“What you feel is what you called it—grief. I’m grieving for what we have lost.”

“What have we lost?”

“Time,” Halcyon said. “An afterlife of togetherness. You have such great mental strength, you would have existed for a long time in my realm.” After Monères died, those with enough psychic power transitioned to Hell and became demon dead, living there for as long as their mental energy sustained them. Some of them existed for hundreds of years, like Halcyon.

Something stirred in me, prickled my calm. “Have I lost my afterlife?”

Halcyon gazed at me sadly with eyes the color of dark chocolate. “You are Damanôen, demon living now. You cannot become demon dead afterward.”

I’d been shortchanged already. As a Mixed Blood, I would have probably only lived a hundred years, a human’s lifespan instead of the three hundred years of life most Monère enjoyed if they were not killed before then. Now on top of that I’d lost the promise of afterlife. It was a devastating blow.

I drew in a deep breath and thought, At least I’m still breathing. A lifetime had been gained and lost; I was just back where I first started. So you didn’t really lose anything, I told myself.

Sure.

The ache in my heart said differently.

“Well, at least I’ve got eighty more years of life,” I said.

Another swelling ache of pain from Halcyon.

It made my heart beat faster. “Don’t I? Halcyon, you said you weren’t going to kill me.” Now that hundreds of demon years had been chopped off of my existence, the remaining few human decades were even more precious.

He closed his eyes and somehow drew down a light veil so that I was no longer bathed in his emotions. So that my own started to rise up instead.

“Not now,” he said. Two very innocuous words apart. Strung together like that, they became very foreboding. Very portentous.

“What the hell do you mean? Not now. So you’re going to kill me later?” I felt that calmness, that resigned feeling of peace slipping rapidly away from me.