Belladonna (Belladonna #1)(49)
Given the party, she doubted anyone would. Still, it was unwise to risk being found sneaking in for the second night in a row. She relented, doing a sweep to ensure everything was in place before she slipped away from the desk.
“Merely ghosts passing through,” Signa said, no longer shy as she looped her arm through the one Sylas offered. His touch had awoken something within her that she had no interest in quelling. A lingering curiosity to experience the touch of a man beneath her fingertips.
It was, as she was discovering, a feeling she quite enjoyed.
TWENTY-ONE
AN HOUR AFTER SYLAS HAD DROPPED HER OFF IN THE TUNNELS, WITH directions to take the first right, the second left, and go straight until she arrived at the pantry, Signa was still wandering alone, her right hand pressed against the wall to guide her. Turn after turn, she was met with darkness and a maze that seemed to shift and ebb beneath her.
Music from Elijah’s party was a distant thrum against the tunnel walls. Signa chased it all the same, clinging to the noise in the darkness. But no matter how far she chased, there was no end in sight. Turn after turn, tunnel after tunnel, the pressure in her chest mounted. It was like the day she arrived at Thorn Grove, when she’d roamed halls that had seemed endless, taunted by portraits of all who had lived there before her time.
Someone or something was toying with her, but knowing that did nothing to ease her shallow breathing. Each of her footsteps grew more desperate, each breath tighter, until she stumbled into yet another dead end.
She smacked the wall in frustration. “Who’s there? I’ve no time for games.”
A voice came from the darkness, low and taunting. “On the contrary, Little Bird, I think you could use more games in your life.”
Signa had never been so relieved to hear that voice. She turned to face him, able to see Death even in the tunnels, for his shadows were darker than the night itself. He loomed larger than usual. “You,” he said without softness, “are late. I hoped you might try to walk through the walls rather than play by the rules of this tunnel, but you are more stubborn than I imagined.”
“And you’re an arrogant fool.” She had not forgotten his promise of midnight lessons, though never would she have guessed he’d stoop to petty games as punishment. “I don’t have any berries with me, you ridiculous heap of shadows.”
The darkness gathered around her. “A ridiculous heap of shadows, am I? Well, Miss Farrow, I’m afraid this heap of shadows is your only help at the moment, and you’d do well to remember that. Especially if you intend to save your cousin.”
Despite her fear and her nerves and the anger boiling within her, Signa tipped her head back and laughed. It was a bitter, unnatural sound. “And I’m supposed to trust you?”
The sigh he blew between his lips became the wind in her hair. “What will it take for you to accept that I am not your enemy?”
“You not killing everyone around me would be a good start.” She squared her shoulders. “And you could answer my questions, too, without the riddles.”
Though still faceless and nothing more than swaths of shadow and the bleed of night, the darkness shrank until Death was a shadow shape of a man that bent to her. “Ask me, then, and I will answer.”
She flattened her expression, careful not to show her surprise. Though he made no comment on the lives he’d taken, she knew better than to lose this opportunity. “If I have the powers you claim, why did they fail me when I got stuck in the fence?”
His shadows brushed close to her skin as he answered without hesitation, “Because you fear them. Because you fear me and my world, and that you may somehow be becoming part of it.”
She bit the inside of her cheek, betraying nothing. “I don’t belong to that world.”
“No? Then why is it that I’ve never met another soul that shares my power?” The shadows circled around her. “Since the creation of life itself, there has been Death to balance it. And in all that time, I have never once been able to communicate so clearly with another living soul.”
She dared not look away from the reaper, but instead tried to peer through the shadows protecting him. What might he look like with his shadows stripped away? Would he have a face? A body? Oh, what she wouldn’t give to catch Death blushing. To catch him feeling as small and bare as she did.
“How did you feel,” he asked suddenly, “when you used my powers last night? Did you like feeling its burn against your skin? Did you find comfort in the darkness and the shadows?”
She had, though it was a truth she’d tried not to admit even to herself. All her life, she’d hated Death. And yet she’d spent her years chasing after him like a moth to a flame. As difficult as her life had been because of him, she should have despised him. Why, then, was it that whenever she was with him, something within her seared hot and fervent?
Before Death, she should tremble. She should fear. And yet the more time she spent with him, the more that fear was beginning to slip away as curiosity festered in its absence.
She didn’t hate Death, not truly. And God, what a fool that made her.
Death’s shadows tilted, circling her. As they did, the air in the tunnels grew tighter and more fraught, and Signa let it turn her fingers to ice and her lungs to frost. There was a limit, though, to that coldness. Too much, and it burned.