Page 218 of Nightshade

Bishop Venable.

“Why! Why did you do this! Why!” When I pushed to my feet, the agony struck my leg again, and I tumbled to the ground a second time.

“He chose this.” His words pummeled my chest like a heavy rock, and I gasped. “The price to save you was giving up his wings. For a Sentinel, it is essentially giving up his immortality.”

Eyes brimming with tears, I shook my head in anger and disbelief. Irrational anger. Molten-hot anger that burned my insides.

“No. You’re lying. He wouldn’t do that. You’re lying!”

“I will give you one opportunity to return to your own world. It was his only condition. Luckily for you, we are bound by conditions in this world, or you’d suffer the same fate as before. At the foot of the mountain, you will find a ferry.” From his pocket, he retrieved a coin--the one Jericho had offered as a means to return, and he threw it onto the ground just out of my reach. “Pay the ferryman, and you will be given safe passage back to your world. Stay here? And I will see to it that you are hunted for eternity.”

Frowning, I stared down at the coin he’d dropped on the ground, and lifted it to find the face of a demon on one side, an angel on the other.

“Seems the curse is broken. For now. Congratulations. Should you bear a daughter, though, it will carry on through her.”

“Why are you doing this?” I would’ve begged that he send me to the same fate, except I was certain that I had a life inside of me. Jericho’s baby. “Why let me go, at all?”

“Because even in the afterlife, we are not exempt from wrath’s punishment,” he said, before turning away from me.

64

Farryn

A gnawing cold embraced me, as, waiting in line for the ferry, I stared over the pier’s edge, down at the placid, black water that looked like glass. In its reflection, I saw flames, horribly bright flames that reached up from the surface toward me.

Tears distorted the too-vivid illusion, and when I screwed my eyes shut and turned away, they spilled down my cheeks. A crippling ache chewed at my heart, my lungs heavy with the suffocating breath of my reality.

He’s gone.

When I turned back to the water, I only saw my own reflection that time. The misery on my face, clear as if I’d stared into a mirror. On a grief-laden exhale, my mind wandered into thoughts. Thoughts of how peaceful it would’ve been to fall beneath that dark and abysmal surface. To let go of my held breath.

To let go of it all.

A memory surfaced. Lying in the ice-cold water. Staring up at the blood red moon. The darkness. The peace.

The few who waited alongside me, whether human, or something else, stirred, as the ferry approached in the distance, cutting through the fog that lingered at the water’s surface.

I stepped closer to the edge of the pier.

Closer.

The water stood calm and inviting, its depths invisible beneath the pitch-black surface.

Let go.

I toed the edge of the pier, my whole body shaking.

‘Don’t do it, Tu’Nazhja.’ That beautiful deep voice I loved brought my movements to a halt.

Glancing around showed no sign of him, only the few who’d gathered at the end of the pier, to board the approaching ferry. With a frown, I turned my attention back toward the water, and my breath hitched when I saw his handsome face in the reflection. Standing behind me.

“Jericho?” I whispered, but I turned to find no one there again.

Shame rippled through me, and I placed my hands on my stomach, eyes burning with holding back the tears. What had I almost done? Should the baby live inside me, it’d be the only thing left of him. Sickness coiled in my stomach, and I stepped back from the edge.

Clutched in my hand was the coin Barchiel had given to me, and when I opened my palm, it only brought thoughts of Jericho rolling it over his knuckles. The wily grin on his face when he’d held it up in taunting. I wanted to keep it forever, but it was time.

Time to return.