking me over, then spilled back into Cole’s body. The little taste I’d given him before was enough to have me tortured slowly for the rest of eternity… but this…
The very essence of life that I’d collected earlier poured from somewhere in the center of my body, straight into Cole’s heart, flooding down the thread between us.
I felt it when it started to beat again.
It tore a shuddering gasp from my chest, because that heartbeat was an echo in my head so loud it was deafening.
But that meant it had worked. Cole was alive, even though he shouldn’t have been. Vitality didn’t have the power to heal like this, or to bring people back from the dead.
But…
With the connection forged between our souls, he had a direct line of it pumping into his body. I hadn’t known if it would be enough… but that red line between us blossomed back to crimson, perfect and almost blinding. A near sob caught in the back of my throat at the sight.
He wasn’t dead.
I hadn’t had to take both him and his brother. He was stillhere. My hand came out, fingertips shaking, and I smoothed them along his chest. There should have been wounds there, but the skin beneath was a little too smooth—like scars.
“What did you just do, Sephtis?” Wren’s voice was hushed behind me, and I slid my palm through the blood on Cole’s chest so I could feel the rise and fall of his breathing, the steady beat of his heart. Proof that he was living, so I could finally tear my gaze away from him to look at the men beside me.
“I don’t know.” It was the only truth I could admit, but it was honest. I had no idea what I’d done. I’d just hoped it would work. Seeing the connection between Wren and his Enmity, knowingthat the red thread of Fate between them had been the only thing that had really kept Theo alive when I’d carefully constructed a seal made of little threads of Vitality…
I’d hoped.
But I’d never thought that thread would be a siphon.
“I have a feeling that whatever it was, you weren’t supposed to do…” Theo gestured carefully between my chest and Cole on the ground, then wiggled his fingers like he wasn’t exactly sure what he wanted to say. “That.”
“I wasn’t supposed to save you either,” I deadpanned, and his eyes went wide. “I guess I’m just a rebel.”
Wren’s lips parted in shock. We’d interacted since he’d shot me with the Ardor, so he knew I’d developed something of a sarcastic personality… but the relief I felt was making it even worse. I didn’t know what I would have done if this hadn’t worked… if Cole’s soul had stayed there, staring at me and waiting for me to ferry him to the afterlife.
I could have waited, I suppose. He would have been reborn again eventually, though it would have been a lifetime of agony, of not knowing. It would have been impossible to ask Death about that soul specifically. Would I have recognized him, faceless and floating in the Lake while waiting for his turn to be reborn?
It didn’t matter. I didn’t have to think about that, because I could feel his heartbeat echoing in my chest. Cole was here, and I’d broken every rule that existed to make sure I could keep him.
“I know you told me you had help when you first shot me, but you didn’t tell me it was from an asshole. Don’t you have any nice friends, Wren?” And then, with a smirk, he added, “Other than me.”
Wren leaned in, pressing his fingers to the center of Theo’s chest. “You aren’t nice either.” His expression when he said it was so soft, so full of love. It was an emotion I’d never seenplay across his face before, though I’d noticed the beginnings of it when I’d found him in the alley holding Theo that night he’d called in his favor. When he turned to me, that look faded into something closer to concern. “Are you in trouble here, Sephtis?”
I could have lied to him, but what was the point? “There’s every chance I’ll learn soon enough if a Reaper can be unmade.”
Wren glanced between my chest and Cole’s, and his next question came even softer. “It’s worth it, though, isn’t it?”
And as much as I wanted to say no, breaking the rules wasn’t worth it, putting myself in a position I was fairly certain no other Reaper had been in wasn’t worth it…
I could still feel Cole’s heart beating, strong andalivebeneath my palm, echoing a new rhythm in my chest, and I knew the answer.
“Yes… yes, it was.”
Chapter 9
Cole
I was burning.I could feel it along every nerve ending in my body—heat that was pooling in my chest, spreading to the tips of my fingers and begging me to quench it in the cool feel of the skin pressed against mine.
Hisskin.
Histouch.
