The fading speeds up.
Her glow flickers, dims. She's got that dying firefly aesthetic, except fireflies don’t look at you with pure, existential horror.
She stares at me. Mouths something.
Help me.
But I can’t.
If I do then…
Oh, for fuck’s sake!
“She has to reap her murderer’s soul,” I blurt out, because apparently, I cannot be evil for my own benefit. “She needs to do it now, or she’ll disappear forever—her revenge unfinished, her pain meaningless. She’ll move on. I don’t know why—I thought a Grim Reaper only moves on once their murderer is actually dead, but… this Skystone must be making it seem like the soul has passed on, even though it’s just trapped.”
And the instant those words escape me, I regret them.
Because now, they know.
Talon’s grip on the blue orb tightens like he’s holding the world’s deadliest stress ball. Nathaniel’s expression flickers—realization creeping in ever so slowly. Cassian? Cassian just stares at me with the kind of gaze that could cut glass.
“And if we release the damn soul, what happens then?” the last one asks, voice all steel and fire.
I swallow hard. “Then she gets what she’s been waiting for.”
But we all know what he’s really asking.
“Skye,” Nathaniel warns me.
Meanwhile, the woman is trembling so hard she looks like she’s seconds away from vanishing. Her form flickers, her breaths coming in wet and ragged, like her body just remembered it was supposed to be alive once.
Uh. I don’t want this to happen to me.
You see, this is not what I signed up for. My genius plan involved my three emotionally stunted serial killer besties murdering my ex-husband so his soul would just… pop right out, like a cork from a cheap champagne bottle. Then I’d collect it, drag him to a nice, cozy torture chamber, try out every single medieval device known to man, and finally, retire to the afterlife.
This? This looks painful. This is not the dramatic, cinematic release I envisioned. And I cannot stand it.
Fuck.
The woman chokes again, her knees buckling, and this sound—this awful, raw, helpless sound—escapes her lips. And I see it.
I seemein her.
I see the same rage, the same pain, the same unrelenting hunger for justice. I see her waiting, hoping, believing that when this moment finally came, it would put something inside her back together.
And now she’s losing it. Now it’s slipping through her fingers, and she’ll never get it back.
I can’t let that happen.
I need to tell the truth.
“If you release the soul, she’ll snatch it up, extract her revenge, and then—poof—her karma rebalances, and she moves on. No afterlife limbo, no ghostly unfinished business. Just one last murder, and then curtain call.”
The Grim Reaper's form flickers again, weaker this time.
“I don't have much time,” she rasps.
Her eyes burn into mine.Begging.
