Soul of the Crow: An Epic Dark Fantasy (Reapers of Veltuur Book 1), стр. 33
Scowling, I pop my hand onto my hip. “That’s not how any of it works.”
“You don’t know that!”
Instead of meeting hysterics with hysterics, I stare at him, dawning my best are-you-serious expression.
“Oh,” he says, shrinking. “I guess you kind of do know something about being turned into a Reaper.”
“You think?” I say, flashing him a sardonic smile. When he doesn’t reply, I think the conversation has ended, but when his watchful eyes fixate on me, I realize he’s waiting for something more…for me to relive his worries, I guess. I’m not sure how to do that, exactly, but I’ve always found comfort in truths so I just tell him what I know. “The Council can’t just decide who to kill. We rely on requests from mortals to determine who we claim for Veltuur and when. The rest of the deaths are a matter of fate: every living creature has a lifeline with a beginning and an end. When Veltuur senses the natural end of a lifeline, we act. I don’t think the Council can just decide to kill the Guardians—” Except, I honestly suspect that somehow the normal rules of life and death might not apply to them in this case, though I don’t know why— “As for you becoming a Reaper,” I say, stifling a laugh. The thought of someone like him being a Reaper, without a dark or graceful bone in his body, is perhaps the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever imagined. “Mortals request the deaths of their friends, their mothers, their children all the time, and they remain in the realm of the living even after a Reaper has completed the task. The only way you could ever become a Reaper is if you actively, physically ended a life.
“And finally, for the record, it’s not like how you describe it. You call it murder, and you act like it’s so shameful to be a Reaper, but our role is important in maintaining the balance. Without Reapers, the realm of the living would be overrun with noxious untethered souls, your resources would deplete, and life would be meaningless. We aid people—and animals, and insects—in completing their journey. They die, Veltuur feeds, and then it breathes life back into Tayaraan. It’s circular and necessary.”
“It’s necessary for you to kill children? Gem’s barely even lived more than three years of her life. You cannot convince me that it’s her time to go.”
“Yeah, well, take it up with your father. He’s the one that sent the request, not me. You can’t blame me or the other Reapers for doing our jobs, but then not blame the mortals who made the request.”
The prince opens his mouth to speak, but then blows through his lips instead. “You’re right. My father is just as much a murderer; he’s the one who wants Gem killed… I just wish… I don’t understand why you do it. Sure, okay, it’s a balance and the world would overflow with dead souls—although, I’m not actually sure that’s true, but whatever—but why not just take a different life then? Gem’s just a kid…and I’m sure you get sent to kill—take other kids too. Why do you have to follow the orders?”
My eyes snap wide. “Why do I obey Veltuur?”
He nods, clearly not understanding the way the underrealm works like I do. How could he? He doesn’t know the terrors that await rogue Reapers, hasn’t heard the horrific stories told from one Reaper to another about the few that decide to disobey the orders of Veltuur…
But he has heard the stories of the Reapers. To him, those are the cautionary tales that keep him in line.
“I’ll make it simple for you to understand. You govern your actions out of fear of becoming a Reaper. Well, Reapers have things that they fear as well.”
“They do?” he asks, utterly staggered. When all I do is shrug, he prods further. “Like what?”
“The Wraiths.” I’m not meeting his eyes when I say it. Instead, I’m watching the shadows of the forest flicker, like uttering their name is a summons.
“What’s a Wraith?”
They writhe again, and this time I think Acari sees it too, how the shadows of the tree branches along the forest floor almost look like spindly limbs climbing up from the earth, how the shadows tucked deep inside bushes almost seem to blink.
“Something terrible,” I say, a chill prickling my spine.
Acari runs his fingers through his midnight locks, brushing the length of the hair back and revealing the shaved sides of his head. It also gives me a clearer view of his runes, the color of mint practically glowing from his tanned complexion. It strikes me odd that he has a full set of the common runes. A person of his age—my age, I’d guess—usually has to experience immense pain or struggle to earn the final markings, a line above either eyebrow. Although I’ve seen children as young as four with those runes, it seems unlikely that a prince, someone born and raised in prosperity and without a care in the world, would know anything about suffering.
Desperate to veer the conversation away from the shadows watching us, I bob my chin at him.
“How did you earn your final common runes?”
He startles, seeming more disturbed by the question than he was of the Wraiths.
“My mother and brother,” he finally says, his features darkening more than they already are. It’s like a shadow just cast itself over him. “They died recently. I guess it was one of the natural deaths you were talking about, or at least, not a death where someone sent a Reaper. They just came across some aacsi and died. Just like that. An accident. Wrong place, wrong time.”
The aacsi—and all of the creatures