“I’m sorry I asked that of you.” She trembled when she spoke. “But if you hated it so much, then… why did you do it? Why did you listen to me?”
When he turned to her, the moonlight shone upon him in a way that reminded Signa of a painting, wisps of shadows like brushstrokes upon a canvas. “Because I have waited an eternity to meet you, Signa Farrow.” The words were a balm she clung to, relished. “To me, you are a song to a soul that has never known music. Light to someone who has only seen the darkness. You bring out the absolute worst in me, and I become vindictive toward those who treat you in ways I don’t care for. Yet you also bring out the best in me—I want to be better because of you. Better for you.
“In all my existence, I’ve asked only for one thing—for one person who might understand me, and whom I could let myself touch. When I touch someone, I see the life they’ve lived in flashes of memories as they die. But the first time I touched you, it was your future I saw. A glimpse of you in my arms, dancing in a beautiful red dress beneath the moonlight.” He tilted her chin up and Signa shivered, savoring the touch.
“You are what I want.” He drew his hand away. “I know I cannot force you to want me in return, but say that you do, and I promise that I am wholly and unequivocally yours. Say that you do, and I will make this world everything for you, Signa.”
The words struck hard. For so long she’d wanted nothing more than to be a normal girl, without Death lingering in the shadows of her life. She’d dreamed of how sweet it would be, only to find the taste bitter on her tongue. She could spend her life at Everett’s side, keeping one ear out for gossip, feeling trapped and weak and stifled. And all the while she would remember that there was something—someone—that had once made her feel so alive.
A normal girl wouldn’t be able to save her cousin’s soul.
A normal girl wouldn’t be able to sit upon this bank, staring at the bridge into the beautiful afterlife.
For so long she’d been fighting who she was, in favor of who others wanted her to be. She’d had enough.
The answer was there—it had always been there. She turned her head up to him, lips a breath from his. “I believe that I have always been yours, Death. As you were made for me, perhaps I was made for you. For I want to feel the way I feel when I am by your side forever. I want to feel the way I feel when you touch me.”
He let out the softest breath as the darkness within him ignited, and he became the night itself.
He was the fire of the stars. The dazzle of the moon. The darkness of the shadows, and the caress of wind against her skin as that darkness drank her in like she was the finest wine.
Signa knew before she wound an arm around his neck—before she pressed her chest against his—that there would be no turning back. When they kissed, his touch broke something within her. Something small and timid. Something that had been holding her back for too long.
It didn’t matter who other people believed her to be. It didn’t matter what they thought of her. This was who she was, and she was ready to embrace it.
“You are no soft thing to be coddled.” His voice was soothing as the season’s first rain, and she shivered from the way it glided upon her skin. “You are bolder than the sun, Signa Farrow, and it’s time that you burn.”
Death pulled her into the forest and laid her upon the cold ground. His lips kissed down the length of her neck and to the top of her corset. She tried to steal a look at him, but the mist and the shadows obscured him. She could have tried harder, but in the end it didn’t matter to her what Death looked like. What she felt for him—how she wanted him—was bone-deep and aching.
In her almost twenty years, she’d never felt so alive. She was without abandon, her hands slipping through the shadows to curl in his hair and on his shoulders, her lips on his mouth, his neck, every bit as starved for him as he was for her.
Lace by lace her dress was undone, the silk slipping from her skin. He leaned back to admire her laid bare beneath the stars, dark hair unbound and spilling over her fair shoulders.
Never had Signa been so exposed, yet she didn’t hide herself from him, nor did she shy away from the shadows that encircled her bare thighs. Signa guided his hands over her waist. Over her breasts and her hips, and then lower, shivering with pleasure beneath his touch.
“You’re sure you want this?” he asked, almost as though he couldn’t believe it. As though he expected her to come to her senses and force him away.
But Signa no longer viewed Death as someone dangerous. He was thrilling and freeing, and she wanted him more than she’d ever wanted anything.
“I have never been more sure of something in all my life.” She cupped her palm against his face, easing him down so that his body covered hers. Her kiss was tender but firm in her desire, hoping she could ease his worry. That she could show him she wanted this every bit as much as he did.
Whether it was the kiss or the words that undid him, he groaned and kissed her full on the mouth. He didn’t hesitate after that. His lips were on her thigh at once, kissing up the bare skin until she gasped, head falling back as her body melted beneath his touch.
His shadows traced her hip bones, slipping to the sensitive place his lips had once been. She exhaled a soft breath, any tension she’d felt loosening itself. Every touch was fire upon her skin, searing into her and commanding her attention. For once nothing else mattered. No inheritance, no spirits, nothing but his body as it covered hers, and the deep aching of want that filled her.
He groaned as he pressed into her, and Signa soon felt herself coming unbound. She was the darkness of the shadows, now. The one making him bend and stretch and twist, taking all he offered, all she wanted.
She wrapped her legs around him as the yearning built, keeping him close as something within her mounted. It wasn’t just him she felt. It was the night itself, shadows and darkness and stars that exploded within her as she came undone.
A growl escaped his throat as she arched beneath him, and he fisted her hair in one hand. His muscles tensed as she pulled him close, kissing his neck and lips and all she could get of him until he growled her name and lost himself within her, shadows curling around her as he collapsed beside her.
Signa unwrapped herself from him, satisfaction on her lips. She was the one who made Death twist to her whim. She was the one who made him whisper her name as she tipped her head back to the sky, and she rather liked that.
Signa laced her fingers through his, and he brushed his thumb over the back of her hand in long, content strokes.
“I have waited for you for millennia, Signa Farrow.” There was a silky husk to his voice now, too pleased for his own good. “Since the dawn of this earth, I have waited. You are mine, and I am yours. And together, this world is ours.”
THIRTY-NINE
BOTH SIGNA AND ELIJAH SAT AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE WELL BEFORE daylight, poring over theories and motives, neither of them willing to speak the truth aloud—that Marjorie couldn’t have been acting alone. That her reaction was too surprised. That her love for the Hawthorne children was too genuine.
But the stain of belladonna upon her fingertips and the entries in her journal didn’t lie. She had wanted Lillian gone, but that wasn’t enough. Hands could be washed and poisoned cups cleaned, so they needed proof. They needed answers. And thus, they had gathered to try and find them.