The Bride of Endless Deaths novel Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Julian Blake stood in the crowd, his presence like ice, his gaze fixed on me without a word. Only when he truly registered my face did life return to him-his entire body began to tremble uncontrollably.

“Evelyn… it’s really you. I’m actually seeing you…” His voice cracked with raw emotion.

Noticing the curious stares from passersby, I steered Julian into a nearby coffee shop. Graham Sterling lingered outside, giving us space. Julian’s excitement was impossible to contain.

“Evelyn, my Arcane Pact told me you didn’t want me coming back to the real world-that you refused to let me find you. I didn’t believe it.” His eyes shone with desperate hope. “I knew you’d forgive me. You have to.”

He looked at me as though a single wrong word would shatter him. Once upon a time, that gaze would’ve melted me. I’d have agreed to anything he asked. But now? All I felt was the urge to laugh.

And so I did.

“What’s so funny, Evelyn?” he asked, confusion lacing his voice.

I met his eyes calmly. “I’m laughing at you, Julian-at how certain you are that I’d forgive you.

His eyes went wide, tears immediately welling. His voice quivered as if I’d struck him. “What do you mean? You still won’t forgive me?”

“I avenged you, Evelyn,” he blurted, desperate. “I didn’t just destroy the Ashen Order-I made Sierra Prescott suffer every ounce of pain you endured. And me? I’ve been living in torment, night after night,

without you. I can’t even sleep anymore…”

The bloodshot veins in his eyes and the shadows beneath them proved he wasn’t lying.

But so what?

Did that erase the hundred deaths you put me through?

“Julian, you keep saying you avenged me.” My voice cut sharp as glass. “But who was the one who hurt me?

You were the one who carved out my heart to save Sierra, leaving me to die on that operating table.”

“No, it wasn’t like that!” Julian clamped his hands over his ears as if he could block out the truth.

“Evelyn, I-I didn’t think you’d actually die.” His voice broke. “I mean…”

I finished for him. “You mean because I hadn’t died the previous ninety-nine times, right? Because I could come back, it was fine for me to die over and over at your hands.”

My words were deliberate, merciless. “Back then, Julian, I lived in constant fear, never knowing when the next death would come.”

Chapter 9

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But I’d loved him too much. And when love was there, what was death? Just a fleeting pain.

It wasn’t until later that I realized-the one who gave me both love and death was the same man.

If I hadn’t been a Contractor, if I didn’t have the ability to return to the real world, would I have been doomed to suffer Julian’s torment forever?

Julian slumped in his chair, tears streaming down his face. “Evelyn, please, let me explain. I only felt guilty about Sierra. The Arcane Pact originally tasked me with winning her over, but I fell in love with you instead.

“Sierra was a living person, too. I couldn’t just watch her die.”

“So

you

watched me die instead!” I slammed my palm against the table, cutting him off. “Enough with the

act, Julian.”

“You still won’t admit it, will you? You fell for Sierra.”

“There were a thousand ways to save her-an artificial heart, earning enough Pact’s Power to have your Arcane Pact make her whole again.”

“But no-you chose to kill me, to reset time again and again, watching me die while you ran back to Sierra for your little reunions.”

While I drowned in the terror of death, he was planning his next meeting with Sierra-showing up with candy, flowers, even ice cream dates, as if I hadn’t just died for him.