Only then did Blythe reclaim herself, the fog dissipating from her mind. She was sweating profusely and grabbed a handkerchief from the table. Slowly, carefully, she allowed herself to glance up to see that the fox kit they’d rescued earlier that week had jumped onto the chair beside Aris, and that the man’s hand had stilled upon it. He didn’t seem to be breathing.
She must have been feverish. That was the only way to explain the strange mistiness over her thoughts, or why she’d been foolish enough to let even a word slip, let alone the entire truth about Signa. Her hands clasped in her lap, a leg bouncing beneath her skirts as her mind worked to unravel what to do next. What to say.
“You’re certain you saw her do that?” Never had she heard Aris speak as quietly as he did then, nor seen his eyes so gentle.
“I was only joking,” she tried, hoping her voice sounded even half as amused as she tried to make it. “It was nothing as serious as that, it was just time for her to leave—”
His entire body had gone rigid, and Blythe realized with a rush of terror that he knew the truth. She tried to make herself smaller beneath the weight of a stare that frightened her to her core. Around Aris the golden haze flickered once more, gone one moment only to reappear when she blinked.
“You believe me.” Blythe whispered those words aloud several times before she could convince herself of that reality. “You believe me… because you’re like her, aren’t you?”
God, what a fool she’d been not to see it sooner. While Signa had been trailed by shadows and darkness, Aris radiated light. He wasn’t surprised because he’d expected this. Blythe would never have offered up all her truths to him on her own accord. He’d drawn the words from her. Forced her to speak them into existence.
“Touch me, and I will kill you.” It was a weak threat, given that she had not a single weapon on her, but Blythe poured as much belief into those words as she could. She’d take the pins from her hair and stab them into his throat if she had to. “What did you do to me?”
Aris started to lean even closer, only for Blythe to kick his knee, startling the fox awake. Aris hissed a breath, doubling over while Blythe leaped from her chair and circled behind it, plotting her next ten steps.
“Stay where you are.” She assessed their shared space for anything she could use against him. A poker from the hearth. The shard of a broken teacup she could smash against his skull. “What is Signa, and what are you? And you’d better explain to me why in the bloody hell you’re glowing.”
“You can see that?” Aris sounded surprised enough that Blythe tensed, wondering if he was plotting something. “It’s not a glow. They’re threads, Miss Hawthorne. Look closer.”
She didn’t want to take her eyes from his again, every part of her tensed and ready to spring should he try anything. But Aris, to his credit, kept remarkably still. It took at least a full minute before Blythe listened, turning her attention back to the glow and staring. Blinking. Staring again. Her vision swam if she looked at any one spot around him for long, yet she held her eyes open until they were dry, just barely able to see one of the threads, then two, before everything became hazy again.
“Three times you have knocked upon Death’s door.” The coolness of his whisper sent a long chill feathering down Blythe’s spine. “Three times you have defied your fate. It would seem that each of those three times was not without lasting effect.”
“I don’t care for riddles.” She decided that the moment he looked away, she would snag the poker. “Answer my question. Who are you?”
The way Aris watched her would have someone thinking he’d never seen a woman before. He scrutinized her face. Her hair. The way she shielded herself behind the chair, creating a barrier between them. It was as if he were seeing her for the first time.
“I am not a who so much as I am a what,” he admitted, and already Blythe was cringing, unable to believe she’d allowed this man’s lips to ever touch hers. “If I had to guess, it seems that after you died all those times, you earned the ability to catch glimpses behind the veil.”
“More riddles.” She no longer bothered to wait for him to turn away and made a grab for the poker. She held it into the flames, heating the metal without ever breaking eye contact. “What veil? And what are you, then?”
There was a grandness in the way he watched her, like a lord assessing his people. The look crawled over her skin, and in that moment Aris felt so much larger and more severe.
“The veil is what separates the world of the living from everything beyond.”
His clipped response was not what Blythe had been expecting. Her stomach clenched, mind working to find words. “What do you mean by beyond? Do you mean to tell me that I’m seeing the dead?”
“Not at all. I mean that you’re seeing things that living people cannot.” Blythe had every urge to kick him again for his nonsense, though this time she managed to refrain. “If you could see the dead, you’d already know. Your cousin is followed by shadows because she is a reaper. When she wills it, her touch is lethal.”
Blythe had already known this much from seeing Signa’s power in action. It was the fact that Aris was the one answering that sent Blythe’s heart spiraling, quickening her breath and making panic rise in her throat.
“Sometimes I see more than shadows beside Signa. I used to see her speak to them, and thought I was ridiculous and imagining things. But there’s someone else, isn’t there? Someone I can’t see.”
Aris’s jaw tightened as the fox shifted out of his lap and moved instead to nestle beside him. “There is. But are you certain you want to know who it is?”
She had her suspicions, and though she wasn’t certain that she wanted to hear the words aloud, Blythe forced herself to nod all the same.
“It’s Death himself that you’ve seen,” Aris said, his jaw flexing when Blythe stopped breathing.
Signa had spoken to that figure so tenderly. So lovingly.
“They’re together, aren’t they?” So light-headed was she that Blythe had to brace herself. “Is he why she’s like this? Is he why she killed my brother?”
Aris stood so quickly that Blythe barely had time to brandish the poker, its white-hot tip a mere inch from his throat. He glared down at her, as still as marble.
“With Death, your cousin is a reaper. With him, she will take the very lives she was meant to create. But with me, she could be so much more. That’s why I’m trying to save her, Miss Hawthorne.” Aris held his hands up, placating Blythe when she drew back. “All we have to do is convince her of that truth.”
“Can you do the same things she can?” Her voice was tight, and it took a great amount of will not to have it squeak. “Is that why you want to marry her?”
“It’s the powers that gave life to the foal that I prefer. But no, I cannot do the same things she can. I can control fate. From the moment a person is born, I weave their fate onto a tapestry. I can alter them, too.”
Signa must have known the truth. It’s why she’d tried to keep Blythe from Wisteria and why she’d had such a severe reaction to Blythe being near Aris. Signa had known, and she’d never told her.
“So you are the one responsible for what happened to my father?” The question fractured in her throat, and Aris frowned at such a pathetic sound.
“That’s like asking if I’m responsible for every time the earth quakes or a person catches a cold. Perhaps to some degree I am, but I didn’t force this to happen, and I’ve no vendetta against you or your family. I do not meddle in the affairs of humans when I can avoid it.”
“But you know what will happen to him. Don’t you?” Never had she looked at someone so closely, as if trying to read his very soul for confirmation of her suspicions. Though he gave no answer, the pity in his eyes told her enough.
Blythe let the poker drop to the floor. She wound her arms around her stomach, fighting to hold herself in while the truth shattered around her.