I was sitting inside the coffin, on top of a long table. In some sort of modern dining room, framed by several picture windows, flooding the space with daylight.
What in the world?I began to ask myself.
Right before I saw Death himself, looming above me with a whiteboard sign in his hands that held two words:Don’t Scream.
I didn’t scream.
Mostly because I was too shocked.
Being friends with someone as cynical as Naomi had made me secretly harbor some doubts about the afterlife depicted in the Wölfennite version of the Bible.
So, I hadn’t actually expected angels to greet me at the gates of heaven and lovingly remove the cursed stain of wolfhood from my body so I could live out my eternal life as a human.
But I also had not expected Death to be an actual person.
Yet there Death stood, pale-skinned and dressed in a black turtleneck and leather pants that belled out over heavy black boots. He loomed over my coffin, with a storm of black hair so wild and tousled, it almost appeared to be moving.
I blinked at him.
“So, after all those promises that scary Irish Wolf made Alban, he and his friend just killed me?” I asked Death. “Poisoned me with whatever was in that needle they poked me with and left me to rot?”
Another terrible, much darker thought suddenly occurred to me. “Is that what happened to the original stolen she-wolves? Why they never found them? Were they all kidnapped and murdered in their sleep?"
I looked around frantically, "Please tell me Naomi isn't here, too.”
Death quirked a dark brow over eyes that were a surprising shade of crystal-clear light blue.
They twinkled with amusement before disappearing under silky black lashes as he cast his gaze down.
To my surprise, he wiped theDon’t Screammessage away with his sleeve before writing something with a fat marker he pulled out of his front pocket.
His hand, I noticed as he wrote, was covered in strange tattoos. Symbols—possibly a language, but unlike anything I’d ever seen before. The markings didn’t resemble Hebrew, Chinese, or the Celtic runes I occasionally saw in Faoiltiarn. They felt wholly foreign and otherworldly, full of dots, crescents, and shapes that looked half-finished.
He turned the board around to me:Not Death
“Oh no…” My stomach dropped, thinking of the Spring Fire and the Winter Sloth. Had my mother been right about my general unworthiness? “Did I not—did I not make it to heaven? Am I in the other place? Are you…?” I lowered my voice to a whisper to ask if I was, in fact, speaking to “…the devil.”
This time, the amusement quirked his mouth, raising one side of his lips. More erasing. And soon I got another message:Not Death. Not Devil. Glad you are living. And awake.
“So I’m not dead...” I let out a huge breath of relief before it occurred to me to ask, “Then why am I here? Why did the Irish Wolves put me in a coffin?”
More erasing. Then:Very Long Story. Tadhg will tell it.
“Who’s Tadge?” I winced a little over my pronunciation. I highly doubted I’d gotten that name right. And even possibly ruder, I felt compelled to ask the possibly disabled man standing in front of me, “And is there a reason you can’t tell the long story? Why don’t you talk?”
His light-blue eyes switched to the side with a considering look. He wrote for a bit longer this time before flipping the board:Eschewed spoken words years ago. They are inefficient. Cannot abide that speaking your thoughts requires so little thought.
“Well, I suppose you have a point there,” I conceded. Heat warmed my cheeks. “I’ve felt nothing but silly since I mistook you for Death.”
Another quirk of his lips. And more erasing. Then:Sadie, may I touch you? Help you out of your box?
I jolted a little. “You know my name?”
More writing. Then:Yes. I am Cian, your Shadow King . May I…?
He punctuated his written question with a palm-in-air extension of his other hand, and his sleeve pulled back, revealing the bottom of more tattoos crawling up his wrist.
The Shadow King… He wanted to touch me...
