Chapter 2

Reva's POV

The shadow stepped through the curtains like they were made of smoke.

I wanted to scream, but my chest wouldn't let me. My heart had slowed to a heavy, dragging thud, each beat further from the last, and the air came out of me in thin little sips that never reached the bottom of my lungs.

The room was going dim at the edges, the way a candle dims when the wick is almost gone.

The shadow was now a man.

He was tall, taller than anyone I'd ever stood beside, and he wore a black coat that seemed richer and deeper than the darkness surrounding him. He moved without a sound, smooth and certain, like the floor itself was honored to hold him.

His face stole what little breath I had left.

It was a beauty that didn't belong in a hospital room, or maybe anywhere at all. High cheekbones, a sharp jaw softened by a straight nose and a mouth that looked gentle against all those hard lines. His skin was pale and clear, almost lit from the inside, the way snow glows faintly under a moonlight. Black hair fell loose around his face, dark as a sky with no stars, one strand curving down toward eyes that made my heart forget it was dying.

Those eyes. They were a pale, wintry blue, so light they seemed to hold silver in them, and when the last red light of the setting sun slipped through the window and touched his face, they turned molten silver.

When that gaze landed on me, I felt it like a touch, like fingers brushing the back of my neck. There was no fear in it, no pity, only a slow, ancient patience, the look of something that had watched many people fade and was in no hurry at all.

He was so beautiful it frightened me more than the dark had.

"You called," he said. His voice was low and smooth, almost amused. "So I came."

I tried to speak. Only a breath came out.

He tilted his head. "Go on. You're wondering what I am."

"Are you..." My voice was barely there. "Are you death? Have you come for me?"

Something flickered at the corner of his mouth. "Death is a servant. A doorman. He opens, closes and does as he's told." He stepped closer, and the cold came with him. "I'm not that."

"An angel, then." My eyes were so heavy now. "Am I dead already?"

He laughed softly, and the sound sent a shiver through me that had nothing to do with the cold.

"An angel." He said the word like it tasted funny. "No, little wolf. My rank sits far above theirs. I don't answer to the ones they answer to."

I didn't understand him, and I was too tired to try. My eyelids were starting to fall.

"Stay with me," he said, and there was a pull in his words, something that reached into my chest and held my slowing heart in place. "You asked for a second chance. I'm the only one who heard it, and I'm the only one who can give it to you."

My eyes cracked open again.

"I can give you ninety days," he said, crouching now beside the bed so his pale gaze was level with mine. "Full health. The sickness vanishes, out of your blood, out of your bones. You'll walk out of this room strong enough to do anything you please."

For the first time in months, something stirred in me that wasn't grief. It was small, but sharp and desperate. Very desperate.

"Nothing is free," I whispered. "What do you want."

"Clever girl." He smiled, and it was a lovely, terrible thing. "One payment. When the ninety days end, you come with me. No begging for more time. No changing the deal. You simply come."

"Come where?"

"Somewhere better than what the sickness leaves you." He said it lightly, the way you'd wave off a small question. "Think of it as a door to a new life. A better one."

Part of me knew there was more he wasn't saying. I could feel it in the back of my mind. But my heart was still slowing, the darkness still creeping in, and I was so far past the point of caring what waited behind his door.

Ninety days. Ninety days of health, to stand up and make all those who betrayed me pay.

"Yes," I breathed. "I accept."

The moment the word left my lips, his smile widened.

"Good," he said. Then, curious, almost playful, he asked, "So tell me. What does a dying girl want with a second chance? A last trip somewhere warm? A chance to say goodbye? To forgive the ones who hurt you?"

The old Reva might have wanted those things. Soft things. Gentle things.

But the old Reva died a moment ago. She died watching her family cry happy tears in an engagement hall. She died the moment she understood they'd all been waiting for her to hurry up and go.

I looked him dead in his eyes, and I felt my mouth curve into something I didn't recognize.

"My sister is getting engaged tonight," I said. "To the man who promised to marry me. My whole family is there, celebrating. They think I'm in this bed, dying quietly, so they never have to look at me again."

"And?"

"I want to walk in there on my own two feet. I want them to see me healthy, and beautiful, and alive. I want every single person who buried me while my heart was still beating to feel one small piece of what I felt tonight." My breath was thin, but my voice had found a strange new strength. "That's what I'm using this ninety days for. Revenge. Not goodbyes."

For a long moment, he simply looked at me. Then he threw back his head and laughed, and this time the laugh was full and delighted, like a child who'd found a new toy far better than he expected.

"Oh," he said, brushing something like a tear from the corner of his eye. "You are going to be fun."

He rose to his full height and held one pale hand out over my chest.

"Then let's not waste time," he said. "You have a party to attend."

His palm began to glow, soft and bright, over my chest. Warmth poured out of it and sank into me, spreading through my chest, down my arms, into every weak and broken corner of my body. My slow heart caught, wavered, then began to beat strong and full. Air rushed into my lungs, clean and deep, the first real breath I'd taken in three months.

The pain that had lived in my skull for so long, the dull ache I'd stopped even naming, simply lifted and was gone.

I gasped and sat up. My hands flew to my face, my head, my chest. My skin was warm. My head was clear. Somewhere deep inside me, my wolf, who had been curled small, silent and dying, lifted her head and opened her eyes.

I was alive. Truly, fully alive.

I looked up at him, this beautiful stranger who ranked above angels, and for the first time in a very long while, I smiled without a

single tear behind it.

"Now," he said, offering me his hand, "shall we go ruin their evening?”