Page 143 of A Fate of Ice and Lies
“What are you doing here?” the figure asked.
“I’ve come to fight for my friend’s life,” I managed to say without showing a hint of the fear that trickled down my spine.
“I’m already dead, Teddy. You need to leave before?—”
“Brenton?” I asked.
“Don’t tell me death looks so bad on me that you didn’t recognize me,” the figure, Brenton, joked.
I huffed out an exasperated laugh that ended on a soft cry.
“Come to fight for your friend?” a silky voice asked. It thrummed around me, into me.
Brenton grabbed my hand and pushed me behind him.
“She was just leaving,” Brenton said. “Made a wrong turn.”
“That’s a shame.” A cloaked figure stepped forward, and shadows that flowed from his body slithered toward us.
He held a large scythe in his hand, and when he touched the tip, I felt it as if he’d sliced through my chest.
I drew another step back while Brenton positioned himself in front of me again, the figure’s shadows skulking closer.
“Don’t hide, little one,” he said.
Still holding Brenton’s hand, I squeezed before I stood beside him. The figure’s shadows continued to inch closer.
“I want my friend back,” I told the figure, soundingbraver than I felt.
Brenton peered down at me, surprise lighting his face. The figure pulled down his cape, and I saw what appeared to be a man. A regular man. Neither fae nor Guardian.
His face was human, with a long, straight nose with a tip that slanted slightly upward. His eyes, a deep green, watched me with open curiosity. Everything else about him—from his height to the way he stood—screamed unearthly predator.
“You seem surprised, Theodora,” he said, a sly smile painting his face.
I held my chin up, ignored the way his shadows enveloped my foot, and winded up my leg to my torso and arms.
“You’re not a dragon,” I said, my heart beating so hard I was sure it’d explode. “I was told I’d meet a Guardian.”
The man laughed, this soft sound that might’ve been pleasant if he were anyone but Death.
“Oh, the lies those deceitful dragons yield. I’m not a man either,” he said. “I am Death, and I come for every living creature. It is the consequence of living. Yet you treat it as if it were something special, Theodora, when it is the one thing that does not discriminate. Why is that?”
His question seemed genuine, as if he truly wanted to know my thoughts.
I rubbed the spot that normally hurt when I thought of Mom, but here, in this realm it was nothing more than a phantom pain that didn’t exist.
“It hurts to lose people we love,” I answered simply, honestly.
He stared at me silently, as if waiting for me to continue. His shadows slid across my body, seemed to dance in my hair. It was a strange sensation, that somehow, despite the shadows coming from Death, didn’t feel threatening.
“Death is the hardest goodbye. The circumstances don’tmatter because, in the end, you’re never ready for such finality.”
“That is why I am always painted as the villain, yet your mother was eager to meet me,” Death said. “Isn’t there any solace in knowing she’s at peace?”
“Maybe.” It came out hoarse and seemed to not only echo around me but also inside me.
“Given the chance, would you have fought me to get your mother back?”
