Now my stomach is twisting for another, entirely separate reason.
What in all the worlds was happening?
“But…” Samael continues on, looking at the Fates once more and ignoring me despite the fact that I am staring at him like he has grown three heads. “I do have a certain…affinity for her, yes.”
The Child giggles again. The Middle purses her lips. The Crone snorts softly.
“‘An affinity,’ he says,” mocks the Crone. “For he has forgotten what it is to love.”
“And whose fault is that?” snaps the Child.
I can’t be sure, but I think the Crone rolls her eyes.
It is the one in the middle I am watching. She seems to be the balance between the two, the sweet spot, matured by time but not yet spoiled by it.
“And you?” asks the Middle, looking down at me with those dead, probing eyes. “Are you in love with him?”
“Uh…” I say. Because I am a top-notch fuckin’ genius.
“I don’t…I…”
Much better, Cici. For the love of the Father, why don’t you give it another go?
I clear my throat. “I suppose I have developed an…affinity for him as well,” I say at last. Because honestly, what the fuck am I supposed to say? It seems pretty evident that dude has risked himself for me.
And that’s apparently because he likes me.
Color me straight up shocked.
The Child sits up a little straighter on her stone throne. Her gray eyes reflect the lights of the massive hall. “Let’s make a deal,” she says. “I do so love deals.”
I do not know how I should feel about this, but a glance at the set of Samael’s shoulders reveals that I shouldn’t be pleased.
“For what you have done,” says the Crone, “you should be sent to the void. The both of you.”
The tone of her voice says that if she had it her way, that’s exactly what she’d do.
I decide I do not particularly like the old bitch. I also keep that thought to myself, because I’m not a complete idiot.
“Oh, please, sister,” says the Child. “Don’t be such a bore. We can make bets. It will be fun.”
The Crone snorts but looks at the Middle. The one in the center has not taken her gaze off me and Samael since we arrived here.
After a silence that seems to last a lifetime, the Middle says, “I’m inclined to play. I am also curious about the choice she’ll make.”
The Crone waves a stone hand. “Fine then. Get on with it.”
The Child claps. The sound is thunderous in the hollow hall.
“Right then,” she says. “What shall it be?”
“What is it always?” says the Crone.
Silence hangs for a handful of heartbeats, and in it, I feel as though I am counting the grains of my own hourglass as they slip through the neck and pool at the base.
Finally, the Middle says, “We have decided to offer you a choice, young one.” She looks only at me, as though Sam does not even exist beside me. “We want to offer you the thing you want most in the cosmos.”
“Your freedom!” says the Child.
The Crone rolls her stone eyes.
I stand rooted to the spot as though I have turned to marble myself.
My freedom.
Can it be that I’d heard her right?
I swallow, try not to glance over at Sam, and fail. I blink when I see that he, in fact, is no longer standing there. He has disappeared.
“You said I get a choice,” I say, staring at the spot where Sam stood only a moment ago. “My freedom…or what?”
“Or a continued eternity of service,” says the Middle.
What kind of stupid choice was that?
“When you say ‘freedom’…?”
The Crone snaps, “She means a return to your mortal life, to live out your human days for however long that may be, and returned ownership of your soul.”
Returned ownership of my soul. Meaning I could live and die like a normal person, meaning I would be free of my obligation to Father Time. Meaning I would no longer be a reaper.
Holy fuck.
It really is an offer of the thing I want most in the world.
I am almost afraid to ask, but I must.
“What’s the catch?”
“Just a token,” giggles the Child, and for the first time, I hear menace in the ringing of it.
“Shred Samael,” says the Middle Fate. “And your soul is yours.”
14
10:15 p.m.
Because of course.
Because it couldn’t be something else, something reasonable. It had to be shredding Samael’s soul. Where is that miserable old reaper, anyway?
The question must be on my face.
“We are making him the same offer,” says the Middle. “Right at this moment. Decide. Before he decides for you…Or we do.”
I feel like my head is going to explode. How many endless days and nights have I prayed for something like this, for a shot at saving my soul? I’d told myself that I would do whatever it took, would give anything to escape my eternal sentence as a reaper, if only given the chance.
And here it was.
I turn, and Sam is there again. A nightmare turned real. His face is familiar, stoic and set. His wings arch up over his wide shoulders, and the hood of his cloak is once more covering his head.
In his large hand, Sariel, his legendary scythe, gleams.
I tighten my grip on my own scythe, the coolness of it tingling against my palm.
The museum lighting flashes upon the curves of our blades. I am going to shred him, or he is going to shred me…
Except that…
Neither of us does any such thing.
His scythe falls first, clattering to the floor. Discarded…
He will not shred me, not even if it means saving his own soul.
Not only that, but the bastard falls to his knees before me, his neck reaching a perfect angle for my own blade.
Samael’s dark eyes pin me, and there is pleading in them. “Do it,” he whispers, so low I can hardly be sure I hear. “Do it, and be free.”
As though it would be a mercy, though he’d told me it was not. And if the void
