Page 39 of Reaper Unhinged
“Open your eyes, child,” the man said.
“What?”
“You can look now.”
I stared up at the man. He was taller now, bulkier and no longer dressed in rags, but in a neat brown tunic and black pants. His dark hair was pulled back off his pleasant face, and his dark eyes were filled with tiny slivers of mercury.
“Seraphina Dawn, please stand.”
He held out his hand to me, and when I took it on autopilot, an overwhelming feeling of belonging rushed through me—the conviction that everything would be all right.
“What is going on? Who are you?”
“I am what you came for, and your choice has set me free.” He turned his hands over, and the veins glowed with inner light. “I am the first.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Sit.”
Huh?
He pointed to my left, and there was a chair waiting for me. “How did you… Never mind.”
I sat down, and when I looked at him, he was also sitting, and there was a table between us laid with tea things. I looked over at Keon still passed out on the ground and then to Uriel asleep tied to the tree, and then at the spirits that hovered around us as if eager for story time.
The man smiled. “Don’t worry, your friends will be fine. Drink your tea.”
He handed me a cup. The tea was strong and sweet, just what I needed after the shock of almost dying. Shit, I was so confused, but I was alive, and this man was…Hewasthe power, and my gut told me he was about to explain everything.
He watched me for a long beat before picking up his own cup and drinking. “I am one half of the divine,” he said finally. “The older twin. Although we may have looked alike, our ideals were very different. It’s why we disagreed so often, even as we worked together to create worlds. Our last disagreement resulted in my being incarcerated here, although back then, this was not Limbo, and the fallen hadn’t made this world their home.”
A twin? Another divine? “Your brother trapped you here?”
“Yes. I made it easy. I was…naïve. We quarreled about the nature of man even as we forged them. I believed in humanity’s ability for self-sacrifice while my brother thought them to be ruthless survivalists that would do whatever it took to live.”
I snorted. “Well, humans have done some pretty awful things to each other in the name of power and resources.”
He nodded, his eyes suddenly sad. “I know. My brother was right, but I’d created man in my image just as he had done so in his, and I was convinced of my philosophy. So much so that when he suggested a test, I agreed. I would allow myself to be bound to this place until a self-sacrificing soul found his or her way to me. He promised to send me souls, and he did for a while, but when given a choice, these souls chose to sacrifice another—a friend or a lover…Each chose to let the other burn. Each chose to save their own skin.”
The ancient souls around me moaned.
Oh, God. “These were the test subjects?”
The divine’s brother smiled wryly. “They have been trapped here for a long time. As the world around us changed and the fallen built their home here, the land was named Limbo. I’ve been bound and waiting. When the Powers came, I was sure I would be free. I realized my brother was gone and that the Beyond needed me. I was ready, but the Powers chose a sacrifice—not a volunteer, but a celestial chosen by ballot. An unwilling soul.”
“So, you turned them into statues?”
He sighed. “I was…upset.”
Okay. “And now? Now what? You’re free because I chose to die?”
“Yes!” He reached across the table and grabbed my hands in his. “You are what I envisioned, Seraphina. A soul worthy of saving.” His smile was beatific. “Because of your sacrifice, the world will continue to thrive.”
Is that what he thought? That there was so little love in the world. “There are others out there, you know? Mothers and fathers who would lay down their lives for their children. Lovers who would die for each other. Your brother sent you the souls he knew wouldn’t. He kept you here.”
A flash of anger crossed his face, and then he closed his eyes and breathed, letting it go. “I had suspected as much. My brother was…ruthless in his pursuit of what he desired.” He looked up at the sky. “I can feel it dying. The Beyond is in pain.”
“Then go. Save it.”
