Page 150 of Hellbound

“Why am I alive, Vale?”

He didn’t reply, but the shadows around him stilled.

Marian stepped toward him. “What did you do?”

“When you died, I forged a second shard of power. One that allowed me to pierce the veil and call your soul to mine.”

He spoke slowly, each word hanging heavy in the air with meaning Marian couldn’t parse. Her gaze flicked to the newly-grayed hairs at his temples. At what cost?

“Am I bound to you again?”

“No,” he said as he turned to face her. “The power you wield is now yours alone. We’re connected, but you’re free of me.”

She blinked rapidly.

“Why would you do that?”

“To anchor you to this life for a while longer,” he said quietly. “You gave a piece of me to the world I left behind. Time will tell if the ixyura falls to Hexceit.”

Marian looked at her hands. The mark was gone, the skin healed.

“What does this mean for me? And you?”

Vale shook his head. “I’m not entirely sure.”

Marian stood in stunned silence, struggling to accept what this could possibly mean. “But why?” seemed like a stupid thing to ask again. It was too much. She looked away with a soft snort. “I feel like Death should not be freestyling with its cosmic powers of mass destruction.”

His lips quirked in a wry grin as he stepped toward her.

“If I thought you were capable of mass destruction, I wouldn’t have equipped you with the potential for it, my leiah.”

That word. It sent a shiver through her.

Vale’s eyes softened. “Come home with me. There is nothing for you here.”

Marian looked at him sharply. “You are Death.”

His features softened with the last expression Marian expected to see. Shame.

“I should not have kept my identify from you. I’m sorry.”

Silence fell over the room. She shoved her hands in her pockets as uncertainty washed over her. Marian looked away.

“Look, I want a life, and … I want you in it. But I need time to process all of this.” And wade through the wealth of memories she now possessed. To reacquaint herself with who she’d been. Who she could become.

And to come to grips with whatever this dizzying sensation was that overcame her when she looked at Vale. A thrilling, frightening loss of equilibrium she couldn’t dismiss as cosmic anomaly, or a side effect of their worlds colliding.

She’d never been skilled at articulating her feelings, but this was far too big for her to contend with in her state. For now, she’d bury it, and try to refrain from embarrassing herself. If he knew how being near him set her world to rights and destroyed her all at once, well …

Marian just wasn’t ready for that.

He considered her through narrowed eyes, a shrewd look stealing over him. “Then give me two days of your week. I won’t accept less.”

She snorted softly. With a smirk, she reached out a hand to him. “Deal.”

He took it, his warm fingers curling slowly around hers. The threads of a bond took shape. But this one settled gently in her bones. Not a deal.

A promise.