Nat gave me a careful nod, his form shifting, the terrifying Reaper replaced by the gentle, bespectacled face of the bookstore owner and friend.
I slid my arms around Jude’s limp form, one hand cupping the chilling cold of his cheek, the other finding the faint, fading pulse at his throat. I pressed my forehead to his, my breath hitching. A thousand words of apology for failing him died on my lips. He needed none of that. Only the truth.
“I love you,” I whispered against his skin, the words a vow and a release.
Then I kissed him, gentle and warm, giving him the last breath of hope I could gather. I poured every unsaid dream, every quiet morning we would never share, into that last touch, then carefully severed the tie and ripped the last threads out of Erlik’s hands, cutting the haphazard knots stringing the last of his soul to this world. It shouldn’t have been so easy, or silent, as his life snapped away. But the power using his body collapsed. The dark tendrils withered to dust. Puppet strings going limp as his power had been soul deep.
For a single, transcendent moment, I saw him, not as this broken puppet, but as he truly was, whole, radiant, and at peace. He smiled, a flicker of recognition in his ethereal form, just as Nat, the Reaper once more, took his hand and released mine.
Then time crashed back in.
The soldiers’ gunfire rang out, bullets streaking toward us. But before they could find their mark, the air around meshimmered. The golden, protective weave Jude had stitched into my very soul, his first and last gift, flared to life, a shield of pure love deflecting the storm.
The towering shadow of the god convulsed, its form destabilizing as it shrank in on itself. It was as if every monster that crossed the Veil had been a thread of its being. Tied to it through Jude’s wilting magic, and with the flow severed, its very substance unraveled. The resulting roar of fury vibrated through my bones as the ground shook.
Jude’s body began to crumple, and I lunged forward, desperate to catch him, as a violent shockwave of untethered magic erupted from the tear with all the stealth of a taser, sharp and brutal. It threw me backward, and I landed hard, breath driven from my lungs.
The sky swirled above me, a nauseating carousel of fading daylight and that sick, otherworldly heartbeat that thumped in time with my own. The world tilted on its axis, the screams and gunfire muffled as if I were submerged in deep water. Blood pounded in my ears, a frantic rhythm, drowning out everything else.
Someone dropped down beside me. Wade. His face was a cracked mask of grief, tear tracks cutting through the grime. He said something I couldn’t interpret. The sound was lost as the darkness surged up from the cracked earth beneath me, pulling me down into a silent, weightless void.
50
JUDE
One secondI was marinating in goo, the next I was flash-banged by the universe. When the spots cleared, Nat was standing there, holding out a hand.
My first thought—because my brain is a traitor—wasoh, thank god, someone who won’t immediately try to wear my soul as a hat.
My second thought waswell, shit, so much for the great dirt nap.
I’d always considered myself an atheist. The end was supposed to be a quiet, permanent off-switch. A moron’s logic, considering I’d spent the last few weeks elbow deep across the Veil, chasing a god. Guess I’d clung to the self-delusion that gods and monsters could exist without the bureaucratic afterlife package. No heaven, no hell, just chaos with a side of existential dread.
The ultimate irony being I’d unraveled my soul down to the barest threads to keep the people I loved safe, and now that shredded remnant was the only baggage I’d carried into the afterlife.
Had I helped at all? Was there a way to know if my team was safe? Would Angel survive without me now that our bond had been rewoven?
I looked at Nat, his face etched with sorrow. He met my gaze, and Angel’s words echoed back to me with brutal clarity.Only those on the verge of dying see a Reaper’s true form in this world.
I’d thought my fancy new weaver sight let me peek behind the curtain. Turns out, the only qualification was being a member of the soon-to-be-dearly-departed club.
Nat squeezed my hand and tugged me forward, through a tunnel of soft light. Cliché, but I followed. He was a Reaper, after all. Wasn’t it his job to get the dead from one place to another?
A desperate question burned in my chest.Angel?
I couldn’t give it voice, terrified of the answer a Reaper might give.
In silence, he led me down an endless corridor. The halls were obsessively neat, labeled with clean, glowing sigils. Not a person in sight other than us. Just the faint, electric hum of whatever kept the lights on, which, for all I knew, was the dying screams of forgotten prayers.
I didn’t feel tired in my body—mostly because I wasn’t entirely sure I had one anymore. It was more like jet lag mixed with the sensation of my soul shredding like cheap cloth that ached deep within, like a runaway train of what-ifs just waiting for me to glance back so it could plow me into a spiraling wreck. Was that normal? What was normal?
“Breathe, Jude,” Nat said, his voice cutting through the silence as he stopped before a featureless door. “Overthinking gets you nowhere.”
“Sorry,” I muttered automatically. A part of me had quietly dared to hope that death might come without the constant background hum of anxiety and the darker trenches ofdepression. No such luck. Turns out when your soul is the luggage, you get to keep all the emotional crap you packed. The ultimate carry-on.
I looked down the vacant, glowing hallway. “Where is everyone?” The question came out smaller than I meant it to. “It’s really quiet.”
Nat regarded me thoughtfully. A parade of unspoken things passed behind his gaze—pity, caution, maybe a flicker of guilt.
