“Always.” It was the only answer I had to give. The sweetest expression, like something born anew and trying to find footing and roots so it could blossom, spread across his face. Cole only let me see it for a moment before he dropped his head to my shoulder and leaned into me. He held me like that while he let his breathing even out.
We stayed that way until the sun started to creep over the horizon. When it did, a soft laugh pulled from Cole’s chest.
“What?” I asked. But he’d already pushed out of my arms and started toward the trees behind the graveyard.
“Caiden’s favorite flowers were morning glories.” He gestured to the vines that crept around the half-finished fence. They were beautiful, in full blossom, sheltered in the shadows of the trees. “After we found out he was sick, I told him it was kind of funny… you know…” Cole’s eyes glanced at the blue flowers that twined up the tree. “Because you only see them blooming for a little while. If you’re early enough. If you’re late…” His expression broke just a little then, and he stepped around thetree to pull one of the flowers from the vine. “They’re gone before you get a chance to understand how beautiful they are.”
Caiden had told me the peonies weren’t his favorite. He loved his brother so much that he dreamed of a field of red instead of blue.
“They’re beautiful.” I didn’t know what else to say as he carefully drew his fingers along the vine, as if he was trying to find the best place to pluck it from the ground. I started forward to help him when I heard it.
A low sound.
A snarl.
A snap of twigs.
A violence out of place in the sweet calm we’d made here in the soft light of the morning.
The blue flower in Cole’s fingers fell to the ground as one of the hounds leapt onto him, and they both tumbled back into the trees.
I hadn’t even realized we’d stepped outside the barrier—I was so caught up in Cole, in his pain, his grieving, his acceptance of death finally there on the edge, just within his grasp, that I hadn’t felt it.
I hadn’t felt it, and now he was going to pay the price for my ignorance.
I dove for the hound, even though I knew I couldn’t do anything against them—not when it already had him. Not when I knew they traveled in packs.
And like my thought had manifested the others, something seized hold of my arm. The spill of pain that wrenched through me wasn’t because of the teeth sinking into my skin. My pain rippled outward from Cole’s scream when the beast above him snarled and snapped at his shoulder. He wasn’t screaming from the pain, though—his eyes were focused on me and the two beasts trying to tear me apart.
There was a beast trying to rip his chest open to get to the Vitality I’d stolen for him, and Cole’s eyes were all forme.
Oh gods. I was going to have to watch as he was torn apart… but…
The hound wasn’t tearing. Two were holding me still, and the other was holding him in place.
In place… and…
Waiting.
A snap sounded through the air and suddenly the hounds vanished in a burst of black smoke.
I knew…
I knew, and I realized… that this. This was worse.
I’d questioned before what it would take to make Death cross the barrier Fate had put into place… and apparently a human stealing his Vitality and a Reaper falling in love had been the answer all along. It should have been impossible, but Death was there… looking at me with his uncanny eyes and a frown, his tall frame surrounded by the blue flowers that had lured us past the barrier to begin with.
“Oh, Sephtis, you’re infected with humanity… and look at what it’s done. You didn’t even realize I was coming, did you?”
It was true. I’d been so wrapped up in Cole, in his soft expression, I hadn’t realized we’d crossed the barrier.
I hadn’t heard the hounds.
This was my fault. I could do nothing but shift to put my body between Death and my soulmate in hopes that it would give Cole time to take a few steps back behind the barrier… that the barrier would be enough.
Of course, I knew better. Even when he’d said he hated me, he’d put himself between me and an Enmity.
Even when he’d wanted nothing to do with me, he’d killed a man to join me in my monstrosity.
