NIKO’S WRISTS AND ANKLES BLED A RIVER. His back bowed from the effort to escape. He ignored the pain, his mind obsessed with finding a way out of his misery. He could no longer watch Arianne kill herself over and over again. He always knew his master possessed an unrivaled cruelty, but he’d never expected to be at the receiving end of it. There was a huge difference between watching a storm unfold somewhere else and actually being within the gale force winds.
Closing his eyes had been useless. Of course Death prevented him from blocking the images with his eyelids. It wouldn’t be that easy. He couldn’t tell when he’d started sobbing uncontrollably.
Death continued to observe, saying nothing. Showing no emotions on his magnificent face—the Devil disguised as Aphrodite.
“Make it stop,” Niko begged, his breaking point upon him like gray, pregnant clouds ushering in rainfall. At the back of his mind, he’d been ashamed of his weakness. But witnessing Arianne hurting herself while wearing a smile that melted his heart had overpowered his shame.
“Are you willing to resume your duties then?” Death asked. “Enforce the Certificate on Arianne Wilson? I would hate to have to replace you.”
“No.” He bared his teeth.
“Then let the lesson continue.”
“Master…”
“The journey has just begun for you, Nikolas. We’ve only seen a few hundred ways a life could end. I have many more in store.” Death touched the center of his chest. “And surely, you wouldn’t want me to enforce the Certificate for you, right?”
Niko groaned; he couldn’t help it. His strength had shriveled the first hundred times Arianne had taken her last breath on screen. Reminding himself it wasn’t real didn’t work. In fact, it seemed to make the idea of watching her demise worse. Loving her had changed him. Other Reapers, and certainly his master, saw his feelings as a hindrance. But compared to the lives he’d lived, meeting Arianne had given him an actual appreciation for his existence. She’d made him eager to wake in the mornings. She’d made him laugh without trying hard at it. And most of all, she’d shown him what it meant to love someone.
Niko released the tension on his restraints and allowed gravity to take his weight. “Master,” he whispered, “have you ever loved someone?”
The image on the screen froze—Arianne twisting the cap off a bottle of bleach.
“What did you say?” Death approached him cautiously.
“You heard me.”
The ever present silence reigned supreme for what seemed like several lifetimes between master and servant. Niko stared Death straight in the face, pushing away the captivation his beauty brought with it.
“Do you honestly think I have the time for such frivolities as love?” Death said the word like a curse.
The sides of Niko’s mouth moved up of their own volition.
“What are you smiling at?”
“I pity you, Master.” Niko laughed. “To not know what it means to have someone so important in your life that you would defy the fates for her saddens me. Before Arianne, I just was. Performing my duties without any thought to what I did. I even allowed myself to fade away.” He stared at her face on the screen. It wasn’t really his Arianne, but he drew strength from the uncanny similarity. “I wouldn’t have known someone like her existed, if not for the events that brought us together. She saved me, Master. She became every breath, every heartbeat, every waking moment. If that makes me less of a Reaper, then you’d do better to just kill me. I’m of no use to you anymore.”