I curled a white tail around my paws, sat tall, and waited with wide eyes to see if she would know me, accept me, love me, as an arctic fox.
Her back flattened against the barn, and for a horrifying heartbeat, I was certain I’d frightened her. Then, as she slowly sank to her bottom and set the lantern gently beside her, I realized that the move had been so she wouldn’t startleme.
“Are you a ghost?” she whispered.
It was a shame she couldn’t see me smile. I shook my head, and she nearly choked.
“You understand me?” Thin fingers flew to her chest. “You are no fox.”
Bowing felt too stiff. I laid down, legs stretched toward her, head tilted toward the side.
“Are you a good spirit, or a bad one?”
Hm. She hadn’t exactly set me up for success with such a complicated ask. I chewed on the answer as she readied herself for her next question when a scream sliced through the wind and waves.
Love knocked over the lantern in her haste to her feet. “Mother!”
She sprinted for the house. I cast a wasted look at the flame before remembering where I was. The soaked grass didn’t have a chance of catching fire. I twisted to follow her into the house, pushing through the door she’d left ajar, as she crashed into her parents’ bedroom.
Her father had been gone for months, and her mother, unable to move, was panting, frozen, while a twisted ghoul straddled her.
Maybe Love had the ability to see through the veil in this life, but I doubted it.
Mortals caught between sleep and consciousness, paralyzed by spirits, however, were cursed with the ability to see.
So much for my time as a fox.
I wasn’t sure if it was Winnie, or Love, whose hands flew noiselessly to her mouth as I burst from my fox shape and leapt for the hag. The succubus ripped me from the mortal realm as we tumbled through time and space, through breath and suffocation, through poison and venom and hate and terror as she snared me in a nightmare.
Chapter Twenty-Five
ETERNITY
Ilanded, panting on my hands and knees, on the edge of the Dead Sea.
Heat scorched me. My hands burned. I winced against the blinding sun, an endlessly blue sky. A stampede of men stormed over me, trampling me underfoot. My mouth was forced into sand, jaw twisting, choking on dust, as their accusations filled the air.
I struggled to my knees, spitting sand onto my forearm, as the memory yanked open a door I’d closed, forcing me to watch an innocent woman beg for a god who would not answer. Somewhere, on a distant cliff, Gula would be watching. I felt the cuts and bruises of a mortal body, shoving as if I was just another man, as I forced my way to the front.
The sentence was issued, and the stoning began, but it was not Shala on the shore.
Yuka looked up at me, wide eyes forsaken and wet with betrayal as she spied her protector, complicit in her death. In her silence, three pained words pierced me:
I trusted you.
Watching, when the first rocks hit. The Qawiaraq word for “Fluffy” barely escaped her lips, the pleading cry of the abandoned.
The air escaped my lungs. I shoved men out of the way, the impact of their rocks exploding against the back of my skull, bruising my spine, cracking my ribs as I threw myself over her.
When I landed, there was no one beneath me.
The sun, the sands, the crowds, were gone.
I shivered against the cold, shocked by the smell of manure and unwashed fur. The strained hiss of rope was a unique noise, but one I’d encountered before. I scrambled to my feet once more, knowing I’d left my mark on the realms and their challenges. Jarovid threw back his head in a cackle as he gave the order.
I’d never met the swollen, battered woman at the center of the quartet of horses, but the shimmer of her soul was enough to shatter me.
This was a life I’d evaded—a death that had haunted me even when told by a legion while I seethed from my palace.
