“Don’t worry, reapers can use shadows to catch themselves,” Connor replies with a wave of his hand as I glance back.
Yes, but it still hurts like a bitch to land in a shadow.
“She is as crazy as you,” another man replies in astonishment, like his mate is the only crazy woman in the world.
I don’t listen for a moment longer, and I jump, the wind catching my breath as I slide down the glass, the scraping noise of my dress against the glass hurting my ears as I head for the greenhouse at the bottom of the building. I reach my hands out, changing power into them and getting ready to make a ball of shadow magic to land on just as someone catches me, knocking the air out of my lungs with the force as we stumble to a stop in the middle of the sky.
I gasp as I take in what caught me. A man, no, not a man exactly. He looks like an over-six-foot dark god sent here to seduce every woman in his path. I would guess he is an angel because of the bright golden wings stretched out behind him that seem like they are made of gold dust shaped into tiny feathers to make brilliant large wings. They are so enchanting it is hard to look away to see the rest of him. He has beautiful light blond hair that is braided back at the sides, and it really suits his face. I thought angel wings were white, at least the angels I have seen before. What is this dude? He slowly flies us down, his wings just make me want to reach out to touch them.
He is ridiculously hot. Dimples and all. His eyes meet mine, and I just stare. His eyes are the colour of honey. A pretty hazel colour that has so many different depths that it makes him quite pretty. But I quickly read him as a demanding asshole type, and I love those kind of men. The kind of men that can rock your world in the bedroom and almost break your heart in the morning, but in the end, you wouldn’t care because it would be worth it for that one night of pleasure. If he wasn’t a supe, he might be a good one-night stand I’d never call again. Supes are too possessive, and they ask too many questions.
“Let me go,” I demand, pushing against his hard chest, but it’s like fighting a rock. Poor Mossy is clinging to my back like a…well, literal monkey, and the man’s hands are holding my waist so tightly that it almost hurts.
“That is a funny way to say thank you,” the angel replies with a smirk, his deep sexy accent unfamiliar to me. But honestly? I have no idea where angels are from; I didn’t know they still existed until now, so maybe this is normal for them. “But fine. Your wish is my command, Daesyn Heartlocke.”
I scream as he literally drops me, his smirk staying in my mind as I plunge into freezing cold water within seconds. I barely noticed we moved closer to the ground or near a pool for that matter. I gasp, sucking in cold water as I swim to the surface, the damn dress making it hard to move my legs quickly.
If this dress drowns me, I’m becoming a ghost and haunting all dresses for the rest of time. Eventually I break the surface of the pool, the dress feeling heavy with all the water it has soaked up as I suck in deep breaths of cold air.
“The angel man is a fucker. Angel fucker is his name forever now,” Mossy shrieks as he climbs onto my neck, coughing out water. Mossy hates water.
“Serves you right for abandoning me for food earlier,” I breathlessly mutter to him. “But I agree with the name.”
As I look at the angel dude at the edge of the pool, Alun walks to his side. Both of them look like night and day. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place.
I’m in so much trouble.
Chapter 4
“Do you need a hand?” Alun softly asks, trying not to smile but majorly failing as he stares down at me. The angel asshole isn’t holding back, he can’t help but laugh as I climb out of the pool on my own. Which, in a soaking wet dress, is not as easy as it sounds.
Nor remotely graceful.
Who am I kidding? I’ve never been graceful.
“Who the fuck are you?!” I demand, glaring at the angel. His wings disappear into gold smoke that the wind blows away, and I just stare. His magic feels different and strong. Addictive. What the hell is he?
He steps closer, crossing his thick arms against his chest. “Torfinn White.”
“Torfinn, I think it is best you accompany us to my house instead of travelling back alone. Daesyn might try to jump off another high building,” Alun asks him, like I’m not even here. “Or she might do something reckless. I’m inclined to believe she is wild.”
“As you wish, my friend,” Torfinn replies, never taking his eyes off me. Like a dusty storm in a desert, his eyes force me not to look away. He is challenging me, daring me to say something.
“Angel fucker,” Mossy randomly mutters in disgust, and Torfinn narrows his eyes at me.
“What did you just call me?”
“You heard,” I snap, just begging him to start a fight even when it wasn’t me who said a word. I’m so done with today and this soaking wet dress.
“That’s enough,” Alun demands, and we both look at him as he holds his hand in the air. A scythe, the one from earlier, appears in his grasp from nothing but shadows. “Daesyn, can you travel through shadows?”
“No,” I truthfully answer, feeling Torfinn’s eyes on me. Alun nods at Torfinn. “Well, I did it once as a kid, but it was driven by fear.”
Alun smacks the end of his scythe on the stone ground, and a black shadow wall appears out of nowhere.
“If you want a new life and a chance at staying alive, I would suggest following me. I will understand if you do not, but the offer will not come again,” Alun tells me before he walks through the darkness and never looks back, his body disappearing into shadows.
Silence fills the space around me and Torfinn, and I stare at the shadows. My uncle told me never to come back to the Otherworld, but the Reaper Realm he never once mentioned. Maybe I would be safer there, and it sure beats dying here. I highly doubt my boss could get into the Reaper Realm…so I might actually be free.
“What would you do in my shoes?” I ask the not-so-angel.
He looks down at me, his next words rocking me to my core. “The question you should ask yourself is if you wish to live. I suspect you know the answer, and you do not need me to give it to you.”
I nod and take a deep breath. Fuck it. An adventure in sucky Reaper-ville, it is then.
“You must hold my hand then,” Torfinn explains, reading my expression like he has known my decision a lot longer than he actually has. He offers me his outstretched hand. “I will guide you through the shadows, and I will not let you go.”
Talk about trusting a stranger.
I glance at Mossy, who nods once, though I can feel his nerves just like my own. “Fine,” I reply and take Torfinn’s hand. A strange warm feeling shoots through my hand, like an electric shock, but it’s gone so quickly I assume it’s just the nerves. Torfinn guides me into the darkness, and it smothers me the second I am inside of it.
Walking through the shadows is something I have always feared. To be lost in it is said to be a fate worse than death.
And here I am, trusting an angel and a reaper to guide me in the shadows.
Torfinn’s hand never leaves mine, gently coaxing me through the darkness until we tumble into a field of flowers, and my monkey passes out on my shoulder. Fae magic and reaper magic are a bad mix, and poor Mossy can’t deal with it. I pick him off my shoulder, holding him in my arms as I look up at the sky. The eternal night of the Reaper Realm. It is dark, like I heard it always is here, and I stare up at the stars above my head for a moment. The stars here are like nothing I have ever seen, even in the Otherworld or on Earth. The stars make patterns, looking like someone actually painted the sky with stars to make these images. They say the stars above in the Eternal Night are actually the homes of the gods.