Page 1 of Love and Death
1
HAZEL
Death’s head is bowed, his body bent, as if in offering of the immense power he has just given away. The sheer magnitude of his presence seems to fill every breathless inch between us, the weight of his sacrifice closing in like an impending storm.
Slowly, his dark eyes lift to meet mine, burning with the intensity of a thousand dying suns.
A thousand shattered hopes and unfulfilled dreams that all say the same thing ...
Oh, how I have loved you, little one.
He does not speak the words … butcarvesthem into my very soul. I can see them in the way his shadows claw to reach for me—Feelthem as they crash over me with all the force of a surging tidal wave, leaving no room for doubt or denial, only recognition of his raw, unrestrained devotion in their wake.
He has loved me like no other, and I …
“Death!”
The desperate cry of his name hangs heavily in theair between us, though I do not know how or when it escaped my lips. I want nothing more than to pour out my heart to him in this moment, but something in his eyes stays my tongue.
The tempest rising within me suddenly calms as the world around me fades away tonothingness. A nothingness in which all that remains … is us.
For but a moment, time chooses to stand still. Chooses to grant us one last breath to share, and the Universe is as it should be.
As it alwaysshouldhave been.
A thousand unspoken words seem to pass between us in the split second it takes for his eyes to grow dull, and the love I’d always dreamed of, but never thought possible, to dim within them.
And, just as quickly, our moment is gone.
I want nothing more than to run to him, to scream his name again, but both my legs and my tongue refuse to obey. Instead, all I can do is watch—bound and gagged by my own body—as the love of my life drops to his knees with a heavy thud before my eyes.
Death’s body folds forward as he collapses to the ground, a cloud of dust billowing up around his fallen form, and my heart stills in my chest. His shadows surge up like midnight flames of mourning before gradually dying down to form a pool beneath him, and then, they fade away altogether.
He is gone.
Sydian isgone,and my heart with him.
A chill unlike anything I have ever known crashesover me, stunning me with disbelief as my mind refuses to process what I’m seeing.
Let alone accept it.
An otherworldly silence fills the arena, ringing in my ears, for what feels like a lifetime, before it’s suddenly shattered by a soul-rending scream. It isn’t until several seconds have past that I recognize the scream as my own, dredged from the very depths of my tormented soul.
What have I done?
Several questions ring out from the crowd as if they, too, cannot believe what they’ve just witnessed.
“Is the trial over?”
“What does this mean?”
“Is he really dead? Is that possible?”
My vision tunnels as I lurch forward, my legs finally breaking free of their emotionally induced paralysis in a desperate attempt to get to him. To pull Death into my arms and breathe life into him once again.
But fate has other plans for me.
Time and reality snap back into place with a vengeance as Hades steps into view, barring my way forward and stopping me in my tracks. He waves his hand, and the creeping shadows edging the arena suddenly rise up to form an imposing wall between us and the crowd, effectively silencing their outcry and blocking us from view.
