A Shadow in the Reaping by Brynne Weaver

Chapter 15

We leave Ashen's room and walk down the corridor with no sound between us except our echoing footsteps. It doesn't just feel awkward. It feels tense and restless and broody. Like, really broody. I don't know if it's just me, but I kinda think if I turned around and headed back to his room, Ashen would be right on my heels. I would probably rip his clothes off the second the door closed behind us and then we would-

Do you ever think of something so ridiculous that you suddenly talk out loud or make a super weird sound? Well, I don't do that.

But I do smack my face with my palm. So now I must seem not just 'strange' but straight-up nuts.

Ashen looks down at me with a furrowed brow but doesn't say a word.

This place is freaking me out, I confess, writing as we walk.

"I gathered. You're barely even out of the corridor and your strangeness level has reached new heights," he says as we near the top of the stairs.

I know. That's a fact that's freaking me out even more.

"While I cannot blame you, you're going to need to pull it together. It doesn't get any better when we leave the building."

By the time we reach the bottom of the stairs I feel like I want to melt out of my skin. I must have a look of utter desperation on my face when I glance up at Ashen because he seems legit concerned.

"Vampire-"

I hiss. Fuck that felt good. Therapeutic, even.

"Vam-"

I hiss again.

"Lu," Ashen says, slowing to a halt and pulling me with him. I struggle to meet his eyes. I'm antsy and restless and I feel like I can't stay still. Moments ago, the Shadow Realm felt like it could be the true reality, like the other world was the myth. But now it feels like a toxic gas. Somehow, I know I'm not meant to be here after all. I know it in my breath and bones. Ediye was right, and the fact that Ember knows who I am certainly doesn't help. It's like I've been tilted on my axis. Like my orbit is misaligned.

Ashen squeezes my wrist. "Lu."

What, I mouth as I look up with a question crinkling my forehead.

"I meant what I said. You will be safe. Just stay with me. Do not stray out on your own."

I have major doubts about that being safe shit, all things considered. But I do my best to suck it up. I realize that if I freak out too much, that will probably look a little suspicious. Judging by the Reaper's face, that ship has long sailed.

I give a nod. The Reaper gives me one in reply. We walk through the hall, past a row of cauldrons. I'm kind of regretting my earlier freak-out with the Fire Corridor of Terror, because I don't know which one would take us home.

We arrive at a tall set of mahogany doors inlaid with black glass. Ashen pushes one open for me. We step outside, standing motionless at the top of a wide set of stairs leading to a short pathway to a road.

For a moment, I'm unable to breathe. I slowly draw my pen across the paper, not even looking down at what I'm writing. I show it to the Reaper. It says:

WHAT THE FUCK.

"Yeah. Like I said, it doesn't get any better when you leave the building," the Reaper says.

The light from the veiled sky is barely more than twilight. The shadows around us seem too dark and pervasive. The pathway to the road is lit with cast iron gas lamps much like the ones outside the Reaper's country estate. They flow at regular intervals down the road itself, disappearing into the fog that blankets us. It's so thick that I can't see far past the black surface of the road ahead, which honestly is probably a good thing. Because this place is fuuuuuuuuuucked.

An old-timey black carriage is lumbering down the road in front of us. Its curtains are drawn. We can't see who is inside. There's no carriage master to steer it, but that doesn't seem to matter. It clearly knows where it's going. There are chains leading from the seat where the driver should be to the iron yokes clamped around the necks of six souls.

Threadbare, colorless clothes float on their thin and featureless bodies. They walk in bare feet. They're expressionless aside from the burden of pulling the weight of the carriage with their throats. They look straight ahead, focused on the fog before them and some destination that's probably worse than my nightmares can imagine. They seem like something between a ghost and a person. Something transparent, yet solid. Something spectral, yet real.

We watch the carriage pass into the fog as I slowly raise my note again in front of the Reaper's face.

WHAT THE FUCK.

"They are souls."

WHAT THE FUCK.

"Reaped souls."

WHAT THE FUCK.

"What did you think happened to reaped souls?"

I glare up at the Reaper with a look that says obviously not that. I mean, come on, how was I supposed to guess that was what happened? I thought reaping was synonymous with death. Nonexistence. Nothingness. Apparently, I was wrong. Very wrong.

We watch the fog consume the coach, listening as the throughbrace leather straps squeak under the weight of the carriage. As the sound fades away into the distance, a black snout appears in the fog, followed by a set of amber eyes and tall, attentive ears. A black jackal stalks out of the mist, trotting down the middle of the road in the opposite direction of the coach. Its shoulder is nearly my height. It turns its head in our direction and sniffs the air, homing its gaze on me without breaking its stride. It disappears into the fog like a lethal shadow.

I hold my note up. This time I hit Ashen in the face with it.

WHAT THE FUCK.

"That's Urtur, our resident jackal."

I move to slap him again, but Ashen catches my journal and closes it before handing it back to me.

"Let's just assume you'll be what the fucking for the next while, shall we?"

I look up and try to give Ashen my fiercest glare, but there's too much what the fuck still rolling around in my head and it ends up more like a grimace. Ashen gives me a dark look, one that says he's forgotten somewhere along the course of his immortal life just how messed up this all is. Maybe he never knew in the first place. Maybe he was born and raised taking ghost carriages and playing with giant jackals. Who knows. I've never really thought about how Reapers are made. Regardless, I can tell he's looking at it through my eyes, and what he sees looks batshit crazy.

"Come on," he says. I feel the pressure of Ashen's hand on my back as we start to walk. The warmth seeps through my shirt and meets my cool skin. The wings of my vertebrae feel like tuning forks, humming beneath his touch.

We descend the stairs and I look behind us, twisting toward Ashen to glance up at the facade of the building over my shoulder. URBIGU hangs in gold letters near the roof, the face of a jackal in gold above the door. I turn back toward the road again, looking up at Ashen as I do. With his hand on my back and his body close to mine, he feels like the only reassuring thing about this place. It's in the details that are becoming familiar. The way his dark hair falls over his brow as he looks down at me. The rich brown hues of his eyes that seem to warm when his deeply buried feelings crawl close to the surface of his stoic facade.

I look back toward the path as we reach the bottom of the stairs. Though I try to keep my eyes on anything neutral, like the fog or the black surface of the road, my thoughts are consumed by the souls pulling the carriage. Once witches, or werewolves, or vampires like me. Vampires that once sang about the sea. Werewolves that once hunted in a pack, wild in the woods. Witches that cast spells to heal the wounded, like Ediye did for me. Maybe some were my enemies. Maybe some were friends. Maybe they committed crimes worthy of reaping, maybe they didn't. But I don't feel like this is what they deserve.

I try not to let my thoughts run further, to my sisters, or Vlad, or any others I've known and lost over the millennia to the rules of the Reapers. I try not to wonder what became of Aglaope. But I can still feel the press of her hands on my chest as she pushed me from the cliff, into the safety of the crystalline sea. The urgency in her eyes still claws at my mind, her final words at odds with the sweet timbre of her voice. FindBarbossa Sarno, from the ship. Get a spell. Take the weapon and get revenge. And then the feeling of falling, weightless, watching the blade of fire strike through her chest as I plunged into the abyss. She was already dead by the time she fell into the water after me. Knowing now that it wasn’t the end, it’s hard not to wonder where her soul might have gone or what they have her doing here.

So, I guess it's for the best that I never fixed my rabid trash panda makeup situation, because tears start to gather along the edges of my eyes as we walk. I clutch the notebook and pen to my chest to hide the effort it takes to steady my breath. I try to focus on the cadence of my steps along the road. I turn my head so Ashen won't see the futile struggle to keep a tear from falling.

We don't break stride as Ashen's hand sweeps up my back to rest on the crest of bone where my neck meets my shoulders. His palm warms my bare skin. I swallow a thick and painful knot in my throat as I open my journal to a fresh page.

I'm fine, I write, which is a total lie. I show it to Ashen without looking at him.

"I know," he says, but he doesn't withdraw his touch.

I'm not crying.

"Okay."

I hear the wheels and leather straps of another coach in the distance along a side road in the fog. My muscles tense and I wipe one of my eyes with the knuckles of my clenched fist.

This place is fucked. And I lied.

"I know." Ashen's index finger travels a slow and careful path across my skin as the rest of his hand lays steady pressure across my bones. It's like a weighted blanket, soothing and heavy on my flesh. "Ediye was right about you," he says, his voice low and quiet.

What, about me not belonging here? I think we figured that out in the first ten minutes.

"We did. But that's not what I meant."

We don't talk or write anymore. We just walk. Ashen's hand drifts back down to the center of my back. I wonder if it's less for my benefit than it is to catch me if I run.

There is mostly silence as we travel the road, which has its own eeriness in the twilight. But sometimes there are sounds in the mist. Scuttling. Shuffling. At one point, a keening wail that sounds like a bird, but I don't think it is. The sorrowful cry carves an indelible memory in my heart.

A looming black shadow emerges ahead from the curl of the fog. A building comes into view. The stone is matte black, unpolished and ominous. A row of doric columns holds up the sharp peak of the roof. GIRGINAKKU, it says along the top of the facade. Library. Two souls stand guard beside the entrance, looking out upon the fog. They are chained by the wrists to the iron handles of the doors.

They won't let me in. I don't have a library card. Maybe we should go back, I write, holding it up to Ashen's face.

"They will let you in, not to worry," he says, his hand steady and strong on my back against the resistance of my slowing steps.

Nah, I think I'm good. If you take me back to your room I can just chill there. I'll watch something on Netflix.

"I don't have Netflix."

YOU ARE A MONSTER.

The puff of air from an almost-laugh escapes from Ashen's lungs. "Might I suggest a book for entertainment? I know where we can get one."

No it's fine, I'll do some yoga instead.  Or I'll find the spa for a massage. Or maybe just stare at the wall. The world is my oyster in your fucked-up Shadow Realm.

"Now might be a good time to let you know that Urtur enjoys showing up to my room unannounced and he does not take kindly to visitors," Ashen says, looking down with a faint smile lifting one corner of his lips.

...the library of horrors it is, I write, and I heave a heavy sigh.

We ascend the steps and the souls grip the handles and open the doors for us to pass. Their chains clank as the links roll against one another. I fix my gaze to the spectre closest to me as I pass, forcing myself not to look away. His face is somehow empty of defining features. Thin lips, papery skin. A small nose that could be anyone's. Whispers of flowing gray hair on a round head. But the eyes are electric blue beneath a swirling cloud of grey. They land on me and seem to find focus. They follow me over the threshold as I pass, watching until the crack between the door closes shut behind us.

An Alpha werewolf, I write, holding the note up for Ashen.

"Yes," he says as we continue through a dark foyer, the low ceiling pressing the weight of its darkness upon us.

What did he do? What was his crime?

"I don't know."

I stop abruptly, Ashen halting at my side as I turn to face him.

So he has been chained there, opening the door for you Reapers for who-knows-how-long and you don't know what he did?

Ashen looks back toward the closed door for a long and quiet moment. The only sound is the ripple of candle flame trapped behind the black glass of the sconces on the walls. "No, I don't," he says as he turns his gaze down to me. His hand falls away from my back. I feel the tension in my brows as my eyes bounce between his. I'm looking for a reason to be angry with him. But all I see is sorrow and guilt, buried beneath the strata of time. And all I feel is sadness.

I turn away and continue to a set of interior doors whose smoky grey glass obscures the sanctum beyond. I'm eager to get this done, to be out of this place. I want to be anywhere but here.

I open the door and lurch to a halt. I feel like my veins have been seared with lightning. It's not the expanse of the room that steals the breath from my chest. It's not the rows and rows of ancient texts, lining three floors of shelves to the ceiling. It's not even the souls that wander in the shadows, listless and alone.

It's the three black marble slabs before me, inscribed with names in shimmering filaments of gold.

The one in the center is for House Urbigu.

Beneath the house name: The Reaping.

The first name on the list is Ember's.

The fifth name beneath hers is Aglaope.

Ember was the one who reaped my sister's soul.

And I killed the wrong Reaper.