by SM Reine
It hadn’t even hurt when he’d accidentally rested a hand on an active burner on the stove at home. He hadn’t healed with preternatural speed because there’d been nothing to heal.
Nothing hurt.
That was another of the weird symptoms demonstrating that he’d changed after Genesis, similar to teleportation or the inability to age. Seth didn’t hurt anymore. He didn’t hurt, he didn’t love, he didn’t feel anything.
But Arawn’s Hounds ripping him apart hurt. It hurt a lot.
Their teeth shredding into his skin, shattering his bones, gnawing on the meat…
It hurt.
Seth hadn’t been in that much pain in a long time, and he didn’t know how to deal with it anymore. All he could do was scream and scream and scream. He loosed his agony into the universe because it was so much easier than trying to trap it inside.
Teeth scraped against his liver.
Pain.
Yet there was another level to that pain.
Every pinch of a nerve, every tearing scrap of flesh, felt like it was unlocking something within his skull.
One Hound snapped its head back with a chunk of flesh so large that it included Seth’s bellybutton. He could see into the dog’s brain as though fur and flesh had turned transparent. He knew that the Hound was a living thing, and he knew that it was going to die in exactly seven minutes and twenty-eight seconds.
The Hound’s death loomed like the Genesis void.
Seven minutes and twenty-one seconds.
Tick-tock.
Another Hound clamped its jaws on one of Seth’s small ribs. With a vicious twist of its head, the bone snapped free of his spine.
That Hound was not due to die for years to come.
It would be killed by an archer. A woman hunting with a bow. The arrow would plunge into its heart, and it would fall among the roots of the Dead Forest, immediately consumed by the hungry fingers of the foliage.
His mind continued to expand as the pain swelled.
Seth was dying, and in his death, he saw every other death in the universe.
The Hounds were nearest, so he saw what would happen to all of them. Every death was ugly. Brutal. Some were within minutes or days, others were within years or even centuries. Regardless of when it would happen, he knew that it would happen, as certainly as he knew that the sun would rise on Earth the next morning.
Seth’s mind brushed against a watching soul.
His eyes rolled in his skull. He focused on a human figure standing atop the hill near the Bronze Gates.
She was tall, slender, graceful. She had a heart-shaped face framed by brown curls and eerily bright eyes that might have been mistaken for blue.
It can’t be Marion.
Seth had told Konig to take her back to the Winter Court, where she would be safe. Where the harsh environment of the Nether Worlds couldn’t damage her purer ethereal system.
Yet he felt her. The Hounds stripped his skin away to expose his organs and Seth felt that Marion was real—that she had returned, that she was alive for the moment, although Death was on the horizon of her existence.
She was clutching the Canope against her chest.
“Stop!” she cried, her voice echoing off of grassy planes.
Seth wanted to tell her something similar.
Stop. Leave. Run away.
The Hounds weren’t interested in her presence, even though Seth was so painfully aware of Marion’s nearness that it overrode the sensation of being eaten. The whole universe could have been coming apart at the seams and he still would have been able to feel Marion there.
The Hounds didn’t care. They had what they wanted.
But what they wanted wasn’t what Seth had expected.
He was dying, yes. But Seth’s death was only the erosion of a mortal form. When he lifted his head an inch to look down at himself, he realized that the dogs were exposing a lot more than anonymous human meat, like the bodies dangling from Arawn’s hooks.
They were exposing Seth’s truth.
His energy.
There was so much more to Seth than a human body. That physical form was no more than a prison of flesh containing his essence, just as the Canope contained Marion.
He wasn’t dying. He was transcending.
That wasn’t what Marion seemed to be seeing. Her beautiful face was twisted with horror.
She lifted the Canope above her head.
Seth opened his mouth to tell her to stop, but he couldn’t speak. One of the Hounds was gnawing on his diaphragm.
Marion hurled the Canope to the ground.
It shattered.
The magic binding the Hounds to the Canope activated again. Not because it had been stolen this time, but because it had been destroyed.
Their protective instinct flared to life. Every single one of those red-eared heads lifted to focus on Marion.
Through his hazy vision, Seth could see Marion’s defiant despair. She was crying. “Come and get me,” she said so softly that her voice barely reached his ears.
No. Don’t. Stop.
The Hounds leaped for her.
Marion tried to run, to her credit—but she must have known that it wasn’t going to work. She’d seen how quickly the Hounds could move.
She only made it a handful of steps before they descended on her.
For all that being mauled had hurt him, watching them rip Marion apart was even worse.
No…
Seth’s muscles had been pulled apart fiber by fiber, half of his guts swallowed by Arawn’s hounds, with so much blood dribbling into Mnemosyne that his heart shouldn’t have been able to beat. Yet the frailty of his human form didn’t seem to matter. He rolled onto his hands and knees, and the pain receded, growing more distant.
Strength of body had been replaced by strength of soul.
Marion’s screaming shook the trees.
“No,” he said, this time aloud.
He got to his feet. Seth’s organs dangled from the cavity that the Hounds had dug below his breastbone. Shredded large intestine dangled over his right thigh, but it didn’t matter. The waterfalls of blood didn’t matter. The missing spleen didn’t matter.
Marion’s death hovered as her screaming became strangled. A Hound began to drag her body away, teeth digging into her delicate wrist, where once her pulse had beat so strongly.
He stepped forward. One foot after another.
“Get away from her,” he said.
The Hounds reacted to his voice the way they’d reacted to nothing but the Canope, shying away from Marion’s body as he approached. They cowered. Heads tilted, legs bowed, tails tucked. Seth had spent enough time around werewolves to recognize signs of submission.
Seth stretched his hands out the way that he had reached for the Canope to seize it. His fingertips brushed the wiry white fur of the nearest dog.
Its skin peeled open. Jaws split. Eyes burst.
In an instant, it was dead. It hadn’t required a single thought from Seth. Merely the faint desire to save Marion.
The rest of the Hounds fled.
Even the idea of mortality that they represented couldn’t stand up to Death himself.
And then Seth was alone with what remained of Marion.
Even in the confusing, better-than-mortal state that Seth had entered, he was horrified. “Marion,” he said, falling to his knees beside her. The name was uttered in a thousand dimensions, across every world that existed.
Her heart was beating every few seconds now. Her right eye was shut. Her left eye had been torn free.
“No. No.” Seth pulled her into his lap, even though his medical training told him that was one of the worst things he could do. One of the Hounds had been gnawing on her spine after she crumpled. It had snapped her neck. Moving her would only cause more damage.
What did that matter now? Seth could see the end all over Marion.
She was on the precipice of oblivion, but regardless of whatever powers Seth was assuming, he co
uldn’t heal.
Marion was going to die.
He cradled her in his arms—her fragile mortal body, tall and lean, gushing crimson from the wound in her throat—and bowed over her body, pressing his lips to her hair. She smelled like the smoke of distant campfires drifting over the mountains, all tangled up with pine and sun-warmed grapes and lavender.
This was his last chance to smell it.
“Take her soul.”
Seth’s head snapped up. Nyx stood over him, even more translucent than she’d been before. She was little more than the idea of a ghost.
“You’re dead,” Seth said.
“So are you,” Nyx said. “Take her soul to the other side. End her suffering as she once ended the suffering of Elena Eiderman.”
Seth was so wracked with despair that it took him a moment to understand. Mrs. Eiderman had been a patient in Ransom Falls—his last patient. She’d been an old woman dying of lycanthropy. It had been slow and painful until Marion eased the end with her ethereal magic.
The magic had been beautiful, but it had been a distinct ending. Elena Eiderman was gone. And Nyx wanted Seth to end Marion in that same way.
“Help me save her,” he said. “Please.”
“That’s beyond my ken,” Nyx said. “My only power is in death, and even that is a mere shadow of what you do. You have to walk her to the other side.”
Marion’s heart wasn’t beating.
The power lurking within him wanted her to die, but he was more than the infernal forces that had seized him. He was Seth Wilder: the only human man to ever run a werewolf pack; a doctor with an oath to heal, not harm; friend to Marion Garin, a helpless and hopeless innocent.
“I won’t do it,” Seth said.
“Neither of us needs to take action. Once it’s time for her to walk, she’ll walk,” Nyx said gently. “We can only make it easier.”
He intended to ask what Nyx meant by “walk,” since it was clear that Marion wasn’t going anywhere. She was utterly limp in his lap.
But then fog lifted from her chest. It pooled in the air above her nose and mouth.
Her soul was going to walk to the other side.
Nyx touched his shoulder so lightly that he could barely feel the tap of bone upon his injured flesh. Her demon mind connected to his. He saw what it would take to guide someone into death: how simple it was to open pathways between life and oblivion.
“Take her through the Dead Forest,” Nyx said.
Was that all he could do for Marion now? Make it easier to die?
Seth stood with Marion hanging from his arms. At least, some part of him stood—not his shattered body, which remained hugged around Marion’s equally broken form, but his soul tangled with hers. Power reaching for power. Life with life.
He stood and Marion flitted away.
“Wait,” he said.
The ghost of the girl smiled at him with eyes vacant of understanding, and she ran across Mnemosyne without her feet ever contacting water. She disappeared through the trees.
“Take her,” Nyx urged.
When Seth turned to the demon, he was shocked to see that the shrouded, skeletal creature had been replaced by a beautiful woman of human features. She was even more beautiful than he had remembered when they had stood at the edge of the Pit of Souls together. Diamonds studded fleshy cheeks. Plump lips curved into a loving bow. Her black eyes were filled with as much compassion as there was chaos.
Nyx was a black woman with gnarly curls that sprayed in every direction, enhancing a noble jaw, strong shoulders, a tiny waist. Filmy veils flowed from her hips.
She was a Lord of Sheol as much as Arawn, but she was the kind of lord that anyone would have bowed to in relieved submission, knowing that they were in maternal hands. She represented the tragic mirror image of birth. Everyone who was born had to die, and Nyx attended with love.
The demon gestured toward Marion’s retreating form, and said again, “Don’t let her be alone.”
Alarm clawed within Seth. “I won’t let her go at all.”
He tossed aside all that was physical and chased her.
After all, in his glimpses of Marion’s memories whilst he bore the Canope, he had seen the truth.
Elise had wanted Marion to seek out Seth. Why had Seth been hiding from her in the first place? He didn’t know. The particulars were neither relevant nor surprising. Before Genesis, Seth’s relationship with Elise had never been better than fraught.
Marion hadn’t known Seth at the time, but she had defended him from Elise. The Voice of God had tried to protect Seth from the intervention of deities.
Now that Seth was bleeding his life onto the ground of the Dead Forest without actually dying, he thought he could guess as to why. Elise had changed him, and she’d wanted to possess him, like Dr. Frankenstein with her monster.
But Marion had protected Seth—more than once now.
Dammit, she deserved better than death.
Seth raced into the trees.
“Marion!”
There was power behind her name for the first time, and she stopped when she heard him. He’d reached her just in time. The ghost of Marion had somehow found a doorway among the trees, and her hand was already lifted to knock on the frame.
He hadn’t seen the door before, but he recognized it deep within his soul.
“What is it?” Marion asked. Her lips didn’t move, but her eyes never fell from his.
“Don’t go through that door,” Seth said. “That’s the last door you’d ever go through.”
“But this is what I’m meant to do, isn’t it?”
“You’re meant for so much more than this. You aren’t done, goddammit.”
“Why stay?” Her voice cracked. “What remains for me here? I destroyed the Canope, and most of my spirit along with it. My memories are gone. I’ll never know who I was, what I wanted, or the things I’ve done. I’m a ghost of myself in life or death.”
Seth risked a step toward her, and Marion didn’t yet move.
“Even if you’ve left the past behind, there’s still a future,” he said.
Marion swayed. “What rests in my future? Political marriage?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Konig wants me to marry him,” she said. “It would give us an avenue to protect the Winter Court from the angels. That would be the end of my life as surely as that door.”
“You love Konig,” Seth said.
“I do,” Marion agreed. The way that she looked at him might as well have been a very distinct “but,” suggesting so many more things to be said.
But Marion didn’t want to marry for politics.
But she wasn’t certain she wanted to be with Konig.
He took another step.
Marion did, too.
She was only inches from the door now—inches from abandoning a tumultuous, confusing life that had been foisted upon her by gods who didn’t care about what she wanted.
“Don’t go in there,” Seth said. “I can still save you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I won’t ever know if you don’t let me try.”
Marion wavered again. “Seth…” She shook her head. Her ghostly hair swam around her shoulders as though she were one of the bodies submerged in Mnemosyne. “I know your secret, Seth. I know that you’ve been thinking about killing me. And you’re so noble, such a hero, that you’ve been fighting against it although you don’t even like me. Once this is over, you won’t need to fight anymore.”
Seth stared at her. “I like you.”
“Do you?” she asked. “Really?”
God, how was he supposed to respond to that?
Charity was lurking in the back of his mind. Tell her the truth. That was what the revenant had been urging the entire time, and Seth had continually resisted. The truth was too much.
Now they were on the threshold of a doorway into death.
There was no more damage for the truth to do to Seth or Mar
ion.
“I care about you a lot more than I should,” he said carefully. “You said that there’s something between us…and you were right, Marion. I’ve felt it, too.”
“A connection,” she said.
Seth clenched his hands into fists. “Chemistry.”
Her whited-out eyes shimmered. She flickered where she stood. “What are you saying?”
Being careful wasn’t enough. The door was still dragging her closer. Even though she hadn’t taken a single step, she was inches nearer the threshold than she had been moments earlier.
Marion was still dying.
“I’m not ready for you to leave.” Seth drew in a long breath—or what would have been a breath if the two of them hadn’t been spirits wandering through a Dead Forest that was more metaphor than physical. “Don’t leave, Marion. Please.”
He held his hand out, and he waited.
The truth was that Seth wouldn’t have fought to protect her so hard if he didn’t like her.
A lot more than like her, actually.
Seth felt things for Marion that he hadn’t let himself feel in years—and certainly not toward her. The half-sister of the god who’d ruined his life, and also happened to have a boyfriend, for fuck’s sake. He’d sworn off fighting over women. He’d sworn off women altogether.
But most women weren’t Marion.
“Please,” Seth said again.
She stepped away from the door. “I don’t want to leave you.”
Her fingers settled against his.
There were no boundaries left between them. Not skin or bone or magic.
Seth and Marion were one, mind and voice.
The forest blurred around them as he pulled her toward him. The doorway flickered.
He saw nothing but Marion, stripped of all her power and pretense. She was nothing but a woman. Magical, powerful, fiery, and entirely mortal in spirit. Her arrogance was merely a feature. It didn’t conceal the compassion at her core.
Seth would ensure she survived. Whatever that took.
“Stay with me,” he said, drawing her toward their bodies on the banks of Mnemosyne. “Don’t let go.”
Marion surrendered. They drifted.
Nyx was waiting beside their physical forms, faded away to nothing but a scrap of herself. There was a door waiting for her, too. “You shouldn’t be capable of sparing the girl. It isn’t possible.”