Page 26 of Reaper's Ruin
“Okay, so I got killed by some fae asshole who accidentally sucked me through the realm with him? Is that our best lead?”
Selyse and I exchanged a look again, then she nodded. “It’s the most logical explanation at this point.”
“So, if that’s true, and it’s a fae who killed me, how am I going to find him to get the answers I need to find peace? It’s not like I can go play Sherlock Holmes and sleuth him out when I’m stuck here in this stupid ghost body.” Frustration crept into Soraya’s voice. “I can’t talk to anyone. I can’t touch anything. I’m watching the world go by without being able to interact with any of it.” She gestured helplessly. “What am I supposed to do? Float around hoping for answers to magically appear?”
“There may be a way,” Selyse said, a spark of an idea twinkling in her eyes. “My mother—” She paused, swallowing hard. “My mother left notes about a spell. For granting physical form to spirits.”
She stood and walked to an old, wooden trunk against the wall. The old hinges creaked as she opened it, then she withdrew an ancient-looking book from within. With a soft blow of air, dust particles scattered before she opened it.
We watched, Soraya’s eyes wide and full of hope as Selyse flipped through pages.
“Here,” she said finally. “A binding of essence. It can grant physical form to a soul temporarily.”
“Physical form?” Soraya echoed, hope brightening her voice. “I could touch things? People could see me?”
“Theoretically, yes,” Selyse said, studying the pages with a frown of concentration. “You would appear as a living being, able to interact with the physical world. Both of you.”
“Both of us?” I stepped forward, tension coiling through me. “You want to bind me to the living realm as well?”
Selyse looked up, her gold-green eyes steady. “She will need help if she is to have any chance of finding peace. Of seeing her mother again.” She closed the book, cradling it against her chest. “She’s from the Mortal Realm. She knows nothing of Faelora, its dangers, its customs. I would offer to go myself, but I cannot leavemy forest for long. My power drains rapidly beyond these constraints, and I am bound here until I master what my mother never had time to teach me.”
“I am already breaking more rules than I can fathom by not reaping her already. You would ask me to defy the Veil Lords more?” I said quietly. “To abandon the Shadowveil? My duty as a Reaper?”
Soraya stepped closer to me, close enough that I could see the flecks of darker blue in her irises, the faint tremble in her lower lip.
“Would you do it?” she asked softly. “Would you help me?” She hesitated, vulnerability written across her face. “I don’t know anyone else here and I... I trust you.”
Those last words struck me like a warhammer. She trusted me. Death itself. The very Reaper sent to extinguish her soul. The absurdity of it should have made me laugh, but instead, something long buried stirred within me—a sense of purpose I’d thought lost centuries ago.
For eight hundred years, I had reaped fae souls with cold satisfaction, finding in it justice for what they had done to my people. In my mortal life, I had failed in protecting humanity and then spent centuries taking my revenge in the only way left to me.
But here was one human soul—one chance to do something different.
I thought of what the Veil Lords would do when they discovered my betrayal. Not only had I chosen not to reap my assigned soul, but now I was actively helping her, and if I did as Soraya asked, soon I would be walking among the living in complete defiance of my station. The punishment would be swift and absolute. Obliteration would be the only outcome once they discovered what I’d done.
And yet, as I looked at Soraya—this fragile, brave human with her tear-stained cheeks and hopeful eyes—I found myself unable toturn away. There was something about her that called to the man I had once been, something that made me want to be worthy of the trust she had so inexplicably placed in me.
Perhaps this was my chance to atone, in some small way, for the kingdom I had failed to save. Perhaps in helping this one human soul, I could find a measure of the peace that had eluded me for centuries.
And perhaps, when the Veil Lords finally erased me, I could face that end knowing I had done one thing right. Saved even just one human soul. And it would be worth it when I finally reached the end of all existence.
Shewould be worth it.
“I’ll do it,” I said, the words feeling strange on my tongue. Not a promise of death, but of salvation.
The smile that broke across her face was like sunrise after endless night—bright enough to blind, to burn, to remind me of everything I had lost and somehow, impossibly, make me want to find it again.
“Thank you,” she whispered, and I had to look away, unable to bear the gratitude in her eyes.
“Don’t thank me yet,” I warned. “This journey will not be easy, and I cannot promise success.”
“I know,” she said. “But at least now, with your help, I have hope.”
Hope.
After eight hundred years of dealing in death, in endings, in oblivion—there was something terrifying and exhilarating about that simple word I had almost come to forget before she’d crashed into my life.
“Well then,” Selyse said, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “Let’s begin.”
