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Chapter 23

Anaya

I let the heat blooming around me take me home.

Or as close to it as I was probably ever going to get. I stared at the gates, the ache of longing working its way up my throat. It would have been nice to see my parents again. But after today, that dream would be gone. A hum of peace danced on the breeze, sifting through my hair, tickling my ears.

A gust blew a few braids into my face. Braids that still smelled like Cash.

“Anaya,” Balthazar’s voice echoed behind me.

I turned around. I couldn’t even force the smile that I knew he wanted from me. A smile that would tell him that everything was going smoothly. That good little Anaya had logged another day of doing exactly what she was told.

“What is it?” His blond brows furrowed as he stepped forward. “What happened?”

“How much longer are you going to put him through this?” I asked.

“We’ve already discussed this.”

“Will you ever let him cross over?” I said, meeting his gaze. “Or are you going to make him your slave for the rest of eternity?”

He laughed. “Oh Anaya, love, you haven’t gotten attached to your pet, now have you? The job was only to keep his soul safe. Not to grow a heart.”

I closed my eyes. “Answer the question, Balthazar.”

After a few beats of silence, he sighed. “No. I’m sorry, Anaya. He has a greater purpose than crossing over. He is too valuable to let his talents go to waste.”

“I can’t do it,” I said, trembling. “The deal is off. I’ll stay working as a reaper. But I won’t put him through another minute of this.”

He raised a brow as he came to stand beside me. Glowing embers flew around us like fireflies. The white fog that clung to Balthazar like a cape spread out around us, rippling with energy and power.

“Excuse me? You won’t?” Balthazar laughed, a loud booming sound that echoed from walls that did not exist in this place. “Do you forget that I own you, Anaya?”

“When he takes his last breath, I will be there. And I’ll carry him over. Not to you, but to the gates.

Where he belongs,” I said.

His fingers latched onto my wrist before I could get another word out. My warmth. The only thing that kept the feeling of life flowing through me slowly crept up my arm before Balthazar’s steady fingers leached it away, leaving me cold. Afraid. His eyes turned into pale blue orbs that refused to release me from their gaze.

“Do you really wish to challenge me?” he whispered into my ear. His breath was like ice, melting against my heat. “Do you honestly think I would let you make me look like a fool?”

Fear bubbled up in my throat in the form of a scream. I swallowed it back down into the empty pit that I used to call my stomach. I shook my head and whispered, “No.”

He leaned forward and my heat began to inch its way out of my lungs, across my lips. The look in his eyes said this was my end. I tensed and readied myself. I knew this might happen, but still…did my thousand years of perfect servitude mean nothing to him?

Shock stole the plea about to escape my mouth as Balthazar released my wrist and stepped away. He shook his head and looked to the gates as if they might open and provide him with an answer.

“You will do what I ask of you,” he said calmly. Somehow this was worse than his anger. Like the calm before the storm. “You will do it, or I will have Easton find you a permanent home in Hell. A pretty plaything like you?” He looked over his shoulder. “Why, they would rip you to shreds fighting over who got a turn first.”

I looked at my feet, wishing I could release the pain and fear gnawing inside me. Wishing I had tears that could carry it all away. Instead it swam circles in my chest, torturing me.

“This isn’t right,” I whispered. I was starting to think Balthazar didn’t know what that meant. What we were putting Cash through was wrong.

He turned and raised a brow at me as if he were surprised that I wasn’t submitting to him after his threat.

“Balthazar, please,” I whispered. “I’m begging you. I can’t go on doing this knowing…”

He sighed. The weight of the world was in that sigh. “Knowing he possesses Tarik’s soul,” he finished for me.

I looked up, unable to conceal my surprise. My betrayal.

“How long have you known it was him?”

He shrugged. The keeper of the afterlife. The second in command to the Almighty… shrugged.

“What would you like me to say? I always knew.”

Anger started an inferno in my chest. Turned my vision red. I didn’t give a damn about his threats in that moment. He’d known. He’d been toying with me for a thousand years!

“How could you not tell me? You let me think he was okay. That he had crossed. That he was waiting for me!”

“Anaya, be reasonable.”

“Be reasonable?” I seethed. “I have been nothing but reasonable for you, for this job for over a thousand years! What did you think I was working for?”

Salvation. I had been working toward a salvation he had promised me. A salvation that included

Tarik. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to fend off the memory threatening to take me. Something in me wouldn’t let me. Something in me said he needed to see. When my eyes flew open, I could feel the heat seeping from my pores. Rage started a slow, steady burn in my chest.

Balthazar narrowed his gaze on me. “Anaya?”

I didn’t think about what I did next. Just grabbed his wrist. His eyes widened and I clasped my palm over his forehead. They’d told me when I’d been given this power that it was a gift. To be able to look into the past. To show souls something worth remembering when their days had come to an end. If this gift was ever going to be good for anything, it was going to be good for this. I closed my eyes against the light enveloping Balthazar and me in a feathery white cocoon.

“See it!” I screamed. “See what you promised me!”

The world around us swirled into a thousand colors, blinding me with the past before depositing me in the dark.

I stood staring at my reflection in the shiny surface of my father’s best blade. I did not recognize the girl staring back. Her braids were wet with the sea. Her eyes were tired and dull. There were no more tears inside this girl to cry. There was no more life in this girl to live. Not without Tarik.

My knees quivered, but my hand was steady with intent. Fingers gripping the blade so tightly it cut into my palm, giving me a taste of what was to come. Red droplets fell like rain onto the sand beneath my feet. I looked up to the sea that held Tarik. That held my father. Pain pulsed through me until I fell onto my knees, watching the waves rage ahead. I wanted them back. I wanted this pain to end. And if it couldn’t…then I would join them. I didn’t think about my mother in that moment. I didn’t think of the breaths I was giving back or the life I was leaving behind. The decision was simple when you took the rest of it away.

“Take me, too,” I whispered to the sea and pressed the blade into my chest. The pain was instant.

Fleeting. Nothing compared to the loss of Tarik and my father. Wind whipped across my face.

Raindrops pelted my cheeks. Life leaked from my body and onto the sand. I closed my eyes expecting dark, but then everything was light. I blinked at the boy holding my hand, smiling. He was dressed in white. Cloaked in light. He had to be an angel…

He laughed. “I’m no angel.”

I looked him over, confused, and he grinned. “I’ve seen that look before.”

“Tarik,” I said, overwhelmed with hope. “You can take me to Tarik now?”

The boy with white-blond hair raised a brow at me. His strangely golden eyes glowed.

“I’m guessing that’s someone you have waiting on the other side,” he said. “And normally this is the part where I take you home. But there’s someone who needs to see you first.”

I nodded and followed him blindly into the mist.

A man waited where the fog cleared. Tall and strong as an oak. Hair like sunshine and eyes like the sea. A white robe flowed out from behind him and clouds gathered at his feet. He smiled when I approached.

“My, aren’t you lovely,” he said, waving the boy beside me away. “Thank you, Darius. You may go.”

The tall man raised a brow at me when I didn’t offer any words. “Aren’t you going to ask me if you’re dead?”

I shook my head and bit my lip. “No. I already know I am.”

He nodded and walked in a circle around me. “That’s right. You did this, didn’t you?”

After he’d come full circle, he stopped and pursed his lips. “I could call you brave or stupid. I’m not sure which is more appropriate.”

“Can I see Tarik now?” I whispered, fear eating away at my voice. “My father?”

“Did you think it would be that easy?”

I felt my brows scrunch together. Yes. I had. Why else would I have plunged a blade into my heart?

He laughed and settled a hand on my shoulder.

“Oh dear, what a mess,” he said. “No, beauty. I’m sorry, that is not how it works. There are some rules that even I cannot bend. And taking a life is one of those rules. The punishment for breaking that rule is Hell.”

“H-hell?” My voice quivered. “But it was my life to take. It belonged to me. No one else!” My heart, on the other hand, did belong to someone else. It was useless without him.

“No,” Balthazar’s voice turned hard. “Your life belongs to the Almighty. He has a plan for each.

And, Anaya, dear”—he shook his head—“you’ve sort of made a mess of his plan.”

“Please…” I managed to whisper through the fear that consumed me.

He studied me for a moment, and stroked his chin. “I have a compromise.”

“Compromise?”

“You work for me,” he said. “Curry souls to the afterlife as a reaper. A collector of sorts. Like

Darius.”

I swallowed. “You want me to be Death?”

A strange smile lit up his face. “Yes.”

“Will it get me to Tarik?”

He glanced at the gates and smiled. “It will get you to the other side. Yes.”

“Then I’ll do it,” I said, stepping forward. “I’ll do anything.”

When the memory faded I was shaking. Balthazar wound his arms around me and let me fall limp against him. An unexpected gesture after our previous encounter. My chest heaved with sobs, but no tears ever came. This ghost of a body wouldn’t allow that. What had I done? What had I given up?

How many lifetimes had Tarik wandered this earth while I was so sure he was at peace? Balthazar stroked my hair and sighed.

“I could have been more…forthcoming, I suppose.”

I pulled away from him. “You manipulated me into this existence.”

“I didn’t want to see you in an eternity of flames, Anaya,” he raised his voice. “You fault me for saving you from Hell?”

“No,” I said. “No. I don’t fault you, but I am asking for your help now. I’m asking you to make this right. Don’t doom him to the kind of existence I’ve been working to escape for a thousand years. Undo this. Let him live.”

His face softened and the cloud base below him rose and bubbled until it took the form of a chair.

Balthazar sat and a sigh escaped him.

“His body has expired. There is no help for him.”

“Then stop the shadow demons,” I begged, falling to my knees. “Send them away. Send him a guardian. At least give him some peace in his final hours. I can’t protect him from this—”

Balthazar narrowed his gaze at me. “Have they touched him?”

I nodded. “Yes. They’re getting more aggressive every day. And I can’t be there every waking—”

“How close is he?” He stood and started to pace.

“He’s close.” My voice shook.

He nodded. “Good.”

“What will you do with him?” I took a step back.

“He is a shadow walker,” Balthazar said, the blue around his pupils burning like a flame. “You have no idea how valuable your human is. It’s rare for a soul to cycle through as many times as his has, to collect that much energy. In a human form he has more power than you could dream of. He can walk freely between worlds. He can force a soul into corporeality for capture. He could waltz straight into the depths of Hell and fetch me a demon if I commanded him to. And he’s going to be mine. He’ll work for me, collecting the souls that flee from you. In time, we’ll rid the world of all of the lost.”

“You…you can’t just use him like that,” I said. “He’s done nothing wrong. He has a right to cross beyond those gates. You would take that away. To use him?”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Were we no better than those of the underworld now?

Balthazar turned on his heel and stared out onto the horizon, hands folded calmly behind his back.

“Yes. And you’re going to help me.”