“I know what you are.” The words were too soft, too timid, and Blythe despised them. “And I know that you are aware of things that no one should be aware of. I want you to tell me the truth—do you know what happened to my brother?”
His severity was like a punch to the throat as he squeezed her hand. “Your cousin killed him—”
“I know that part.” It had been a while since she’d danced, and yet her body moved effortlessly with his just as it had the night of his ball, the dance ingrained in her bones. “I want to know why. The truth, Aris. Please.”
When his eyes flickered over her, seemingly searching for an escape, Blythe wanted to curl into herself and never unfurl. Because in that moment she knew why she hadn’t cried, knew why Signa had taken Percy, and that what Death had said in the garden was the truth.
Percy had been the one who had tried to kill her. Which meant that Percy had killed their mother.
Blythe shoved away as the music crescendoed into a crashing finale. Her head throbbed harder, and the world continued to spin even as she stopped moving. Aris watched her with narrowed interest as she staggered away from the dance floor.
She’d made a mistake. An awful, horrible mistake.
“Miss Hawthorne?” Aris closed the space between them, taking her by the elbow. “Miss Hawthorne, what’s wrong?”
Heat lanced through her body at that touch, and she ripped her arm from him. She needed to get out of there. Needed to give her mind room to breathe, to think, and… God, what had she done?
“Get them out of here,” she all but gasped. The words sounded like a distant echo, as though they hadn’t even come from her lips. “Get everyone out.”
And before Aris could argue, Blythe fled the ballroom.
FORTY-TWO
MORNING CAME TOO QUICKLY. SIGNA WATCHED AS DAWN CREPT through her curtains, slices of dusky orange cutting across the room.
She was wound in Death’s arms, head against his chest and entirely at home in the cocoon of sheets they’d drawn over them. She and Death kept to their silence, neither daring to shatter the peaceful lie they’d built around themselves. Yet as birds sang and the sunlight had them burrowing deeper into the sheets to shield their eyes, Signa knew there was no other choice. If they didn’t get up, Fate would find them soon enough. She pressed kisses down the length of Death’s neck and chest before she forced herself from him to get dressed.
Perhaps it was foolish of her, but the dress she grabbed from the armoire was stark black mourning wear, and neither she nor Death made any comment of it as she slipped it over her body.
Shadows slid up Death’s neck as he stood, shrouding himself in a mantle of darkness. He brushed a finger down Signa’s neck as she pinned her hair up, then let his hand slip to her waist.
“There is another option.” His voice was as sweet as ambrosia, and so divine that all Signa wanted was to lose herself within it. She didn’t want to hope, fearing she would only be disappointed. And yet she peered up at him, praying for words that could save them.
Death curled his hand around her waist, his hips pressed against her low back as he drew her close. “We could find a way to kill my brother.”
She should have known it was a fool’s hope.
“And what of Elijah?” she asked, not unkindly. “We leave him to hang?”
“We can find someone else to frame—”
“And doom another?” It would be a lie to say that she hadn’t considered it, but… No. There was a way out of this that would affect no one but her and Death. She’d brought enough people into her mess. “You and I are not confined to the rules of time, Death, and Fate is too vain a man to be bound to someone who despises him.” It didn’t matter what memories returned to her; Fate would always be the villain who had forced her hand.
“Is Blythe truly worth such a sacrifice?” Death countered. “Fate is as stubborn as he is vain. He will do anything to spite me, Signa. You cannot count on him to end your bargain so easily.”
Despite its bluntness, the question was fair. In the grand scheme, Signa hadn’t known the Hawthornes long. And yet she felt bound to them, forever woven into the folds of this family that had inherited her. The last thing she wanted was to spend her years seeing Blythe’s fire snuffed out, or to know that she could have prevented Elijah’s death when he was only just beginning to truly live.
The Hawthornes were her family, and with everything in her, Signa loved them. And so she took Death’s hand in hers, brushing her thumb across his skin as she answered, “I wish that she wasn’t. Truly I do, because I know what I’m losing and that I’ll spend every moment away from you wishing that it didn’t have to be this way. But we will have our time, and when we do I swear that I will never leave your side again.