“You fell bad.” His expression is trying to be cavalier, but I can see the depth running underneath.
“Fate,” I murmur, turning away from him and back to the window, staring at the path where she disappeared, “has absolutely nothing on Nyssa Vale. She is an apocalypse.”
“Blowing our worlds apart,” Dastian mutters and then vanishes. I’m alone. Well, as alone as the God of Wraiths ever gets.
The moment the chaotic static fades, the house breathes a sigh of relief. Or rather, a rattle. Agatha drifts down from the ceiling, looking particularly sour as she eyes the stained sheets.
“Disgusting,” she whispers, her voice sounding like dry leaves skittering on pavement.
“Oh, hush, you old bat,” I mutter, waving a hand to disperse her ectoplasm before she starts lecturing me on propriety. “You watched the whole time.”
She flickers, indignant, before fading back into the wainscoting.
“Pervert.” I stare at the bed. Dastian’s glamour has completely collapsed. It’s a ruin. Literally.
If we don’t get that Crown, the Devourer eats the world. If we do get the Crown, the power might incinerate Nyssa from the inside out.
Whatever happens, blood will spill.
I walk to the window, pressing my palm against the cold glass. The reflection staring back at me looks tired.Centuries of imprisonment, days of freedom, and I’m already exhausted. But beneath the fatigue, there’s a hum. A tether. I can feel her moving away from the house, a bright spark in the dull grey of the mortal world.
My anchor.
“Don’t die, slayer,” I whisper to the empty room. “I’m just getting used to the noise.”
Chapter 32
Nyssa
My legs feel like jelly that hasn’t quite set yet. I stumble down the overgrown track leading away from Marrow House, forcing my boots to find purchase in the mud. The rain plasters my hair to my face, cold and miserable, but it barely registers against the furnace roaring beneath my skin.
Guardians.
The word rattles around my skull, smashing into twenty-eight years of Order indoctrination. We weren’t just demon hunters; we were the divine leash. The safety catch on a gun the gods held. And the Order—my ancestors, my legacy—severed the connection because they wanted to be the ones pulling the trigger.
“Arrogant pricks,” I mutter to the wet hedgerow.
I skirt the edge of the village, sticking to the shadows. If Rynna or Cormac see me now, looking like I’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards and thoroughly ravished, questions will be asked. Questions I can’t answer without committing treason or sounding insane.
My cottage sits dark and silent at the end of the lane. Itlooks painfully normal. I fumble for my keys, my hands shaking from the residual buzz of chaotic energy zipping through my nerves. I get the door open and lock it tight behind me, sliding the bolt home.
I stare into the gloom of my hallway. I should be packing. I should be running. Instead, I’m standing here, humming with lethal power, wondering why the silence of my own home suddenly feels so deafeningly loud without the bickering of three ancient deities.
It used to be comforting. Now, it just smells like ignorance.
I strip off my clothes in the bathroom, leaving them in a heap on the tiles. The anchor. The leash. Whatever they want to call it, it’s active, and it’s buzzing under my skin like a caffeine overdose.
I turn on the shower, cranking the heat up as high as it goes, though I doubt it can rival Dastian’s magic lake. As the room fills with steam, I feel a prickle on the back of my neck. A cold, heavy sensation that slides over my skin like velvet.
I glance at the frosted window. The shadows in the garden are too deep, too solid for a simple rainy night.
“I know you’re there,” I whisper, stepping under the spray.
The shadows don’t answer, but the temperature in the bathroom drops just enough to make the mirror fog over completely. He’s watching. For the first time in my life, having a monster in the dark doesn’t make me reach for my blade. It makes me feel safe.
“Damn you.”
I scrub until my skin is raw, trying to wash away the scent of the lake and the lingering static of three gods, but it’s pointless. They’re in my blood now, quite literally. Thehot water sluices down the drain, taking the grime of the day with it, but the hum of the Firsts remains, a constant, vibrating reminder that I never was who I thought I was.
