“I’ve been so tired lately.” It came numbly from my lips as Sephtis carefully lowered the body of the man to the ground beside the grave of his wife. “That’s what Caiden used to say.”
“Cole…” He sounded so gentle when he spoke, that soft whisper the same tone he’d used with the dead man, like he was still trying to help someone move on. To let go. “Death isn’t a punishment. It isn’t always painful. Sometimes the dying are tired, sometimes they’re ready to go.”
I knew what he was trying to say. I knew what he was talking about… but I couldn’t do this.
I wasn’t ready.
“Is she really waiting for him? Will he be able to find her if you don’t take him?” The thought of that man not seeing his wife after Sephtis had promised was enough to break me, enough to distract me from the other truth he was trying to force me to see. I swayed, but he was already walking forward to catch me. He pressed his hand over my chest, and the dizzy sensation I’d felt started to ebb away. It was replaced with something else, though—the quick fluttering of my heart, the dazed sensation of what I’d just seen. “Is she going to find him?”
“Yes.” He leaned in, tilting my head back. I thought he was going to kiss me, but he just pressed his forehead to mine. It was almost more intimate. The soft feel of his breath on my lips, my world swimming in a sea of gold… It was gossamer threads, breakable and beautiful, trying to stitch all my broken pieces back together with the promise of a world that could be beautiful if I would only let it. “I don’t have to ferry soulmates. Their threads never break once they’re connected. They’ll always find each other. In this life. In the next life. Ineverylife.”
His fingers on my chest spasmed, and it felt like I was being broken wide open, left bare and vulnerable in front of all these gravestones, for the entire world to see.
My whole world.
For Sephtis.
“Really?” Was my voice cracking? Were my eyes blurring with tears, or had it started to rain? I wasn’t sure. I just knew his arms around me were the only thing holding me upright.
“Always.” He did lean in then, pressing his mouth to mine to breathe his promise there. “I’ll always find you if you call for me. If you wait for me.”
Wait for him?
“Fuck… I think I dreamed of you before you were ever in my dreams, Sephtis. When I was little… I told Caiden…” My voice broke on the word. “I told him aboutyou. Fuck, maybe I dreamed you into this world. Maybe I did die in that river and I’m in Heaven. I don’t know…” It felt so vulnerable, admitting that truth. I dropped my eyes to the ground, because I wasn’t sure if I could let him see my tears just now. “Can we go back to the library… please… I…” I couldn’t look at the body beside us either. It wasn’t that it frightened me.
It was the implication that it had been so easy for him.
Almost beautiful.
Letting go.
Taking another step to some future he deserved.
What would it feel like to finally let everything go and just… be?
“Cole.” Sephtis’s voice was a soft ache that beat along my skin like it was trying to find a way to slip beneath and burrow into my bones. Just him saying my name made things inside me thrum that I couldn’t understand, that it was impossible to ignore. I couldn’t help but wonder if it had always been impossible, if he’d always been inevitable. If where we were right now was the only place we could ever have been.
If Fate really was real, then I had to wonder if he was the whole reason we were standing here now, beyond all odds.
“Please,” I whispered, and I wondered if it was the first time I’d said that word to him and really meant it. “Please… can we go back to the library now?”
I wasn’t sure what I was feeling, what I needed. I just knew I was raw from what I’d seen, that my entire life felt like it was upside down. Sephtis had shown me obsession, shown me death. He’d shown me that an entire world of supernatural creatures existed, and that the world could be a scary place…
And somehow, in all of that, I’d never seen until now that death didn’t have to be all those things.
It could be…
Good.
You could be tired. And ready. And it could beokay.
“All right. Come on.” He slid his fingers into mine like it was the most simple thing in the world, like the connection of our hands wasn’t the center point of an entire universe I was only now starting to accept, so raw and flayed open from my emotions that I couldn’t close my eyes to it.
Sephtis was peeling back every bit of armor, every hard place and rough edge, every wall I’d ever put up… and he was doing it with soft touches, with gentle words. With an endless wave of dedication and patience.
He was going to break me apart; he was truly going tokillme.
And for the first time, I realized it might be okay… because as he pulled me through the door of the little library and closed it behind us, I realized he would never actually let me die.
