River of Shadows (Underworld Gods 1)

“Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?” I ask, because one sob story isn’t going to win me over.

That brings out another chuckle from him as he opens the wardrobe. “No. No one is supposed to feel sorry for Death, and especially not you. You should feel sorry for yourself, standing naked like that, all because I asked you to.”

I don’t know where this is going, so I decide to keep my mouth shut for now.

He carefully riffles through a drawer in the wardrobe and then brings out a white lacy thing. “Perhaps it was this that made me a better ruler for Tuonela. Because I was cruel at times, but I had empathy. Ruthless but not heartless.”

I can’t help but snort. Not heartless? Yeah, you keep telling yourself that, buddy.

He ignores me. “As you know I eventually got married. I was able to please my wife without touching her with my bare hands, I made it my mission.”

“I’m not sure I need to know all this,” I mutter.

“But you do,” he says quickly, grasping the white dress and coming over to me. “You do. I did all I could and then some, but she said it was the fact that I could never touch her with my bare hands that made her leave me and take up with another. Frankly, I knew that was a lie, and yet I remember the prophecy that the giant Vipunen told me when I was just a young man. That one day I would find someone, the one person able to withstand my touch, a person I would then love and marry, and that an alliance would form, an alliance that would cement my position in the kingdom forever. What alliance and with whom, I don’t know, and the one I am to marry? I don’t know that either.”

“How do you know it wasn’t your ex-wife?”

He lets out a sharp, sour laugh. “Louhi? No alliance came of our supposed love or our marriage. If anything our marriage was a strategy on behalf of her father, to further fragment this world when we finally broke apart. No, it wasn’t Louhi.”

I feel his gaze deepening, tension thickening.

“You think it’s me,” I say quietly.

“It could be,” he says. “I think there is only one way to find out.”

He places the dress in my hands and then unsnaps one of his gloves.

I suck in my breath as terror shoots through me.

“What are you doing?” I cry out softly.

He pulls his hand out of the glove and I stare at it in horror and fascination. It’s the large, lightly tanned hand of a big man. The only thing unhuman about it are the strange markings that keep pulsing with light, like someone has drawn lines all over his hand and wrist with a metallic gray sharpie, lines that keep glowing for a moment in different spots, as if lit from within. I caught a glimpse of the lines earlier in the desert, and even close up they don’t make much sense.

While I’m trying to figure it out, he reaches out to my breast with his bare hand, pausing just inches away, and my body floods with adrenaline, ready to flee.

“If I touched you, I would know,” he murmurs. “If I touched you and you didn’t die, I would know you were meant to be mine.”

I’m frozen, staring down at his hand, unable to move. “Is that why you’re keeping me?”

“One of many reasons,” he says, his fingers stretching for me, closer, closer now. I swear I feel the heat burning off them, like an electrical wire on the ground, and I wish my nipples weren’t getting hard at a time like this. “But then, if I did touch you, and you died, I’d lose you to Oblivion, which means I would lose you for good. There’s no coming back from that—you would never be in my kingdom. And I haven’t yet decided if I want to keep you or not, or what use you might be.”

Slowly he withdraws his hand and my nerves buzz with relief. “So, as you can see, I’m in a minor predicament. How do I know if you’re the one if I can’t touch you?”

I need to tell him what he needs to hear in order to keep me. If I don’t make a case for myself, at any point he could try the experiment and take off his glove and I would most likely be gone, to suffer for eternity. Because deep down, I know I’m part of no prophecy, no sick and twisted love story. I’m here because I have a loyal heart and a foolish mind, and a bit of rotten luck thrown in there.

Tell him what he needs to hear.

“Perhaps the prophecy takes time,” I say slowly, looking down at the clothing in my hands. “Maybe some other things have to happen first before you’re sure enough.” I glance up at him in a vaguely seductive way, trying to get him to pick up on my meaning without being too obvious about it.