“Show me your true form,” I say, ignoring his arrogant bemusement. “Let me see Death, and I’ll make my wish.”
The easy arrogance evaporates, replaced by a cold rigidity. He turns his head slowly, and this close, I can see the tiny flecks of gold in his irises.
“You demand your wish, and I grant it,” he says, his voice dropping. “That is the transaction. I do not perform parlor tricks for your amusement.”
“It’s not amusement. It’s…” Curiosity, probably, but that seems too morbid to confess. “It’s…knowing who I’m dealing with.”
“You’re dealing with the end of all things.”
He turns back to the sky, dismissing me. But he doesn’t leave. He stays there, the heat of his body—yes, heat—seeping through his clothes into mine. It’s strange. For all the coldness he can bring, near me, he sometimes seems to burn like a fever.
We lie in silence for a long moment. It’s surprisingly peaceful. The wind howls above us, but down here, shielded by the earth, it’s quiet.
“Why didn’t they see you?” I ask quietly, breaking the truce. “In the city. At the Gutter Lane house. My mother, Daron… They all looked right through you. But the kitchen girl…she saw you.”
Vale sighs, a sound of weary patience. “I am a concept, Elara. Even in this form, most minds refuse to perceive me.”
“But I saw you. I saw Vale.”
“Because I chose to let you see Vale,” he murmurs. “And once the curtain is lifted, it cannot be lowered. Not in this form.”
I nod in understanding. The kitchen girl saw him that night because he’d appeared to her before. No wonder she was scared. She didn’t see a steward or even a prince; she saw Death.
“The carriage driver who brought me here.” My mind wanders back to how he asked if I was alright. How Miss Hampshire mentioned the next day that talking to myself was not permitted. “He never saw you, did he? Probably thought I was mad.”
“What else would you call a woman who cozies up in a grave beside Death?” Vale shifts onto his side, turning to face me just in time for me to see a twitch leaving his jaw. “Enough of this nonsense.” The annoyance in his voice is sharp enough to scrape. Vale’s eyes narrow, not in anger—notyet—but in that bored, predatory way that says he’s about to stop indulging me. “I didn’t climb into a grave to trade memories of carriage drivers. Ask what you’re clearly prepared to ask, Elara, before I decide you’re wasting my morning.”
The scathe in his voice pricks at me. The distance between Vale’s patience and his rage is unpredictable at best, but maybe I can still risk more questions? Learn about the power he wields and the rules that bind it?
I roll onto my side, leaving nothing but an inch between our faces, warm breaths mingling in the air. “The farm girl. Kael’sdistant scrap of blood.”
“What of her?”
“Did you kill her?”
“This again?” Again that shift in his jaw, barely there, but I catch it. “I cannot take a life like that.”
“You told me as much, but who knows?” I shift in the grave, the movement sending a small cascade of dirt down from the grave’s edge, but it mostly sprinkles on him. “You’re Death. It’s in the title.”
“Do you really think I busy myself with mixing poisons or pushing old men down stairs?”
I look at the dirt on the velvet of his collar, Corvin’s voice murmuring through my skull.He desires you. Use it.My pulse rises into my throat, but I simply let it pound there. Death is a man, he said so himself, and I now understand what it takes to seduce one.
After all,hetaught me.
I reach out, fingertips slowly brushing the dirt off his collar. “If it suits your plans.”
Vale hesitates, eyes narrowing, flecks of gold catching in the gray light. “I am not a plague. I am not a blade. I am not the hand that pushes a child into a river.” His voice turns colder. “I am merely the one who collects the soul.”
Daron’s soul, and that thought drives a shiver along my arms. “You’re making yourself sound pretty innocent, considering you created a curse that’s killing thousands over the death of one ferryman. Even if he was your friend.”
His jaw clenches and unclenches. “Innocence is a mortal invention…as is guilt. I don’t decide how much sand is in a mortal’s hourglass—though I might tap it a little.”
I slide my fingers from his collar to the sharp line of his jaw, feeling for stubble where I only find polished river stone. “Tap?”
Vale’s throat works once beneath my hand, a swallow that shouldn’t matter and somehow does. His pupils flick to my fingers on his jaw, then slide back to my eyes with thatlazy, infuriating calm he wears when he’s deciding whether something will be amusing or merely tedious.
“I can…nudge.” His exhale comes with the slightest weight pressing into my fingers, almost as if he’s sinking into my touch without wanting to make it too obvious. “Hours. A day. Rarely more. I can stretch a fraying thread a little, or pull it taut so it snaps sooner—if it was going to snap, anyway.”
