My stomach dropped again, and if my heart had been beating, it would’ve pounded against my chest and ribs until it became painful.
“S-so where am I going then?”
Back to Rune? I wanted to go back to Rune. No... Ineededto go back to Rune.
“You know where. It’s you that will get yourself back. The power lies within you, Isa Finley.”
Licking my lips and ignoring that it felt like a numbed fat lip from the dentist, I took a step away from him in utter shock. He kept telling me to revive myself like I had the power to do that, which I didn’t.
Right?
“You don’t control life and death.” It didn’t come out as a question as I meant it to.
He inclined his head; yes.
“But you control the soul and where it goes.”
Another slight nod from him.
Something about that seemed so familiar. His job was to pull the soul from the dead vessel and direct them into the afterlife.
It was odd, but... I felt like I knewhimpersonally. His name was at the tip of my tongue but I couldn’t seem to get it out. It was an itch in my brain that I couldn’t quite get, and it was going to drive me nuts until I remembered.
Standing here awkwardly, I gazed at him as I tried to force his name into my mind. I was sure my face was a funny sight with the way it felt scrunched as I was trying to think of his name. It wasn’t The Angel of Death. My mom had told me about angels in her storytelling I loved so much as a kid. Dumah was my favorite and one that I bugged my mom to tell me the story all the time since no one ever knew who he was. I felt that if my mom gave in with a laugh and told me the stories about Dumah, then I was connected with him in some way. That his legacy lived through me.
A freakin’ eight-year-old thought angels’ legacies lived throughher. And now I couldn’t think of the one’s name standing across from me.
He stood only two feet from me, watching with a strange intensity with the weight of his gaze.
The way he stared... waiting... like he had all the time in the world for it to click in my mind of who he was on a personal level.
No... that couldn’t be it.
Blinking, I averted my gaze as I worked through everything he said.
“So you’re here with me because you control souls. And for whatever reason, you want me to somehow bring myself back to life like nothing happened.”Like I hadn’t been stabbed to death and now had the power to come back from the dead. Did he not realize how that sounded crazy to a human?
He straightened, taking measured steps around me. I turned in my spot, watching him the whole time. With his back facing me, he stared down the hallway, where I could still hear the soft groans and cracks of my friend, who was now going through some painful death echo. It broke my heart because she didn’t deserve that. What did she do, and why wasn’t he telling me?
I blinked out of my thoughts, barely realizing I got distracted again and gazed at the black feathers of his beautiful wings. The tips were a hair away from touching the ground, while the tops curved right at his broad shoulders.
I didn’t think angels would always have their wings out. It was something I always assumed they somehow magically disappeared into their back so they could blend in with humans. That was what a lot of movies did, anyway. But I knew because of everything that happened when Rune came into my life that Hollywood got a lot of things wrong. So what else did they get wrong?
It wasn’t something Death needed to worry about right now since he wasn’t walking around the square in New York, giving away his identity and that angels really existed.
Taking a half step in a turn so he was peering at me over his shoulder while still mainly facing the hallway, he murmured, “You’re here for a reason.” His eyes brightened like a fire deep within him was fighting to break free. “It’s time you awaken.”
“What?”
“You’ve been asleep until I came for you. You need to open your eyes and awaken to who you are meant to be.” He turned to face me fully, crossing his arms over his chest. “Draw in your power and return on your own.”
The pain in my chest came back full force, ripping the nonexistent air from my lungs on a shuddering breath. It reminded me, again, of someone punching through my chest to fist my heart and yank it out. My ribs screamed at me and my stomach twisted into a knot until it was a stab that throbbed every second with the same airless breaths I took. In my mind, I fully believed I was alive and couldn’t breathe. I was being stabbed again, but it was focused more on my chest than my stomach, where my killer thrust the shard of glass into me.
Over and over, it pounded on my chest. My ribs threatened to crack under the pressure as my dead heart squeezed painfully. I shoved my hands to the center of my chest as I bent in the middle, squeezing my eyes shut. A scream built in me, but nothing came out. I couldn’t force it out. It wouldn’t come as I stayed breathless—oddly enough.
Something sharp was in my chest; it felt like it was digging deeper into my flesh and bone. It couldn’t. Realistically, it couldn’t be wiggling deeper into my body because I wasn’t alive. I was a fucking ghost and not corporeal. But the sharp piece of whatever it was, burrowed deeper.
Flashes of the glass shard piercing me over and over played through my mind. The echo of the pain of it breaking off in my chest throbbed in the place that hurt so damn badly.
