Death is My Frenemy Rewritten (Book 3 of the Rewritten Death Chronicles)

Chapter 31: The Revelation

*INSERT DIMBFF EMOJIS*
 IT IS TIME.

OHOHOHOHOHO OHHHH YESSSS. NOW THIS. THIS CHAPTER IS WHAT I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR.

I EXPECT LOTS OF WICKED COMMENTARY FROM MY CUPCAKES FOR ME TO READ. *EVIL PURPLE EMOJI WITH HORNS FACE*

            Everything felt numb, like I was dissociating and separated from my body.

Whatever was left of my broken heart wept at the sight before me. When he turned his head toward me, time slowed to a crawl, those haunting, drained eyes like two lifeless black buttons against the vacant, pale, sunken features of a corpse.

His hair was a pale, limp blonde, still shaved shorter at the sides of his skull in the style I remembered. Caked in places with a dark oily substance and mirrored liquid. A jagged cut sliced through his sharp cheek, the ridges of the wound dark with black blood, telling a story that he'd been injured by one of those Forsaken and hadn't healed properly.

I didn't know what to believe. I didn't even know if he was real, or if I was hallucinating, or if I'd lost my damn mind. But I forced myself to move toward him to find out.

As I neared, the nearly unrecognizable version of Death rolled fully onto his side as though startled, his eyes widening with alertness and his posture tightening. The bones in his face were too prominent, the outlines of his skull too well-defined, too sharp, the fleshy meat once in his cheeks hallowed out, malnourished. His body had leaned down to the point that I could see the slight indent of his shoulders, his joints, his ribs as he lifted himself up and pulled his legs into himself. Curled up, I realized, like a stray dog being cornered in an alleyway.

And I knew. All the horrors I'd witnessed in the Unknown had paled in comparison to what Death had been through.

I slowly lowered to my knees on the ground. Close enough to him for it to be dangerous. Close enough for him to kill me. But he just looked at me, and I looked at him. His head cocked, and he blinked for the first time since he'd laid eyes on me.

The question that beckoned to release from my mouth lingered between us.

Are you real?

Death pushed his hand against the bookshelf beside himself to lift onto his knees, though his eyes were still wary and neither of us made a move to touch one another. My heart was pounding. We stared at each other closely, the cold silence of the library between us. What if this was a sick, twisted hallucination? A nightmare made of smoke. What if he went away again?

He reached out his hand. The skin was so pale it was nearly white, and I could see the joints in his long, bony fingers. I forced myself to stay still, to trust in the madness that this was real. His sharp talon brushed against my cheek bone, and I could feel it retracting back into his finger as the pad of his thumb brushed my cheek. Slowly. Unsurely.

I watched his dark eyes glint with the tiniest sign of life against the black shadow of his iris, his marble-like features moving like water as they reflected my own emotions. Joy. Confusion. Sadness. Then...fear. It widened his gaze as he pressed his fingers more firmly against my cheek, and then pressed his lips fleetingly against mine.

"It's you..." Tears swept past his fingertips as he pulled back to look at me and moved his hand over my cheek to my neck, where my pulse rebounded off his palm. "It's really you, cupcake."

A sob almost escaped me. His deep voice sounded so drained, fatigued, like any emotion at all had been sucked out of it. But it was his. It was him. It had to be. All I could do was nod at first so that I didn't break down into tears. "It's me," I said. "It's really me..."