Just as the beast lifts a foot to crush me, a gleamingsomethingarcs through the air.
The ghoul’s head rolls off its shoulders before the body collapses, thudding heavily onto the icy road right next to me. It twitches and goes still as a smaller figure emerges from the dimming whiteout. Black hair billowing in the wind. The perfect height. Probably beautiful, if I could see more clearly through the blizzard.
Look at that. The gods are allowing me to dream about her in my last moments.
The figure rounds the fallen ghoul to crouch beside me, and as soon as I get a better look at her face?—
No.
This isn’t real.
She's not real.
But this face is too fucking perfect to be drummed up by my memory.
Dark, beautiful eyes filled with the fury of hell itself. Olive skin. That perfect curve in her lower lip. A slight redness to her nose and cheeks from the cold. Ghoul blood dripping from the scythe in her hand. Even Baelfire’s bite scar on the side of her neck when the wind blows her hair aside again.
“Were you going to defend yourself?” my hallucination demands.
And Iknowshe has to be a hallucination. There's no other explanation, but I can’t stop staring. I’m too stunned by the sound of the voice that's been haunting me for months. It’s dripping with protective warning like she’s livid that I was ready to give up.
“Everett,” I vaguely hear her prompt.
I trace every feature with my gaze. This delicate, understated beauty, contrasted with her powerful presence, is a drug I can't give up.
My hallucination’s attention settles on the left side of my face, and she reaches out to brush the haggard scar with her fingertips.
Her very real, verywarmfingertips.
My heart skips several beats, my entire body reacting like I was just struck by lightning. She touched me. I know that touch. I’ve ached for it so long that I can’t breathe through a sudden wave of confusion and sharp fear.
This can’t be real. It can’t be. Because if it’s real and she’s touching me?—
“Maven?” I whisper, my reality twisting in on itself as I realize hallucinations don’t have warm fingers.
Fingers that are quickly turning pink and purple from frostbite.
Oh, gods.
Fuck.She’s real. She's real, and she touched me, and now she's going to pay the price.
Pure horror floods my system, choking me. Darkness has coagulated around us, chilling whispers and laughter dancing in the howling wind as I watch my keeper begin to freeze, ice crackling up her arm and neck. Her eyes widen, a scream lodges in her frozen throat, and?—
An inhuman screech cuts through the air beside us so violently that it startles me. As soon as it cuts off, the scene in front of me ripples and changes. Maven is crouching beside me exactly how she was, only now her attention is on the wraith beside us…which was just cut in half by her scythe. Both pieces of the shadow fiend drop to the ground, shrieking and hissing before evaporating.
I’m left trembling, shaken to my damn core as I realize the wraith just made its move, using my newfound fear against me—and she killed it.
Because she’s here. Real.
Maven looks back at me. The scythe in her hand shrinks instantly, now a clear knife that she tucks away without an explanation. She’s just crouching here, all…alive.
When my breathing turns quick and labored, her gaze slips down to my bloodied side. She moves the torn trench coat aside and immediately moves to put pressure on the wound, but I panic.
“Don’t,” I warn hoarsely, propping up on one arm to scoot away as my head spins.
She can't touch me again. It's not safe for her.
Maven’s dark eyes lock onto mine. “I understand if you hate me.”
