Signa fell upon all fours, clutching her chest and gasping from her returned breath as Percy brought the knife down again. Before it could strike, Sylas stepped in front of her and caught the blade in his palm. Percy gasped, eyes wild as he tried to lower his hand. He pushed down upon it without success, attempting to get the knife to budge. To cut. To do anything. “What is this?” His lip trembled, skin ashen. “What are you doing?” Percy looked to Signa for an explanation, trembling like a leaf caught in a storm.
Sylas didn’t waver as he held the blade. Signa waited for the blood to come. For him to wince from the pain. But there was not so much as a scratch upon his glove.
It was as though all the air had been pressed from her lungs when she heard him whisper, “This wasn’t how I intended to do this. I’m sorry, Little Bird.”
His shoulders were blurring, bleeding into the night. Signa understood the sorrow in his voice as shadows built around his feet and engulfed him until he was no longer Sylas but the reaper of the night. The bringer of death. One by one the stars winked out, until the night turned black and the only light came from the seething flames that glistened upon the snow and bowed at his feet. He pulled the night into him, claiming the moon for his scythe, and pointed its tip at Percy’s throat.
Death stood before her, and Signa could not breathe.
Sylas had been the one to bring her to Thorn Grove. To help her, step by step. He’d led her to Grey’s, to the garden, the library. It was him she’d ridden with in the moonlight. Him who made her question her feelings for Death.
Death and Sylas were one and the same.
She couldn’t ask why. Not yet anyway, for Gundry stood at his heels. The hound was no longer of this world. Just as the shadows had wound around Sylas, they spun around Gundry as well, lengthening his maw and sharpening his incisors. He tripled in size until he stood at Death’s shoulder with paws larger than Signa’s head, eyes as crimson as blood as shadows dripped from his panting mouth. Hungry, Signa realized. He was hungry.
“This is where you make your choice.” Death spoke to her with words like nectar. Like honeyed wine she could drown in. “This is where you decide what world you are made for. There are but two options: let him run and hope that he will be a changed man, for if you send him to trial, he will surely be hanged. Or…”
“Or?”
Death touched her shoulder, where the knife wound had already stitched itself back together. He pulled her up to her feet so her back pressed against his chest, and so she faced Percy and the flames that charred Lillian’s grave. “Or you claim his life as your own and give his remaining time to Blythe. You are not cursed—you are a reaper. You are the night incarnate, the ferrier of souls. You are the bridge between the living and the dead—a caged bird that’s ready to fly. So spread your wings, Signa Farrow, because you are limitless. Spread your wings, and oh, how we’ll fly.”
How right it sounded. How simple, like something deep and pulsing within her knew that was the answer. That it was right.
You are no soft thing to be coddled. The words Death had once told her played in her mind, over and over again. You are bolder than the sun, Signa Farrow, and it’s time that you burn.
He was right. She no longer feared what brewed within her, and she was done making apologies for who she was. Signa would not just burn; she would ignite. She would blaze hotter than a star at Death’s side and would finally claim all that she was. All that was hers.
She leaned against him and let that thrum of power course through her. It was ice in her veins and fire in her heart. Gone were her worries, her fears, for as she let the power consume her, she understood those fears meant nothing. She no longer claimed them. She was to be the ruler of the night. The bringer of death. A reaper. And she would start her reign now.
“Are you certain?” Death’s voice was a caress amid the chaos.
Signa had never been more certain of anything in her life. She had cared for Percy; had begun to love him. But she understood now why Death had done all that he did. Understood why he’d given people an early end, all because he’d been selfish. All because he’d wanted to protect her.
For Blythe, she would do the same. For Elijah, for Thorn Grove, she would be selfish. Percy had made his choice, and now it was time to make hers.
If Percy would not feel remorse for his sins, Signa would ensure that he came to regret them.
When Signa faced her cousin, it was with the night itself in her eyes and hair silver as starlight. She didn’t need to speak. She simply thought of her desire to raise the dead garden beneath him like a cage, and the world bent to her will. Dead bramble tore through the snow and flames, roots ensnaring Percy, whose nails ripped at them in desperation, trying to tear himself free. “Release me!” He gaped at her through the barbed trap of thorns and vines. They snaked around his wrists, securing him to the ground. “What in God’s name are you?”
For once, she had an answer. “I am free.” And then she turned to Gundry and let the hellhound have his feast.
FORTY-FOUR
SIGNA DIDN’T WAIT TO SEE THE FATE OF PERCY’S SPIRIT. WHETHER HE chose the afterlife or to linger, or whether Death claimed Percy’s soul as his own, she had no desire to know. She sat with her back against a tree just outside the garden and barely felt the bite of the snow sinking into her clothing or the smoke still in her lungs, even as the garden fire was snuffed out.
It was over. After all this time, the Hawthornes would be spared from their torment. Or at least those remaining would, though Signa didn’t want to think about that. She curled her arms around her knees, trying to process all she’d seen and done, and only looking up when two pale, translucent feet appeared before her.
Lillian sat down beside her, no longer so terrifying. The wounds around her mouth were healing, and her eyes were no longer so hollow. She was more a woman than a spirit. A young, mournful woman with damp eyes that watched the smoke dissipate in the sky.
“Thank you,” Lillian said. The words were soft and a little scratchy from disuse, as if she struggled to remember how to form them. Signa turned to peer at the spirit, who set a hand upon her arm.
Signa felt her hesitant touch like one might feel the brush of the wind against skin, gentle and a little cold. “You have nothing to thank me for.” Her voice was harsher than she intended. “I couldn’t save them both.”
Even as the sound of Percy’s laughter as he’d spun her across the parlor rang in her head, she couldn’t regret her choice. Percy’s remaining years would go to Blythe; it was the least he owed her. But the callousness of the decision had surprised her. She’d known what to do so quickly, so easily, and she hadn’t once hesitated.
Signa truly was a reaper. And though she didn’t know what it meant for her or her future, there was no going back.
Death emerged from the garden gates, his shadows slipping away to reveal the form of Sylas, only with silver hair in place of black. Her eyes drifted to the earnestness in his eyes, and she glanced away. She’d talk to him soon, but with Lillian here, it wasn’t the time. Death scratched the back of his neck, understanding that simply enough. Nothing in his expression revealed Percy’s fate. Perhaps Signa would ask about that, too, someday. But not yet.