“He’s dying, Sephtis. You of all people know that. It’s not?—”
“I don’t care.” I cut him off, the vehemence in my voice overwhelming. It stung along my nerve endings, and my fingers squeezed Caiden’s so tightly I probably would have hurt him if he’d been able to feel anything at that point. “I don’t care. I know he is… but I…” I glanced down, and I could see the phantom image of the man in the field, standing alone. That soft smile.
That knowing expression. His faith in me.
“Sephtis, I can’t.”
“Youcan.” I stepped forward, crowding his space and hoping the threat would be enough to make him draw his bow. A cupid could only pull the arrow they needed… and what he needed was this. I needed this.
I needed…
“Sephtis…” He shook his head again, and his fingers came behind his back. When he snapped them, I expected to see a streak of red. Or white. Anything.
Nothing appeared.
“Please…” I was surprised by the pain in my voice, the way the words cracked along the edges like the cool, calm exterior I’d always had was splitting wide. I felt like I was breaking from the inside out, dying right along with Caiden on the bed. “Please… don’t make him go alone.”
“Sephtis.” Wren snapped his fingers once. Twice. And then he dropped his hands between us, palms facing upward. “I can’t.”
NotI won’t.
Ican’t.
“But I can feel it,” I whispered. And I could. Some soft draw to Caiden—the draw that had made me seek out Wren to begin with. The one that now told me I had to stay in this room, that I had to behere. “I can feelit.”
“It’s the Ardor, Sephtis. If it were real, I could pull the arrow.” He sounded almost miserable. “If I could pull it, I would. But… you need to take him. Even I can see he’s done.”
Done.
Done, and his soul was reaching out to me to finish it.
The sting in my eyes was something I was unfamiliar with. Hot tears cutting like knives behind my lashes. Emotions I couldn’t control.
Caiden’s love for life, his fear of death… and the calm he had now that he knew I would be here.
That I would be here to take him.
Tostayafter.
After.
What after had I promised him? It almost seemed like there was something he wanted to tell me, but he couldn’t manage in that place we were in. Death was funny that way, stealing words and thoughts, names and memories. I’d met people incapable of saying the name of the person they loved most when they were stuck in that in between, like they were afraid to drag them down with them.
“Sephtis, you have to do your job,” Wren sighed, but I was already moving. I leaned down and pressed my lips to Caiden’s cool mouth, and his soul poured forward without hesitation. His Vitality leaped between us, spilling into me and leaving me shivering. I was wrecked with the wayCaidenfilled me up, the way I could feelevery moment of his life. All of it, flashing in a sharp burst too fast for me to understand, too overwhelming for me to sort through. A thousand fractured images of his face.
For just a moment, his soul lingered in front of me. Sosoft. His smile so sweet. He leaned forward and whispered, “Remember your promise. He’s coming.” Then he stepped into me, disappearing like he’d never been there at all, ready and willing to be ferried to the Lake.
“Sephtis?” Wren’s voice came to me like I was underwater—I was drowning in Caiden’s emotions, in humanity, in the way it felt tofeelhim die. I realized now that part of his confusion, his inability to fully tell me what he meant, was because ofmyconfusion. I’d shaped the world we were in by making him stay, and now I was drowning in all the things he’d left behind, left unsaid. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to surface until I heardit.
A voice. An impossible voice.
“Hey, Caiden, I…”
The man in the doorway was a ghost—a beautiful ghost, whose tender expression was slowly fading to one of shock.
Of pain.
Ofagonyas his eyes drifted to the dead vessel on the bed where Caiden had been.
