I reach for where his hand hangs at his side, half-hidden by the night-cloak. It’s easily twice the size of my own. Two fingers are long, elegant, sheathed in pale skin. Three are stripped clean, nothing but articulated ivory, bright and polished, clicking softly against one another as he shifts.
A moment of breathless hesitation.
Then I press my fingertips against a transition point—where gray flesh gives way to the stark white bone of his knuckles—expecting the bite of winter, the numbing chill of a tomb.
Instead, a shock of heat burns my skin.
I gasp, snatching my hand back.
As does he, more violently so, jerking the limb away with a hiss that scrapes through the exposed teeth of his skeletal jaw. The movement is so sharp the wind from it buffers my face, and he cradles the touched hand against his chest, the black pits of his eyes locking on me.
“No mortal has ever touched Death like this.” His growl trembles like a caving mine deep underground, yet it can’t scrape the hint of surprise from his tone. “You asked to see. Now you saw.”
“I asked to explore.” I take a step back into his space, tilting my head until my neck aches to look up at the nightmare towering over me. “You can’t explore a map that’s folded shut, now can you?” I lift my hand to his again, ignoring the tremor in my fingers. “Exploring requires touch.”
When my thumb finds his warm, bony finger, the heat jolts me again—less startling now, more…fascinating. It’s warmth that can’t belong to a corpse, warmth that suggests the presence of life rather than absence.
Death shudders.
Probably from how I slide my fingers up, tracing the line where tendon bands into muscle along his arm. Where pale skin clings smooth as parchment stretched over strength, higher into his sleeve, until?—
Gods, he’s tall.
I strain upward, my boots sinking into the muck as I stretch onto my tiptoes. It’s futile, my hand hovering mid-neck on a creature that scrapes the lower branches of the oak.
“Kneel.” The word hangs in the cold air, sharp and absolute. “Please…”
Death does nothing. He simply looms, perhaps hoping the logistics of his enormity will force me to abandon this madness. Never…
“You granted me exploration,” I remind him, my voice steady despite my own audacity souring my tongue. “So, unless you plan on lifting me up”—I glance meaningfully at the hand that could easily crush my waist—“you need to come down.”
A low, grating sound vibrates from his chest. It might be a growl. It might be the clicking of his rib cage shifting beneath the linen.
He holds my gaze for one long, agonizing second. Then, slowly, terrifyingly, the god descends.
It’s a collapse of gravity. One massive knee hits the earth with a thud that I feel in the soles of my boots, followed by the other. The ground shakes, dead leaves shuddering around us. His height cuts down, shadows spilling around him like pools of black ink, until his skull levels with mine.
Death’s face is inches from mine.
I step between the V of his spread knees, my boot rustling against his shadowy cloak, a sound that seems deafening in the vacuum of silence. Trembling, I raise my hands.
He flinches as I cup his face, his breath hitching, but he doesn’t pull away. My right hand finds the familiar: the high, sharp cheekbone of Vale, the smooth, pale skin that feels fever-hot against my palm. My thumb brushes the corner of his brow.
I search the black hollows of his eyes, the shadows that seem to writhe there. “Can you see me?”
“I see everything,” he rumbles, the vibration traveling through his jaw and into my palms. “I see the blood pumping in your veins. I see the fluttering in your throat. I see the bright radiance of your life.”
I slide my fingers to the bridge of his nose, over the ridge where the skin tears from the cavity, and onto the polished ivory of his skeletal cheek. Despite the indignity of a mortal petting his exposed structure like a lapdog, he doesn’t pull away.
Instead, a long, ragged exhalation leaves his chest as his skull leans into my touch, all but nuzzling against the warmth of my hand with a desperation that makes something inside my chest clench. It’s the reaction of a creature that longed for touch for a long, long time. Eons.
The intimacy of it intoxicates me. It floods my veins, dousing the fear until I slide my thumbs inward, tracing the line of his naked gums, my thumb hovering over the exposed roots of his teeth. What would it feel like to kiss Death? To press my mouth to something that is half lips, half bone?
The gravity of that question pulls me deeper into the heavy space between us. My body leans in, abandoning disgust for the dark pull of the unknown. His head tilts, the movement disjointed and eerie, the black pits of his eyes lowering to focus on my mouth. He leans closer, the distance shrinking until his breath ghosts over my lips.
We are so close that I should be choking on the stench of the grave. I brace for it, for the cloying sweetness of rot or the metallic tang of blood, but…there is nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Because he’s no corpse.
