Death Shall Bow by Gemma Ashborne

Author:Gemma Ashborne [Ashborne, Gemma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gemma Ashborne
Published: 2024-01-11T00:00:00+00:00

I collapsed on the castle’s front stairs, the connection between Fate and me severed like a chopped limb. Her tight hold on my heart remained, but her light no longer soothed me. Instead, wrath rose. Crumpling into a ball, the pressure overtook me, twisted my stomach into knots as my head pounded from the rising sobs. A scream tore through me, so raw and anguished it sent the birds in the nearest tree into flight.

My love: gone. Cooper: gone.

How the hell was I supposed to go on? Leaving Cooper in a box to rot. Never seeing my lover’s sweet smile again. Why hadn’t I known about the laws set in place by the original Fate and Death? There’d been no warning. Anywhere. Nothing in my studies of Anathema led me to believe I’d have to break my own damn heart and offer it to the old gods as a sacrifice. Why hadn’t I known?

Cadagon.

He’d been forced into a sacrifice in his own time to ascend the throne, and yet he had left me unknowing. From the very beginning, he had known! Still, he’d brought Cooper here, sealed him away in that coffin, tried to sever my connection with Fate in an attempt to steal my last moments with her. Monster! He lacked compassion. Empathy. Nothing but a shriveled black heart lived in Death’s chest, and everything in me wanted to rip it from his body, slide it onto a stake, and post it in the castle courtyard for all to see.

The motherfucker.

I rose to my feet, shadows thrashing about me, urging me forward. Feeding the fire burning inside. If he were capable of these things—treachery against his own flesh and blood—his wickedness knew no bounds. The shapeshifter massacre: him. My fists clenched at my sides. Odin and Malachi: also Cadagon. How else had Odin gained access to me that night? And the guards stationed below my stairwell were conveniently MIA at the precise moment I had needed them. Wind whipped around me in a frenzy as I stood. He would answer for his crimes. Every last one.

Gliding up the stairs and into my castle, I wound through the halls; a terribly delicious power settled on my tongue, sharp as whiskey. Servants dove away at the sight of me. Doors shut of their own will at my passing. A darkness encompassed me, and where I walked, it followed.

The voices started low and muddled at first, but as I stalked within those walls, they grew louder. Death’s castle: it spoke to me with certainty. Before, the halls had merely whispered their reports, but now they answered my questions with sharp precision. The castle’s invisible eyes prodded me.

“Death?” A voice trilled in my ear.

“No, that is not him…” said another from the opposite direction.

“Yes, it is Death. Though, she is a lady somehow?” a third called from a step behind.

Why the sudden change, I had neither an idea nor care in that moment. My mission was clear. Each corridor sounded a report, voicing the names of those you could find concealed within its walls.

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