Page 5 of The Souls Harvest
A long second stretches between us.
We both shake our heads at the same time. Galen scratches his head, clearing his throat, and I step away, catching my breath.
Many Reapers like me, and Deleteri like Galen, find relief from the rush of adrenaline by sharing a bed for a night or two after a mission. No promises. No bonds. Galen and I fell into that deep of easy release and pleasure once, but there is something binding our wills that stops us from exploring theafter.
When the moment has passed, I turn my face to check on the empty body I left behind, but his voice gently pulls me out of my reverie.
“Did something happen?” His hand is comforting on my shoulder.
“She wasn’t like the others. She didn’t cry, didn’t try to run away.” I take a deep breath to steady my hammering heart. “Her eyes were on me the entire time as if she didn’t want to miss any detail of her last moments…”
“Sof—July…I…” Galen steps back, searching my face for the right words to say.
I run my hands over my face and through my hair, letting it come undone again. My eyes find Galen’s. “She told me she would have done it again.”
Instinctively, I touch the pocket where I tucked the glass vial. “I need to recover my bag before someone finds it and gets too curious about all the weird glowing shit in there.”
Galen stretches out a hand, but I put more space between us as he asks, “Would you like me to go with you?”
Yes. “No, I’m okay. I…need to reset.”
Reset—this is what they do to us after every harvest. They wipe our memory clean of any unpleasant details. Tomorrow, the young woman who didn’t look away will only be a Nistares in a pretty emerald dress.
Galen breathes a half-smile, “I’ll see you back in Libera, I guess.” His voice is heavy with unasked questions.
I nod and turn to be on my way, but before we’re too far from each other, I glance over my shoulder. “She referred to Nistarei’s souls as stolen.”
There are ways to bend the rules and remember what we want after a mission. Galen and I have a secret code to tell each other, ‘This is what I want to keep.’ We always have a way to mark our very last words, a final message that must be kept safe because it has a special meaning.
I see him ready to follow me in the corner of my eye, but I hold a hand up, behind me, to silence him.Make me remember.
When I turn the corner, I’m glad nobody is in the alley, rummaging on the table and in my bag, so I’m free to collect my harvesting tools and disappear. The back door of the woman’s shop is still shut, but the exit signal has stopped flickering.
I pull Galen’s hood up, fish the vial out of my pocket, and nearly drop it.
The soul inside glows red like a flame, not purple like the others I collected last night.
And by this time tomorrow, this detail will have been wiped out of my mind.
Chapter 2- Harvester’s Eyes
July
"Sofia July Crimson, your report should have been on my desk two hours ago. Have I gone blind? Have you started to use invisible paper? Please, explain.”
Standing tall behind her desk, Miss Popplewish fights to keep her annoyance under control and her tone flat, but her fingers, drumming on the mahogany desk, betray her fast-racing thoughts.
Miss Evelyn Popplewish. Lovely, gentle and ferociously keen to change my mind and turn me into a Donatore because that will make me softer and less lonely.
No, thank you. I’m perfectly fine on my own.
Trying to prove my point, again, won’t take us anywhere. So, I pick a more neutral start. “I’m sorry,” I pant by the threshold, a bottle of water in one hand and a mess of wrinkled papers in the other. “I hav… I have it, Miss P.”
She dropped the case against the too-friendly version of her name only weeks after I'd pioneered it—the night she caught me and Galen downing a bottle of red in the orchard. She reprimanded us, and we promised we would never force the cellar open again.Galen and I threw up all our past and future sins that night, but it was the best birthday I’d ever had.
“Please don’t tell me this is your first draft, Sofia—” Her lips disappear into a thin line as if trying to take back the version of my name she knows I hate. I move one foot over the threshold, clutching the report to my chest, pretending I didn’t hear it.
“What’s a draft anyway?” I sigh, marching inside her classroom, hoping my attitude would mask my terrible attempt at an excuse. “Does it even have a universal meaning?”
