Grismal stood before me in the foyer.

I didn't bother to change a thing about my unkempt appearance. My act of passive defiance went unnoticed.

Grismal waved his large, boulder-like hand toward a hallway behind the stairwell. This was new. I had never been down to the subterranean levels of the palace before. I wondered where it led, someplace with furnishing, perhaps? An outdoor courtyard? The throne room?

"Are you wasting my time?" Grismal remarked impatiently as I lagged behind. It was out of necessity as I braced myself against the wall and slowly stepped from each slippery stone to the next. The floor was covered in decaying moss. Slime oozed between my naked toes with every step. I vaguely recalled leaving my heels by the foot of my bed. If I knew I would only have one pair of shoes for the rest of eternity, I probably wouldn't have chosen three-inch heels.

Grismal snorted at my lack of a response and kept walking. There was a hidden stairwell at the end of the hallway. Finally, we were headed upward again, out of damp depths of the bowels of the palace, back into the dark eternal night sky.

"I know that you and my mortal half-brother are determined to kill me," Grismal mused as we walked up the dusty steps. "You were misled to believe that is the only solution to the blight that has afflicted your people."

Grismal raised an eyebrow at me as though my sudden lack of snarky comments. Yes, the weeks of solitude had quieted my tongue. Yes, he finally had my attention, though it was all that I could do to stop myself from falling into laughter. He thought I was the treasured but willful wife of his hated brother, but I was actually no machiavellian genius as he believed my husband to be.

I was merely a mad woman. And I was starting to find all this talk of saving the world incredibly funny.

"Kill me. Kill a god. Even if you managed it, what would you do then? Have you thought about what will happen once I am gone? If Mearnox is without a ruler, it will fade into nothingness. Then, the bridge between death and the afterlife will be gone. With it will go all the souls who had been afflicted with the very poison you are trying to cure. Is that really your idea of salvation? Of redemption?"

"Then what other answer is there?" I demanded. Yes, I was mad, but I disliked the smug look on his face. The rage filled my body again and seemed to push the fear aside. "Do you have a solution, God of Death?"

"No," Grismal seemed to merge with the shadows again, and his voice faded into an echo. Once again, I was reminded of how alone I was here, as though he were only a creation of my mind. Was it really I who struggled to see him with my flawed mortal eyes? Or did he lack substance because he wanted to be one with the darkness? Perhaps, he was as tired of his eternal existence as we humans were of him. "Do you believe I wanted to poison the mortal plane? How would that serve me? Only more souls to arrive at my doorstep and to cause havoc in my realm."

It was my turn to scoff at him.

What do you want Grismal?

Do you even know?

To meet your brother here instead of me?

Would your pride ever allow that?

Have you ever felt a single emotion besides jealousy?

"You let it happen. You failed at your duty."

Grismal scoffed and turned around. I saw that I had hit a nerve. It was true. I didn't need my fire to hurt him. I was here for one singular reason: because he despised my mortal husband beyond all reason. If I pushed him too far, he would kill me.

Grismal blocked my path, and for a second, I wondered if he would spin around and snap my neck. That was what I would do if one of my idiot prisoners were taunting me as I was to him.

Yet, he did not kill me. Instead, he reached out with his granite-like hand and showed me the amber stone that rested inside his fist. It looked like a plain rock until my eyes fixated on it. Then, weirdly, as though it sensed my interest, it burst to life. It filled the room with light as though the sun itself had been plucked from the sky and trapped inside a minuscule glass vial.

"Inside the Blood Star is the power to give you back your fire, Melody."

I crossed my arms over my chest to show him I was absolutely not going to take the bait. Then, to further stress my point that I wasn't interested, I looked away. The gem seemed to lose all light as I stopped making eye contact. Was it disappointed in my lack of interest? Was this a test of my ability to be tempted by power?

What incentive did I have not to snatch that rock away from him?

What's the worst that could happen?

I could be damned for all time?

Well, it was too late for that. Twenty years too late.

"I brought it here, along with you, because this is the highest point of my palace. Here is where you will have to bring my brother to retrieve the crystal for the power to destroy me."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I'm allowing you the choice to bring it to him."

"Why?

Grismal sighed. "Because I grow tired of these games, and I don't have the will to fight you anymore. Take it and be done with it. Within the Blood Star is also the power to give the dead back their consciousness. It could restore your friend Allison to the state you remember."

That got my attention. I glanced at the gem's surface. It shimmered like a vial of sunlight again. He noticed my hapless interest and chuckled.

"There's a price to its use. It allows the dead a second chance at life. It's not life, not truly, more like an imitation of life. Once the dead are given their consciousness back, they will begin to weaken. In most cases, it will fuel the dead for only ten days. The further they wander from my palace, the quicker they will lose their strength, until finally, they will fall back into their sleeping spirit form again."

"Like vampires."

"Yes, like the vampires created using the waters of Tahil. But your vampires never truly crossed the divide between life and death. Mine do." Grismal stood at the window of the tower and surveyed the sunless expanse of his kingdom. "You know that when your beloved shows up, I will have to kill you. You must know that by now."

"And you'll do that to keep him from destroying the stone? Because in the stone lies the power to revive the dead?"

"Yes, you understand, don't you? If he destroys this stone, all of Mearnox will dissolve into ashes. The souls that live here include those of your friends."

It suddenly occurred to me why he kept assigning me "servants." He wanted me to grow attached to them, to want to save them, even at the price of my own life. Grismal approached me and stroked my cheek with the back of his large, rough hand. I didn't flinch, and that puzzled him. His eyebrows furrowed in confusion and anger. He wanted my fear. He liked it when I was afraid. I felt nothing but numbers now that I knew what he had been planning.

"I never thought you were a beautiful mortal woman," Grismal admitted. "But I see you're not a cowardly one. And that, in it of itself, is a type of beauty."

"I've never felt fully alive these past couple of years. I feel as though I should have died twenty years ago."

"You're fortunate that there's a man who loves you enough to gift you with immortality."

I wasn't a fool. Why would he tell me the truth? All the same, I knew a little more about the seat of his power, about his motives. Would it be enough to defeat him? Or were we both walking into his trap?

"Why are you telling me this?" I blurted out. It couldn't be that he simply wanted to gift me with a girl's night out with Allison. "What use could I possibly have—"

"No more lies!" Grismal screamed, and the grounds seemed to tremble with his fury. Then, strangely, he seemed to calm down quite a bit. It was as though I no longer mattered to him, and he had made his peace with destiny.

"Enjoy your time with your lost friends, Melody. My brother is growing closer. He'll be here. Soon," Grismal assured me and then hushed me before I could continue my ruse of trying to convince him that Blake was dead. "Save your breath. I know you've diverged to your loved ones the location of Mearnox. When my brother arrives, he'll see that he paid for that knowledge with everything he holds dear."

And just like that, I realized Grismal had known what I was plotting all along.

Did I truly believe I could outwit the God of Death?