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I’ll make it through this. But I gotta know you’re safe, that when it’s all over you’ll be here.”
    She held my gaze for a long moment, then rose and slowly came toward me. When she was within a few inches of me, Tess lifted her hand and traced where the scars of my penance fanned out across my chest. “The flames burned into your soul,” she murmured. “That’s the punishment you’ve endured in the past.”
    I nodded. “Yeah.”
    â€œBecause of me.”
    I sighed, wanting to lie to her, but I knew she’d see through it in a fairytale minute. “Yeah.”
    She pressed a kiss to my skin, and then another, before wrapping her arms around my waist and resting her cheek against my chest. “Do what you need to do,” she murmured. “But don’t worry about me—I’m not going anywhere.”

Chapter 3
    â€œWe need to tell Al,” Tess informed me as we drove to FMA headquarters the next morning.
    I shook my head, my jaw tightening. “You know that’s not an option.”
    â€œYou’re his friend, Nate,” she insisted. “He’s not going to out you to the rest of the Tales.”
    â€œHow do you know that?” I demanded. “Al is always going to do what’s best for the Tales. Do you really think he’ll just shrug it off when he finds out that a person he depends on, a person he trusts, is a total fraud?”
    â€œYou’re not a fraud,” she shot back, her cheeks flushing as if she was already testifying in my defense. “Okay, so you did lie to his face—”
    â€œThanks, that’s helpful.”
    â€œâ€”but you’re definitely not a fraud. No one can argue that you’re a Reaper.”
    â€œNo, I’m just not a Tale.”
    â€œYou have our signature,” she pointed out, referring to the unique aura that each Tale had that helped identify them to others of their kind.
    â€œIt’s just as much of a fabrication as the rest of me,” I murmured.
    â€œYou can’t fake that, Nate. You either have it or you don’t.”
    I squirmed a little, still uncomfortable with this line of conversation. Tess had forgiven me for keeping the truth of my origin from her, but every time I revealed a little more of the story, I found myself cringing, hating that I’d ever deceived her in the first place, bowing under my rediscovered conscience. “You can’t fake it,” I admitted, “but you can borrow it.”
    She blinked at me. Twice. “Come again?”
    Oh, yeah. This was gonna be a fun one.
    â€œSo . . . remember that connection that binds me to the Tales?” I started out, trying to sound nonchalant. “The one that anchors me to you, specifically?”
    She quirked a dark eyebrow at me. “Yeah . . .”
    â€œWell, uh, so that actually gives me the appearance of a Tale,” I explained. “I basically am borrowing your Tale signature. That’s why it looks a little odd. It has nothing to do with the fact that I’m a Reaper like everybody thinks.”
    Now her eyes narrowed at me as she waited for what else I had to say. “And?”
    I glanced over at her and shifted my grip on the steering wheel. “Well, that also helps me hold my form.”
    â€œSorry?”
    I heaved a sigh and doffed my fedora, setting it on my lap. “Without a . . . tether to the world we inhabit, Reapers are spirits—and dark ones at that. We can hold a form of our choosing for a little while, but only for a few minutes. The shadows that haunt me, they’re part of me, Tess—the part of me that I can’t hold in this form. And sometimes . . . well, sometimes I slip, usually when I experience an intense emotional reaction. I lose control.”
    When I glanced over to gauge her reaction, she was staring at me, her brows furrowed in a frown. I could tell by her expression that she was thinking about every