Can't Fight Fate

Foreword

Dear Readers,

Thank you for those who have decided to continue this journey with me. Thank you for those who are just joining. I will warn you, I wasn't kind to my readers in this story; I was true to my characters and myself. If you don't understand a scene or why that character is there, I hope you go back and read the first book. Or at least hard skim. I picked up right where I left off, and continued the story.

This book isn't my book. I might have written the story, but that's about it. Nina and Grim's plight aren't my doing, and the minute I realized that, the faster I wrote. I want you to know a lot of these scenes were extremely hard for me to write. A piece of my soul is in this manuscript-- only because it was taken from me.

I hope you can understand and respect the characters and their journey. Whether you like it or not is entirely up to you, but I've told their tale. My job is done.

Sincerely,

Rosi

Author's Note

In my story, reapers were created around 400,000 BCE. They started mating with humans around 300,000 BCE, and stopped mating with humans around 600 BCE. Around 1,000 BCE, Yin and Yang made more reapers and introduced them to the Underworld.

Every name I use for a reaper (save one) are names of Death in different cultures around the world. That is the only thing I took from the cultures. I ignored when the cultures came into being, traits specific to each god, and when the names gained in popularity.

Currently (in the era Nina and Grim live in) there are around 10,000 reapers living.

CHAPTER ONE

"Nine weeks," a guard whispered, breaking through the veil of sleep shrouding Grim. "Pay up."

The Bloodspurn King roused, exhausted, pained. He didn't know the time, the day. It blurred from one second to the next, stone walls and blood-spattered floors.

"You won't win next time."

Grim listened closely. Trying to understand the sounds coming out of the guards' mouths. Comprehension dawned, and he gritted his teeth. Assholes. Taking bets on my life.

The young king had strived to adopt his human wife's mannerisms and speech, recalling every colloquialism Nina ever uttered. If she couldn't be near him, he'd hold anything he could of her, twentieth-century culture included.

Grim rolled his head. It felt heavy, the size of a boulder and the weight of one, too. He blinked his eyes open, pupils contracting as he looked around. It was dark, not that that was a surprise. Sunlight didn't pierce his cavern, only candlelight that illuminated whatever the one holding it wanted shown. He was glad there was no natural light for he didn't want to see what the darker corners of the cavern held.

Outside in the hall of his open, circular hell stood two guards. Castoff born by their use of Chinese, and the slight accent he detected. Language had always fascinated him, and Grim was thankful that he'd studied the human ones extensively. He knew Chinese, ancient and modern, almost as well as his own tongue.

"What's your bet?" one demanded.

"Two weeks? Yours?"

"Nine days."

For what? Grim wondered. For me to break? For Felicia to kill me?

If he was a betting man, he'd stake it on never. He was broken already, and the Castoff Princess didn't intend to kill him, even though he wished she would. There was something else she was after. Grim had discovered that early into his sentence. His parents were dead, his brother's status unknown, and she kept him alive for a reason. She'd taunted him with the ruins of his birth mother's portrait, and the melted remains of a crown and family treasures that were older than Felicia by several millennia.

She taunted him; a person didn't taunt a dead man for longer than hours. Even the torture sessions had run stale. Felicia had thrown the gauntlet long ago, and Grim had picked it up, grasped it, waiting for the time to throw back or break it. He wanted something of hers, a power play to use against the Castoff bitch.

Except no one came to him. Even if someone did come down, in his current state he was slightly stronger than a human. After Felicia's sessions ended, Grim was usually only as strong as a human infant. It was the time when the guards or maids came in and force fed him. The food and drink was to keep him aware enough for the pain Felicia inflicted, almost always physiological-- she enjoyed reminding him of his parent's death and who held the power. His chains were too solid, the poisonous drug in his blood too thick and his will was heavily fractured, making it near to impossible to seek vengeance against Felicia. Fighting to live was better.

Grim felt nothing so little besides the need to survive. Ice and heat and pain and hunger and tiredness. All his emotions could be spoken on a single breath. His own.

Breathing had since become a norm. Novel in the first few puffs, now he felt like the human Felicia mocked him for. For the first time, Grim revered the creatures. They might not be as strong as him, but neither were they weak. He'd been stripped down to his mother's blood, her family of breathing, bleeding, dying people. And he lived. Forced himself to open his eyes day in and day out. Hold strong.

Though Grim couldn't understand why he bothered. Tenacity had never been his strong suit, and et mors, true death, had never fazed him. Death was death. There was no escaping something that was at the beginning of everything. Creation, destruction--sides of a coin.

Now he clung, fingers bloody, nails jagged, to this life he had. He would not die, would not welcome that fiery embrace. Not until everything had been stripped from him. She had yet to do that.

Grim hung his head, knowing it wouldn't be much longer.

The thought of his wife entered his head. Memories washing the ever present pain aside. It was as if he stood on a beach at the edge of receding water, wondering when it would touch him. It was that instant--the unexpected feeling of the icy cold water washing over him--when it touched that caught him off guard and let him relax enough to slip away.

Nina was beneath him, and he was deep inside of her. She was molten around him, silky thighs stroking his flanks, naked fingers playing against his collarbone.

Chestnut eyes looked up at him and he pulled back, rocked into her, taking his wife with a leisure that he knew she loved.

"Tell me again," Grim whispered, moving his arms from the red velvet counterpane to the curls sliding against the silk pillowcases. He twisted one around his finger and tugged gently, watching it bounce back into place. Even her hair was defiant.

"I love you." She clamped hot as fucking fire around his dick. There it was; her heart beating between her legs. It thrummed through him. Grim used his power to thump his own heart, beat in rhythm to hers. A sensation that was uncomfortable, but one Nina loved anyway, and what she loved was always good for him.

Her fingers moved from his collar to his chest, covering his heart. Tears shimmered in her eyes as she pressed her hand to him. A shiver wracked her form and she tightened around him. His balls drew tight, slapping against the soft curve of her ass. The friction nearly undid him.

Grim dropped his head and shot his arm out, clamping tight around the headboard behind her. Slickness pulling, Nina arched her back, pebbled nipple dragging against his chest.

"Never. Leave. Me," he groaned, wood splintering in his hand, cutting deep, before his reaper power stemmed the bleeding. Blinding pain robbed the memory, water receded. Grim fought, stepped from the beach, dove head first, and reclaimed his wife and his home and his sense of self between browned-sugar thighs.

She laughed, breathless. "Never--ehn, n-never is a long time."

"Eternity," he agreed, picking up the pace. He was back and whole and supremely male. God it felt good.

"I promise tonight."

He groaned when she moved beneath him, legs sliding up, ankles locking in the small of his back. "Not enough."

"Never will be."

"Never's a long time," Grim forced out through a barring of teeth he couldn't shape into a smile.

She was too tight. Human women weren't supposed to be this tight. Couldn't be this tight or human men would walk around with permanently stiff members--she clenched harder, drew deeper--or none at all.

"I'm a bad person," she said suddenly, turning her head and drawing her tongue across the pulse thundering in his wrist. His heart was still beating, power still working the muscle unconsciously.

Grim dropped his head lower, sucked her lips and tongue. Confection. Sugar sweetness he couldn't get enough of. A part of him worried about the lack of contraception, but this was the last time. One last moment inside her without a barrier. She was his wife. She would be with him until she grew old and withered away. When that happened he'd go with her. Hold her lifeless body and let the flames engulf them both. Paradise.

"You don't know what a bad person is, Amica."

She had no clue. Bad was taking a kingdom, slaughtering a population, torturing--

Grim shook the thoughts away as the memory started to fuzz. No. He clung to his wife, plunged deeper into her body as if he could escape his reality. She felt so real, wonderful and hot. So. Fucking. Hot.

Hot

Grim screamed, receding instantly. Cobbled stone and candlelight flooded his vision, and he blinked hard. Not candlelight, but torch light.

"Welcome back," Felicia purred, pulling the torch away from his thigh.

The burning pain stopped, and Grim mentally cursed. That had been a nice memory. Too real, though. Pain edged him again, fogged his mind. He pushed it down and focused all he was on Felicia. That was what she wanted, and he'd stopped fighting it.

"Ah, Felicia," Grim drawled. "What a pleasant surprise. What brings you down to my hell hole today?"

"It is that attitude that keeps you here, Grim." She passed the torch to a waiting guard, and the gloves she wore up. "You make this place hell. You could choose to see it another way."

"Hard to do when you burn me and mutilate me."

"I would not have to do it if you cooperated."

He flinched against the bonds. "I'm not sure what more I can do. Chained and all."

She shook her head. "You know I used to envy you, Grim. Truth be told, I have wanted to kill you for some time. You had everything I wanted, but deserved none of it. And then I saw you."

When she didn't continue he prompted, "And?"

"I wondered what it would be like," she said softly. "To be myself... with you."

He didn't respond to that. She loved mind games, was the queen of it. She neither loved nor hated, but was instead apathetic to the world with a focused concentration on controlling it.

She looked like a child, but her lilting voice had faded as the weeks wore on. Subtle changes in the way she moved, the way she spoke, the way she looked at him, became evident. Holding a whip, she didn't look like she enjoyed it. It was if she was forcing herself to do it, to see whatever thing in him that would make her stop.

Then there were other times when she looked gleeful. Her eyes lit up as she tore him apart with words sharper than knife. Their conversations had taken on a pattern: one in which she revealed herself in a small way, alluded to her motivation, and then asked him what he thought of her. As if his opinion mattered--as if she gave a flying fuck about him.

It was all still a game to her. Grim had long suspected it was chess, but instead of simply knocking over a piece, she crushed it. Had she needed to destroy his home? No. Kill his family? Exile would have been better. Keep him here for weeks? It should have been a day at most, followed by a gruesome death.

Felicia defied his expectations of a "bad person," because she sought out meaningful conversations with him. Not all the time, but enough that he was starting to see her as less of a title or figure or monster, and more of an individual.

That scared the shit out of Grim.

She was his jailer--would be his executioner. Attachment didn't grow from those places.

He started to retreat into himself again. The look she was casting him didn't promise conversation, and he was still healing from her earlier ministrations. Though, it felt good to feel. The pain was unwelcome, but it meant that some of his power was back. The numbness he'd suffered the first few times, the out-of-body experience had been very unpleasant. The word didn't begin to sum up those first few weeks, but any other words would fail even more abysmally to encompass the experience.

Control was an area Grim prided himself in. With Nina, he'd allowed the area to go lax, retreated because she was amazing and beautiful. He hadn't wanted anything to ruin those moments with her. Constantly obsessing over the state of his kingdom, stressing over his narcotic council members, dealing with his father's increasing madness, the list went on into eternity. But as a reaper, he had eternity to deal with it.

That wasn't entirely true, but being the son of a human and reaper had gifted Grim with certain advantages. Ones he was loath to admit. That constant power-hungry cavern in his being that grated on his nerves wasn't as powerful as his brother's or even father's. The humanity offset it.

Reapers could live forever if they held onto the tautly drawn tether that kept them in the world. But if it began to tear, the madness set in. And when it finally snapped--

Grim shuddered. There was a time honored tradition that reapers would either seek the Puluto Desert or the Picullus Sea. While fire was the quickest death, it was also the most absolute. Choosing to go into the sea or desert was an honorable way to leave before harm was done and it also allowed for family to hold out hope that the reaper would come back.

It was how Grim thought he would leave. Floating out on a sea of nothingness, starving, going mad. It would be wonderful and awful all at once, but that was the reaper experience. Duality was their skin.

"... Grim... Grim!"

Felicia's voice jerked him back. A conditioned response.

"What?" he snapped, knowing it would upset her, but not giving a damn.

Her face transformed, eyes feverishly bright. "And you question why you are here," she hissed. "Know. Your. Place."

Grim tilted his head back and took in Felicia for everything she was. Castoff Princess in a black button-down shirt covered in frills, a flowered skirt that came just above her thighs, and black shimmery nylons with thick black heels. Blood lips, apple cheeks, that lawless makeup a doll would envy. Perfection in the overall presentation, but the Devil was in the details.

"Know your limits," Grim countered. "How long do you think you can keep this up? Soon you won't be able to lift a finger, let alone a knife. And that mouth you prize so much will collapse, fall. You'll be mute, deaf, blind."

Her eyes narrowed, and her right shoulder twitched. "Not for long."

"Long enough for me to kill you. Take your kingdom. Kill your family." He wouldn't do it, not if they weren't involved. And Grim had yet to see her family. He could only assume they weren't involved, that above stairs they thought he was dead and everything thereafter was to save face, protect their people, and deal with the fallout from her actions. Grim assumed that's why she was with him so much, because her family didn't want her or trust her.

A smile stretched across her face, pulling the skin tight, betraying the tic she had in her jaw. Felicia dropped the smile, smoothed out her face, and ran a hand down the front of her dress. When she spoke, her voice was that of a nine-year-old girl, "I think we will use the axe today. I am in a huntress mood."

Grim snapped his eyes closed at the same moment she snapped her fingers. The beach was in her mind's eyes as the shuffling of a guard's feet let him know the axe was in Felicia's hands. The waves were too far back, had receded miles away.

He started running to the water. Dive in and escape. He'd perfected the technique, but Felicia had perfected knowing beforehand when he was going to try it.

The water was close; he could feel the cold, taste the salt on his tongue.

Her heels clicked against the stone, exactly seven steps from him. If the axe was long, she wouldn't have to get too close. Grim re-evaluated as he stared counting. Five steps to me. She used one, four now.

The water was a leap, skip, and a jump away. Why weren't his feet running fast enough? Why wasn't the water coming toward him? It just seemed to keep receding.

Click. Another step.

Grim shook his head like a dog in the rain. It didn't work to get the water off the animal, and it didn't work for him.

I can make it. I can--

The axe came down on the third step. He'd miscounted. Maybe she'd used her reaper speed to get closer to him. Whatever the case, his eyes were open, pain was pulsing through his body, and the beach was far away.

CHAPTER TWO

Sticky, thick time-goo--or whatever it was--clung to Nina as she was hurtled through the portal from Yin and Yang's flower field to the Underworld. Much like the first time she'd traveled through the portal alone, there was a bright light followed by a stygian darkness as if she'd just watched a star go supernova in half a heartbeat.

Unlike the first time, the light wasn't blinding and the darkness wasn't all-consuming. If Nina hadn't known better, she would have thought the portal welcomed her, caressed her, and wrapped her in a friendly hug.

Nina forced her way out of the portal, feet trying to gain purchase on the uneven, slick stone floor. It took another moment for her to orient herself. After a second, her legs stopped shaking, and the floor felt steady and strong beneath her feet.

Lifting her head up, Nina looked around the portal room and--

"No," her voice was barely a whisper, her eyes so wide they hurt. Neck craning this way and that, Nina tried to understand what she was seeing.

The portal was broken, shattered into goo-covered glass and a wooden frame. Stones were scattered around the small room, and half of one side was completely demolished. Light poured through the open roof and candle wax was splashed over the stone walls and floor, mimicking blood in its display.

The portal room had been demolished--attacked.

She wondered briefly how she had been able to travel through the portal if it was broken, but before she could analyze it any further her thoughts changed again, focusing on the only person that mattered: Grim.

Forcing her legs to move, Nina ignored the stiffness and the ache behind her temples. If she found Grim, she found answers. It was the foremost thought in her mind as she clung to the wall and stepped carefully.

Slipping on a piece of shattered glass, Nina reached out to steady herself and felt nothing. No one accepted her hand. It was at that moment, falling to her knees amid broken glass and sharp debris, that she felt completely alone.

Pain from the glass cutting her legs and knees didn't register. There was a feeling of such confounded loneliness eating away at her that Nina paused. She tried to breathe past the feeling, knowing it was irrational, but fear and panic forced images of a broken castle with broken bodies inside of her mind.

Get it the fuck together, she growled at her body, the sentiment reinforced by her conscious self. For once they weren't fighting each other. This wasn't the time.

In comparison, ending up in a destroyed castle didn't chart on the top ten worst things of the last three months. Well, three human days.