His eyes dart up to the ceiling, but it is not the plaster he is studying; it is something else. Something I cannot see.
“What is it?”
He is on his feet faster than I can stop him, breath rushing like winter gales on a pond. Bram reaches out to me, his hands passing like frozen teeth through the wool at my shoulders.
“Get away from the window!”
A gust of cold air knocks me to my hands and knees. Bram dives below the windowsill. When I look up, the truth is like a punch to the throat. There is nothing out there.
“Bram—”
He brushes a hand through his dark hair. “Look, we don’t have much time. I need—”
“I don’t understand how you’re here.”
The air hardens to ice. He slides beside me next to the bed, so close I smell a hint of woodsmoke on his tattered clothes. His eyes darken.
“Adelaide, listen to me. I need you to bring me back.”
I stumble against the frame, the bell breaking free from my hands to spill across the checked quilt. His eyes narrow when it rolls to rest near Mother’s journal, Ransom’s handkerchief.
“I don’t—”
“The bell.” Panic beats in his eyes. “You can use it to bring me back. I don’t know how you found it, but that is a death bell. A Reaper’s bell. You know what this is, don’t you?”
My mind is a jumble of words that make no sense, but I weed through it, reaching for Blessed Scriptures.
“In the Rending.” My vision ripples. “Certain souls taken by Erybrus were cursed. Turned to Reapers. Tasked with harboring the dead to whatever awaited them. But you don’t—” My gaze flinches to the bell.
“Yes. And each Reaper was given a bell to travel between the planes of life and death, remember?”
I nod. Yes, I remember. I have sat in church and heard the stories. But they were always just that: stories. Meant to scare us into submission, into a yearning to grow closer to Ithrandril.
“Look, Adelaide, if you don’t—” Bram darts his eyes wildly around us, seeing things I cannot but sending my heart racing all the same. “I’m going to die here. I need your help. You have to use it.”
I blink and shake my head. Maybe Idlewild is the right place for me to go. I am no Reaper. And if I am…then Mayor Samuels, my father, and the entire village is right.
I am touched by darkness. By Erybrus himself.
I stumble backward. “Bram, you’re already dead. I don’t see what this little thing is going to do.”
He ducks, hands clutching aimlessly at the bed skirt. Still, there is nothing in the room besides us. He stays still for a moment, and when he finally looks up at me, his eyes could melt diamonds.
“I’m not fully dead, you know.”
There’s a catch of something in his voice, something like fear, and it liquefies my bones.
“Bram, I don’t understand. My father spoke your funeral rites. I threw earth on your casket after your three sisters. I—” The words hitch in my throat. “Why are you here? Why are you not watching your family? If your sisters knew, your mother—”
“They cannot help me!” He spits the words like gravel. “They cannot see me like you can. Adelaide, you’re the only one who can use the bell. I know it, deep down inside. I know you are my only path to salvation.”
There’s a desperation in his eyes, and it breaks me, shreds my heart to threads. But this can’t be real. It isn’t—
I glance once more at the bell, overwhelmed with my own desperate confusion. And yet, it all makes sense.
In my mind, it begins to slot into place, like pieces to a puzzle. My blackened blood. My wan complexion. The illness tremoring through my veins. Shadow-touched. Cursed. Which means I am something this townshouldbe afraid of. A monster.
Tears hem my eyes. “This isn’t—you have to help me understand. You died so long ago. I remember…” My voice trails off while I study Bram’s face.
