“How…?” All I could think about was getting to a mirror so that I could see it myself. “What does it mean?” I asked two different things at once.
He smiled. “I think it means you’re my soulmate, witch, just like I felt you were.” Damn these feelings and their need to make my eyes tear up with a knowing smile.
“Help me with the castle, will ya boys?” Grim hollered at his sons.
Stepping out the way, Melanie guided me off to the side as we watched them rebuild their home with the power they held. It was pretty amazing. They only stepped around the ruins, nothing else. You’d never think they were even doing anything until the castle started mending itself while they watched. Broken glass restored to whole, becoming windows once more. Broken piles of rubble became the dark grey brick that made their castle. The wooden double-doors was there like it was never broken to begin with. It only took a few minutes, and when they were finished, Sebastian held my hand as we walked back inside.
As I watched his family walk ahead of us, it felt like we were getting the chance to start over. Only I knew now that our moments together had a time in which Sebastian knew the limit to. It depressed me. My heart hurt uncontrollably because of it.
Then, with a kiss, my Reaper left me with his mom as him, his dad, and siblings set out to the human world with every Reaper they had. He didn’t tell me before he left what all had happened while I hadn’t been myself, but some things you could imagine.
His sister Kitty woke up the next day and was informed of what had happened. She, too, headed into the human world to help them, and if it hadn’t been for me, I knew their mother would have been with them.
With promises of comfort and reassurance from Sebastian the day before, I waited, each hour turning into days at a time.
I got to know Melanie during the weeks that followed as we waited for the Reapers to come home. The time spent with herhelped me understand why Sebastian was the way he was. His mother was just as bright and heroic as he was.
The devastation was relentless in the human world. The deaths still rose even weeks later from those that were injured from the disasters in different parts of the world.
Despite everything that happened, parts of the world were left untouched and without consequences of the vortex. And it was in these moments that Sebastian would tell me of the humanity he seen between the humans and their willingness to step in and help when tragedy strikes.
I’d only seen him three times since the vortex incident. Each time he came for me, it was only in search of my touch. He needed the energy when his curse threatened him, then he’d go back to the human world.
It was another two weeks when ghosts and deaths were settled down to normalcy as they called it that they all finally came home for good. They couldn’t help the humans. The only thing they were there for was to balance life and death once more. It was up to mankind to pick up the pieces while the Reapers dealt with the approachingend.
The vortex that Harvest and I opened had sped up the Apocalypse. Ten months. Ten months was all I had left to spend time with a man I had just come to love if the end couldn’t be stopped. It was even less in the human world. Time flowed vastly different between the worlds. And weeks of those ten months had already gone by while he was in the human world.
When Sebastian strode into the castle with his siblings, I was sitting on the third step of his parents’ stairway. I placed the bookmark in the book I was reading and placed it on the step as I stood and smoothed out the shirt I was wearing, then I self-consciously did the same to my hair as he caught sight of me.
I smiled, but he didn’t return it so I frowned the entire time it took his heavy steps to get to me. He gripped my wrist,pulled me in as the high of our touch licked over me until the hair on my neck and arms stood on end. “Let’s go, Izzie.”
His words liquified me and pierced me with arousal.
After six weeks, my Reaper was taking me with him instead of leaving me behind.
Thirty-Six
Sebastian
Time rapidly slipped by while I was away from Isabella. Even though I missed her and longed to be with her again, my body and mind were pushed and filled to the limit the last six weeks.
The devastation was real across the human world, but surprisingly, it was times like this when humanity showed, and I could understand Heaven’s need to protect the mortals. Only they didn’t know they were picking up pieces that were going to fall back apart sooner than any of us wanted.
And the fact that we wanted to prevent it from happening but was utterly powerless against it made it so much worse. Reapers weren’t made to prevent fate or time, we were only here to live it out and guide death until we were no longer needed.
In nine months we would no longer be needed, said fate.
I had a love/hate relationship with destiny. On one hand, it gave me Isabella, then on the other, it limited my time with her. That just didn’t sit well with me. Or any of my siblings.
As I stormed into the castle in search of Isabella, my eyes sought and found her out as she stood from where she sat on the bottom step of the stairs.Fucking hell, she’s beautiful.Tiny andsweet despite the lethal amount of death she can place upon someone with a single touch. And fate made her mine, and I considered myself very lucky because of it.
Six weeks of tiny touches across her arms, enough to keep myself awake, then I was forced to leave her instead of love her while we got the death toll under control. It was better now, not normal, but enough that we could finally come home and rest. We couldn’t let so many ghosts roam freely. Not when the end was already so close. Scared and confused ghosts could easily turn into poltergeists and the world didn’t need more trouble.
I probably looked pissed, and although I didn’t want to alarm or scare her, I couldn’t get my brain and face to relax as I gripped her wrist. That crackle of energy and lust burned through our touch, and I wanted nothing more than to just be inside her. I wanted to hear about what she’d been doing while waiting for me, and that was another thing that tightened my facial expression. The fact that I had someone to come back to. My smile had been tensed and knotted up so tightly that I hoped she understood I wasn’t angry or upset, I just wanted her so badly. I missed her so much, and these circumstances and everything going on right now scared the fuck out of me.
Because I had someone, and I was going to lose her if we didn’t fight against the approaching future.
All I could mutter was, “Let’s go, Izzie,” as I pulled her in and faded to my home that was now hers as well.
