Destined to the Reaper (The Shadow Realms #2)

Chapter 10

Pharos

I tightened my hold around the unconscious form of my mate as I crossed the large terrace of my domain. Even though she hadn’t given me her soul, I could feel her pain. I hated that she should have suffered because of that damn covenant. As I approached the tall doors into the living area, my eyes widened when they parted open on the frail silhouette of Myress.

“Welcome home, Master,” she said in a breathy voice. “It has been a long time.”

“I told you not to call me master,” I gently chastised her.

As was her wont, she shrugged but didn’t otherwise comment. It bothered me that she perceived me that way, even though I understood it was genetically impossible for her to see it otherwise.

“I’m surprised you’re still here,” I said, marching with determined steps towards the bathroom.

“Where else would I go, Master?” she asked, seeming genuinely baffled.

“You could have explored the realms, found a mate, or crossed the Veil,” I said gently.

“That world is not for me,” she replied with a shudder. “Here is home. Here is safe. Here, I am happy.”

I nodded, my chest constricted for the Cambion. Born of the frolicking of a human male and a succubus, Myress had gotten the short stick of the DNA lottery. Physically, she’d inherited enough demonic traits to look unnatural to humans, but too few of her mother’s offensive and survival powers to be welcomed among her peers.

“Such a pretty soul,” she said wistfully while peering at my mate. “She’s dying. Are you going to reap her?”

“No. I’m going to heal her. And I can use your help. Please, bring me healing herbs for Skarach and Bone Fiend poison.”

Her eyes widened in surprise. Confusion sparked in her oversized, golden eyes, before giving way to a sliver of worry. Before I could question her as to what prompted that reaction, my servant hurried out of the bathroom, her flowy white dress making her look even more skinny and fragile.

I filled the huge, recessed tub with warm water, then proceeded to remove Kali’s clothes. A wave of anger surged within me upon seeing the extent of the injuries she had sustained. Angry welts puckered around the edges of the wounds where her skin had been flat out peeled off by the acid of the Skarach’s phlegm. Where the Bone Fiend’s darts had pierced her upper arm, a network of dark tendrils spread outwards around the puncture wound, indicating where infection and necrosis was spreading.

Myress returned just as I was finishing to undress her.

“I will help with the poison,” she said in a muted voice while setting the couple of flasks and jar she had returned with down on the bathroom counter.

“Thank you,” I said with genuine gratitude.

Her presence was truly a blessing. I never hoped she would still be here after my unexpected absence for half a millennium. But what she lacked in offensive skills she more than compensated for with defensive ones. And right this instant, her ability to extract and assimilate poison couldn’t have been more welcome.

I held Kali, partially sitting at the edge of the counter, and partially leaning against me. Myress leaned her unnaturally narrow and long face towards my mate’s leg, which had sustained the most grievous injury from the Skarach’s phlegm wrapping around it. She slightly parted her lips, then her narrow tongue shot out, stabbing into the wound. It vaguely resembled the hooked tongue of a fly, but with a straight dart at the tip instead of recurved.

Magic radiated from her, and the narrow funnel of her appendage discreetly undulated as she drained the poison from Kali. After a few moments, she pulled her tongue out to stab at an unscathed part of my mate’s upper thigh and repeated the process. She eventually moved to the wound on her upper arm before straightening.

I couldn’t deny that the satisfaction with which Myress licked her lips—like one does after a delicious meal—unnerved me. It was a good thing my bride had been unconscious through it. There was no question in my mind she would have been creeped out.

I hope they will get along.

“It is done. But by the Gods, there was a lot,” Myress mused aloud, looking surprised. “As a human, she should be dead already. You circumvented the covenant.”

“She’s my bride,” I said, the pride I felt audible in my voice.

“So I see,” she replied pensively, the narrow slit of her vertical pupils widening as she studied Kali’s features. “You will have to tell me the story of how that came to pass and of your whereabouts during all those centuries.”

“At some point,” I said in a non-committal fashion.

She nodded, content with that response. Myress then held her hands a few centimeters from my woman’s body, moving them up and down as she whispered a few healing incantations. By the time she was done, Kali had stopped trembling, and her skin no longer felt feverish.

Myress picked up the flasks and jar she brought and poured a small amount from each into the bath. After setting the containers down, she waved her hand over the warm water with another spell. I could have performed that part myself but welcomed her assistance.

“I will go air your room for you,” the Cambion said as she turned to leave.

“Thank you, Myress. But please prepare a guest room for Kali, as well as a nightgown and fresh clothes for when she wakes,” I requested.

She recoiled, baffled that I wouldn’t just take Kali to my room. By the way she pursed her very thin lips, she was itching to question me about it, but thankfully thought better of it. She gave me a stiff nod before exiting the room.

Obviously, I wanted nothing more than to share a room with my mate. But I wouldn’t be so bold as to assume her consent. After all, I took her to my home without asking first. However, I didn’t doubt for a second that Cornelius was already tracking down where she resided and likely already knew. He would never stop seeking to punish her in the most atrocious way for ‘stealing’ from him.

I stripped out of my clothes, which proved a little awkward while still supporting my woman, then carried her into the tub. I settled inside it first and held her against me. Although my regeneration powers had already fully restored me, the healing magic in the water seeped deep into me, relaxing and soothing every cell of my being. I could feel it coursing through my mate. Through the clear water—which had taken a slightly purple tinge due to the herbs and oils Myress poured into it—I watched Kali’s wounds slowly mend.

Simultaneously, I shared my regeneration aura with her. I couldn’t heal another person with it the way I healed myself, but it helped accelerate the process, enhancing both her body’s natural abilities and the magic in the water.

By the Gods, this felt so right! Her body aligned perfectly with mine. Her soul sang the most enthralling melody, harmonizing flawlessly with my own. I could stay like this, embracing my soulmate for eternity.

To think I nearly lost her…

The memory of those dire last few minutes before I managed to drag her into that safe room had my anger instantly flaring. A part of me wanted to spank Kali for her stubbornness. It hurt me that she genuinely considered death over giving me her soul. She should trust me. Granted, we’d only met a few days ago. Kali barely knew me, and after the mess between her brother Jasper and Cornelius, she had every reason to be wary of what could befall her should she ever allow another to take over the most precious thing anyone possessed.

And yet, I had to acknowledge that after I’d spent centuries being enslaved, sharing the mind and vessel of a narcissistic psychopath, my mate couldn’t be sure that I hadn’t somehow been corrupted by him. Frankly, I couldn’t swear to it either.

Still, Kali was almost fully mine now. I still couldn’t believe she felt strong and genuine enough affection for me to enable the mate bond. Had I even remotely suspected that possibility, I would have brought it up to her.

But she likes me. She genuinely likes me.

The joy that swelled in my heart came crashing down moments later as a dreadful thought popped into my head. Yes, Kali was almost fully mine, but I was not fully free. Until I was made whole again, I couldn’t plan a future with her.

The clock was ticking, and I needed answers.

I remained in the tub with my woman for a while longer until the magic concluded its work. I stepped out of the tub, dried my mate, then took her to the guest room. A nice fire was burning in the fireplace, and an elegant flowy nightgown was neatly folded on top of the fresh blankets. I swiftly dressed Kali before tucking her in bed. She would remain unconscious for a few hours, giving me the time I needed to handle my business.

I brushed my lips against hers, then headed back to the terrace. I took flight even as I opened a rift through the Veil and teleported a hundred meters outside of the Weaver’s domain. Contrary to widespread belief, Reapers couldn’t simply teleport at will anywhere we pleased. We could do so near a dying person assigned to us for reaping, or near people or places with whom we shared a powerful bond...

As was my case with the Weaver…

Flapping my wings—which were still a bit wet from the bath—I carefully approached the imposing gates of her domain. The guardian imps didn’t stir, and the gates didn’t open for me. Although a more official welcome would have been appreciated, I simply flew over the closed entrance, unimpeded. Had I been trespassing, the Weaver’s powerful magic would have taught me the error of my ways.

The door of the ridiculous little thatched-roof witch hut illusion she gave her mansion opened as soon as I landed in front of the house. I walked in to find the Weaver sitting next to her spinning wheel, as always.

“My son,” she said, her eyes still glued to the glowing thread between her fingers.

“Mother,” I replied in greeting, my chest filling with warmth as I admired her timeless beauty. “It’s been too long.”

She nodded and stopped the wheel. “Too long, indeed.”

She rose to her feet and circled around the large table a short distance from where she sat at her wheel, and which faced the door like a reception desk. I stood still as she slowly examined me from head to toe. She caressed my right cheek, her soft hand gliding down to my chest before her index finger traced one of the exposed bones of my rib cage.

“By the Gods, I do make beautiful offspring,” she said wistfully before caressing my wing.

I snorted, and shook my head at her, having no word to respond.

“You regenerated well,” she added approvingly.

“I have. The Keres in the crypt provided me with quite a few of her minions to feed on,” I said mockingly.

My mother snorted. “Grizelle is most displeased. She’s roaming over every battlefield to try and compensate for your loss.”

“I was never meant to be her meal,” I ground through my teeth.

She looked at me with an unreadable expression before slowly nodding. “You are correct. But you kept her eternal hunger at bay for centuries. People never take kindly to losing a privilege they’ve come to consider their due.”

“Like Cornelius,” I replied grimly, understanding her underlying meaning.

She dropped her hand from my chest and nodded with a serious expression. “This isn’t done yet, my son.”

“I know,” I said with a sigh. “But the first and most crucial step is finally done. Thank you.”

She waved a dismissive hand. “You knew I would eventually get you out.”

I tilted my head to the side while giving her an assessing look. “Yes. I figured you would. But why now?”

“I needed to find the person able to help you,” she said with a shrug.

“It took you five hundred years?” I asked with disbelief devoid of any anger.

“The potential candidates were much too likely to keep you for themselves. And none of them were your soulmate,” Mother said matter-of-factly.

“So she is my soulmate!” I exclaimed, my heart soaring.

“Of course, she is. You know that,” she replied as if I’d said something silly and obvious.

“I suspected,” I replied in a slightly defensive tone. “I felt it the very first time I met her. Kali has such a beautiful soul. It’s mesmerizing.”

“A soul that you don’t own,” she countered in a disapproving tone while running a hand over her endless, silver-white braid.

I stiffened, worry immediately swelling within me. My mother never said anything just to make small talk. If you were wise, you noted every single thing she alluded to. It usually was the difference between life and death.

But what more does she want with my mate?

“I eventually will,” I retorted sternly. “Kali needs more time.”

“You don’t have it,” she snapped, her sudden mood swing taking me aback.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “I have taken her to the Shadow Realms. She’s safe from Cornelius.”

“ She may be, for now. But you are not.”

I heaved a sigh again, frustrated that even now the necromancer continued to poison my life. “Yes, I know. I need my scythe back. I have a few days to plan—”

“Two days, Pharos,” my mother said in a tone that brooked no argument, interrupting me. “You only have two days.”

“What?! Why?” I exclaimed. “It will take him more time to gather all the reagents to compensate for my magic and to set things up for the inevitable battle he knows I will bring to him.”

“No, my son,” she said with a conviction that twisted my insides. “You only have two days because of the manticore heart you helped him acquire. There’s a reason Cornelius has been hiding things from you. The manticore was the final ingredient he needed to permanently bind you to him. If he succeeds, not only will you never be free again, you will in fact cease to exist while he will retain all your powers.”

I took an involuntary step back, shock and horror swelling through me.

“This cannot be allowed, Pharos,” she said, her face expressing the closest thing I’d ever seen to distress from her.

My mother never showed her softer emotions. She would shower you with sarcasm, disdain, and anger, but would express her affection and tenderness in very subtle ways. That she would allow herself to display any type of vulnerability had all my senses go into high alert.

“The fact that he’d been able to use your powers for so long has already significantly upset the balance,” my mother explained. “The manticore should have lived. His thread was not meant to be severed like this. That in turn has had a domino effect on many other threads that will now no longer be woven, that got cut short, or completely derailed. To make matters worse, Cornelius intends to try to harness Charon, the same way he harnessed you.”

“Charon?! The Ferryman of the dead?!” I shouted.

She nodded with a somber expression. “Cornelius needed at the very least manticore bones to perform the binding ritual. But the heart is even more potent. With it, he will be able to ensnare both you and Charon. Once the ritual is complete, you will make him nearly immortal. And this time, he will enjoy the full spectrum of your Death and Regeneration Magic, without being bound by the covenant against killing.”

“Harnessing me, I understand. But why Charon?” I asked, confused.

“Because the Ferryman will provide him with an endless supply of souls,” my mother explained grimly. “Instead of ferrying the deceased to their appropriate realm of the afterlife, Cornelius will funnel them into his constructs. He will amass an immense army of enslaved souls, trapped in the powerful creations that he will build.”

“By the Gods…!” I whispered, horrified.

“By the gods, indeed. The Gods, the Ancients, and the netherworld as a whole is in uproar. My son, Cornelius’s fate is sealed. In two days, on All Souls’ Day, he intends to perform the ritual while the Veil is the thinnest. He must be stopped before it is complete. You must defeat him. If you fail, if he ensnares you, all will be lost. Therefore, we will have no choice but to finish the task.”

The intensity in her eyes made her underlying meaning clear. If Cornelius won and managed to bind me again, they would have no choice but to kill him, which also meant me in the process.

I gave her a stiff nod. “I understand. This gives me less time than I thought, but very well. I will be ready.”

“You cannot do this alone, Pharos,” she warned in a soft voice.

I immediately stiffened. “Not Kali. She wouldn’t survive.”

“She will if you claim her,” she replied dismissively.

“It must be her choice,” I said in an obvious tone.

“Then make her choose to go through with it,” she retorted with a hint of irritation. “Do you really think your female will sit on the sidelines while you confront Cornelius after what he has done to her brother? If she’s not tethered to you, she will die.”

“I won’t let her come unless she’s bound to me,” I said firmly.

“You cannot shackle her, you fool. You should know by now she has her own mind,” Mother said, rolling her eyes.

She then waved at the large wall on the left side of the room next to her spinning wheel. An intricate network of threads came into focus. Most people couldn’t see it, even if they tried, unless she deliberately showed it as she was now. As a Reaper, I could always see people’s life threads. Out of respect, I never peered at my mother’s wall by altering my vision when I used to visit her before. But this time, I greedily studied it only to feel my blood drain from my face.

Two threads shone brighter among the complex web that very few sentient beings could even begin to guess how to interpret. They belonged to Kali and me. They branched out, showing the possible outcomes of our future. Normally, a person’s life thread was like a tree, its limbs spreading in various directions, some branching out further, and others cutting short quickly.

While my own thread was a source of concern, it was Kali’s that retained my attention. There were only six branches, four of which indicated her death either in the next couple of days or within the year. Of the remaining two where she lived, only one matched my own exceptionally long thread of near immortality.

“She only lives in two scenarios?!” I exclaimed with this belief. “And they’re both the palest options?! Why just these two?”

The thickness and intensity of the glow of a thread indicated the likelihood that it would come to pass. The paler it was, the less probable it would be the path chosen by the person concerned. Various choices they made along the way could shift the focus from a different path making the desirable one become stronger. I needed to make this happen for my mate.

“Because she’s your soulmate. If she doesn’t die by your side in two days, she will wither away without you if you fall alongside Cornelius. Guilt and sorrow will eat away at her. Kali will only live and thrive if you do. So you must convince her.”

“Don’t you think I want to?” I asked, my anger not aimed at her but at the situation. “In the end, she doesn’t owe me her soul or to sacrifice herself for me. Surely there is another path where I keep her safe even should the worst happen, and I fall?”

She snorted and shook her head with a mix of affection, amusement, and discouragement.

“Oh, Pharos, you are always so angelic. You would get along with Asheron. You are both too sweet for your own good. Did you not get any of my ruthlessness?”

“You can’t blame us for that,” I teased affectionately. “You chose to have us with angels.”

She made an unimpressed face while waving a dismissive hand. “For your father, I’ll grant you that. But Asheron’s sire is a true fallen. And an obnoxious one at that.”

She muttered that last sentence under her breath, making me chuckle.

“Alderan is of the divine, nonetheless, even though he’s more chaotic,” I said gently. “I’m assuming it was your hand that helped free my brother?”

She lifted her chin defiantly. “No one messes with my children and gets away with it. It doesn’t matter how long it takes. Bind her, Pharos. I’m not losing you now. You do not understand how many loopholes I had to exploit to get your mate to act now before it was too late. This is the best outcome for the both of you. But you only have two days.”

“She cannot be coerced into this, Mother,” I said with frustration as I began pacing around the room. “And telling her any of this feels like blackmail and manipulation.”

My mother huffed and rolled her eyes at me. “Truth beats deception any day. Kali wants you. She wants a future with you. The mate bond never would have worked otherwise, and she would have died in the crypt. Stop overthinking everything. By keeping quiet, you’re not protecting her. All you’re doing is taking away her free choice.”

That gave me pause.

I turned back to face her and shifted my wings to loosen some of the tension knotting my back. She was making a fair point. Were our roles reversed, I would want Kali to be honest with me and allow me to make an enlightened decision.

“Understood. I will speak with her,” I said with a sigh, surprised to find it felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. “I must go back to her now. She will awaken soon.”

I smiled and turned to leave.

“Pharos!” my mother called out.

She closed the distance between us and plucked two strands of her extremely long, silver-white hair from her head. Despite it being plaited into a single long braid, the strands came out effortlessly without breaking. I watched in fascination as she tied each one around my bracers. They fused with the metal, giving it a silver glow.

“I thought you couldn’t intervene?” I challenged as I felt the potent magic radiating from it.

She shrugged. “A mother is allowed to offer her son a gift from time to time.”

I snorted. “You know all the workarounds, don’t you?”

“I’ve lived since the dawn of time, Pharos. I’ve seen it all,” she said, her face taking on a serious expression. “Death Magic wielded by a Blood Mage is a powerful thing. People wrongly assume that Flesh Magic is best to control constructs. But what binds the various parts that shape them is blood and the fluids in their tissue.”

With these cryptic words, my mother drew me into her arms and hugged me. Too stunned by this highly unusual display of affection, I just froze. Before I could snap out of it and return her embrace, mother kissed my cheek then pulled away from me. Without another word, she returned to her spinning wheel, indicating this meeting was over.

My heart ached at the sudden realization that this maternal embrace was in case we may never meet again. As much as it saddened me, it also whipped me into being even more determined that it would not be. I had not been a prisoner all this time to only enjoy freedom for a couple of days before my final death. I would prevail, and I would live happily ever after with my soulmate.

“Thank you, Mother,” I said.

Although she didn’t glance back at me, the pleased smile that stretched her lips confirmed she had sensed my reaction. I smiled in return, understanding it had been her intention all along. She was constantly playing the most advanced game of chess, always five moves ahead of everyone.

I walked out of her house and took flight before opening a rift in the Veil to teleport back home. As soon as I appeared above my terrace, my blood turned to ice.

A Grim Reaper was in my house.