The Keeper of Night by Kylie Lee Baker

Author:Kylie Lee Baker
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2021-07-12T19:17:53+00:00

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Yuki Onna’s eyes locked on to me the second I left the cave, a head of black hair on her canvas-white landscape. I stood only a few paces from the cave, close enough that Neven could touch my hand when the time came. The match and matchbox trembled in my hands as she came closer, the scent of gasoline on my clothes burning my eyes.

Fear wanted to wrench open my rib cage like a book, but I held my breath and focused my gaze and shoved it back down. I would do this for Izanami. I would do this for Neven. I would do this because this was what Shinigami did, and I was a Shinigami.

So instead of remembering the sensation of my teeth turning to knives of ice and my organs shattering with cold, I thought about time.

Even without a clock, a Reaper knew how to use time as an instrument and weapon. Reapers had reaction times faster than lightning, and though I’d never excelled in that area, I knew how to time my actions correctly when I focused. I knew that if I struck the match a moment too early, Yuki Onna would run away and I’d have to cross the distance, narrowing the window of time I had to burn her before Neven had to drop his clock. But if I waited a breath too long, she’d fill my lungs up with ice and all of us would die. I visualized the ideal scene in my head as I’d been trained to do, the exact distance between us that would land her right in front of me just as the match ignited.

She crossed the invisible threshold, her frosted white eyes unblinking and blue-tipped fingers stretched toward me. I held my hands steady as I pinched the match between my fingers and poured light energy through my fingertips, igniting it.

The wind tore the match from my hand.

It spun off somewhere into the snow, the flame easily snuffed out in the turbulent winds. The ice beneath my feet felt paper-thin, the world prepared to shatter and swallow me whole.

Now the timing was ruined.

I should have lit the match sooner to account for this possibility, should have told Neven to stop time right before she touched me and not rely on me for a cue. Would he stop it anyway when she got too close, or would he foolishly trust that I was in control? Probably the latter. But by the time she touched me and he realized I was in trouble, it would be too late.

She was already too close. Her white hand reached for my face and my fingers felt too numb and even now I was hesitating, wasting the precious nanoseconds I had left, not fast enough to be a Reaper and not smart enough to be a Shinigami. Was there even time to open the matchbox and light another match? My fingers were shaking so hard I’d probably drop it. I was going to die and it was entirely my fault.

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