SIGNA GAVE LITTLE THOUGHT TO WHAT SHE DID NEXT. THINKING would require
feeling, and she had no desire to suffer through anything of the sort. Not yet.
Moments after Blythe had fled, William returned in a panic to find Signa hugging her knees, unblinking as she watched the foal.
“Miss Farrow?” Fear edged his voice.
Had she been able to see herself, Signa might have understood why he drew a step back as she stood to face him. She would have seen the wildness in her eyes and the straw in her hair. Would have seen the way she flexed her fingers as though her nails were claws, and the pain that cracked her expression like a porcelain cup. One wrong word, one wrong move, and she would shatter.
“Leave me alone.”
“It’s getting late,” William whispered. “I’ve come to accompany you back to the manor.”
She cut him a look so scathing that his mouth snapped closed. Only after a long moment of staring down at the foal did he step inside and scoop it into his arms. “Stay as long as you’d like, then. But I’m putting the foal with his mother.” William said it like a question, so Signa nodded. It would be better that way, if she didn’t have to look at the foal—at proof of what she was, and the impossibility of what she’d done.
She waited for William to disappear. For the noise around her to settle into swishing tails and softly stamping hooves before she tilted her head up at the ceiling, shut her eyes, and asked, “You’re still here, aren’t you?”
Signa was met by a wave of icy air, and a voice that slipped through her
mind like the finest velvet. Of course I am.
“I brought a foal back to life.”
You brought a foal back to life, Death repeated without a hint of emotion to betray his thoughts. The silver in your hair is gone, as well. How are you feeling?
The question was so ridiculous that she couldn’t contain her bitter laughter. How was she feeling? God, she couldn’t even begin to process it.
Tell me how I can help, Little Bird. Signa knew he pressed closer when her fingertips numbed from the chill of his body. Tell me how to make this better.
That was just it—there was no making it better, and the reality of that was sinking in too quickly to process.
“I feel like I’m being pulled in a thousand directions.” The admission was quiet, whispered from her most fragile depths. “I’m tired of people being afraid of me. I’m tired of feeling like I’m not enough. No matter what I do, I’m disappointing someone. But the one I truly feel most disappointed in is myself, because I hate feeling like this, Death. I thought I was done.”
Death’s voice came as easy as the autumn breeze, sweeping in and lulling her into its comfort. If people are afraid, he said, then let them be afraid. Your shoulders were not meant to bear the weight of their expectations, Signa. You were not made to please others.
He was right. Despite the result, Signa did not regret telling her cousin the truth and unburdening herself of this secret.
Signa had tried to please Blythe; she had made herself feel as though she were burning from the inside out to bring the foal back to life. Yet doing so hadn’t mattered at all. None of it mattered. Signa had made her choices, and now it was time for her to own them.
Still, she would mourn all that she would miss, like sneaking into Blythe’s room for gossip at all hours of the night, listening to ridiculous family banter over dinner, laughing with her about whatever ridiculous thing Diana said or did at tea. There would be no more rides with Mitra, or seeing Lillian’s garden once it healed from the fire and managed to bloom again. She wouldn’t even have Death’s voice in her head to help ease the transition if Fate continued to keep him from her.
Signa would be fully and utterly alone.
“You asked me what I want,” Signa said at last, fingertips curling in the
hay, “and it’s to know that you’re not going to leave me, too. No matter what I am or am not. No matter what your brother tries; tell me that you’ll be by my side.”
She stilled when she felt the pressure of him against her gloved hand as he pressed a kiss to the back of it, as fragile as a wish.
You have me. It was a promise that Signa wound around herself, hoarding it. Protecting it. So long as you want me, you will always have me. “What if I want you now?” Signa was on her knees in the hay, following
the sound of his voice and hoping, as she lifted her head, that she was looking at the space where he crouched, invisible to her eyes.
Perhaps it was silly, but throughout her life, Death had been her one constant. He, more than anyone else in this world, had helped her feel comfortable in her own skin. As everything and everyone was working to tear that apart, telling her who she was and what she should be, it made sense that she needed him more than anything else.
Death made no sound as he weighed her words, and when his answer came it was as gentle as the patter of raindrops after a storm. I don’t want to hurt you, Signa. I won’t risk your life.
She knew that, of course. She didn’t want to risk it, either. Without a clue how these new powers of hers worked, or how far Fate was willing to go to keep her from Death, the gamble wasn’t worth it. Yet when he lifted a hand to her cheek and she could feel the leather of his gloves brush her bottom lip, she had an idea. A way to defy the constraints around them and to still have exactly what she wanted—him.
Signa captured his hand in hers by touch alone, smoothing circles into his palm. There was nothing in front of her as far as she could see. No hand she was holding. No eyes she was looking into. She felt him, though. And that counted for something.
Signa… Death’s voice was low and tentative as she skimmed her fingers up his arm, following the shape of him over his shoulder and down his chest. Down and down until he jerked away. Careful. Your skin almost touched mine.
She was so tired of needing to be careful. She’d discarded her gloves when she’d used her abilities on the foal, and they still lay half buried in the hay. She rose to fetch them and slipped the satin over her fingers.
“It’s only a problem if our skin touches, isn’t it? Then we won’t let that
happen.” Her lips ached, desperately wanting to pull his face into hers and kiss him. To see him. But for now, this was the next best thing. She took his hand then, guiding it beneath her dress and petticoat, to one ankle, then slowly up the length of her stockings. She leaned into the corner of the stall, lifting her skirts to her knees. The low, appreciative sound Death made in the back of his throat was the most intoxicating music. She didn’t need to guide his hand; he seemed to have taken off his gloves as he undid her boots, tossing them to the side as he brushed his thumb against her ankle. Her calves. Farther and farther up, tracing patterns along her inner thigh.
Warmth flooded her, her lower belly stirring with anticipation as she shut her eyes and focused on the heat of her skin beneath his touch. On the shivers that rolled through her spine.
I love it when you make that face, he teased, one thumb sweeping up to skim beneath her eyes, where her cheeks were undoubtedly flushed. I so rarely get to see it. Usually when we’re like this…
“I’m dead?” Signa offered with a breathy laugh. “Only temporarily.”
It was different to experience him like this, still alive with her blood pulsing. Her breaths came faster as Death gripped her by the hips and pulled her onto his knee, and faster still as her body sparked with electricity and she straddled his thigh. With one hand Death braced her from behind, while the other hand curved up her thigh, gripping her close as Signa pressed into him.
She wanted him. More than she had ever wanted anything or anyone, she wanted to lose herself in him and forget everything. To believe for a few moments that they were a normal couple. If she shut her eyes, she almost believed it.
Beneath her skirts, Death’s hand slipped between her and his thigh, only a thin layer of muslin between their skin.
I want you, too. The low husk of Death’s voice had Signa’s heart thundering. Always.
She rocked her hips into the fingers that pressed against her and let herself be lost to the pleasure. In that moment, Fate did not matter. Nothing did. She wound her arms around Death’s neck and gasped quiet breaths against his shoulder as he whispered her name and curled his fists in her hair.
And as she tipped her head back and lost herself to him, she imagined
that Death was there with her in the flesh and that, one day, they would build the life together they’d always wanted. A life in which they would never have to feel this way again.
