Page 147 of When Death Whispers

“Remember you must compromise to save her.”

I snarl. Idiotic nonsensical cosmic demon riddles. I should have known better than to question him. His answers are never answers at all.

Without another word, my shadows swiftly pool around me and drag me back to my burrow.

Yet, when we arrive, it is not the comforting dark sanctuary scented with her intoxicating citrus aroma that greets us.

Instead, we step into a nightmare. One we did not create.

Parker stands at its center, the entirety of the Evergloom’s pink-tinted power flooding into her body in waves of crackling energy. Her hair floats ethereally around her head as if suspended underwater. Her chin lifts in a silent, anguished scream, eyes blazing like twin supernovas.

“Parker!” I roar, rushing forward, shadows desperately reaching to absorb the overflowing power.

She is too fragile. Too human. Why has the Evergloom chosen her, so forcefully and without mercy?

“No!” My roar echoes like thunder, resonating to the farthest reaches of the realm. She cannot withstand this. I cannot—will not—lose her. “You cannot have her! She ismine!”

My shadows surge, protective and fierce, wrapping tightly around her body, turning vibrant pink upon contact, pulsing fiercely alongside the realm’s overwhelming power.

I pull at the magic coursing beneath her skin, absorbing every ounce possible, but it’s like draining an ocean drop by drop. The power floods relentlessly into her small frame, threatening to shatter her from within.

The Evergloom has claimed her. It has deemed Parker worthy, blind to the limitations of her fragile mortal form.

I continue to siphon off the power, the energy slithering beneath her skin both familiar and alien, tasting oddly citrusy and deeply satisfying. Yet even as I take it in, she continues to fill with more. I cannot slow it fast enough. My shadows strain under the immense force, becoming saturated and overloaded, yet the flow doesn’t relent.

I cannot save her—not with my shadows, not with all the darkness I command.

Not even with my love.

“Do not leave me, Snow Pea,” I rasp desperately, a plea that feels foreign on my tongue. “Not now, not when I’ve finally realized…”

Parker flares brighter, hotter, her body becoming incandescent. My shadows tighten around her desperately, attempting one final push to contain the uncontainable.

A sudden shout draws my attention to a gaping hole ripped into my burrow wall—revealing Rädslakorcu’s beastly snarl and beside him, impossibly, that infuriating human male my Parker values so dearly.

Rage and possessiveness flare simultaneously. My shadows surge forward instinctively, forming a protective wall around Parker and me, warning them off.

Yet another devastating surge of power drives me to my knees, scattering my shadows into useless pink dust once again. Helpless, I catch Parker’s limp form, cradling her unconscious body desperately. Her pulse thrums erratically, her skin aflame with barely contained power. My shadows are gone, my magic spent, and I—Death itself—am utterly powerless.

She hovers dangerously between life and oblivion, and I am forced to confront the unthinkable.

For the first time in my endless existence, I am forced to confront vulnerability.

I raise my gaze, locking eyes with Rad—stunned, uncertain—and the human, equally shaken. Anguish and desperation shred every ounce of pride I’ve ever held, forcing the single plea from my lips—a plea I never imagined myself capable of uttering:

“Help me.”

55

Everything is chaos.

Parker lies at the center, her body suspended off the floor in a storm of light so intense it hurts to look at. The air itself vibrates, crackling like lightning, alive with tension and desperation.

Steo, the reaper born of shadow and bone, cradles her mid-air with a reverence that feels too human, his expression contorted with something raw. Something real. Grief.

He looks utterly shattered. Not at all like the shadowy monster I’d been scared of back in our world. What the hell happened?

“Help me,” he pleads again, voice strangled, shadows gone and leaving him oddly vulnerable.

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