Her expression twists, her jagged claws flexing, her body morphing into something even less visually appealing. I see the raw, bitter hatred in her eyes, the kind of deep, personal loathing normally reserved for people who ruined your life.
And then—she vanishes.
One moment she’s there, flickering and writhing under Cassian’s blade. The next, the air thickens, darkens, and she’s gone—like she never existed. Just a fart in the void.
I barely have time to process before her voice slithers through the air, low and mocking.
“You think you’ve won?” she hisses. “I'm going to come back.”
I whirl around on the floor, ready to tell her to eat shit, but she’s already gone.
My heart slams against my ribs, a brutal, frantic rhythm. Something hot and electric surges through my veins—adrenaline, panic, disbelief, all tangled together into a sensationso raw it borders on hysteria. It’s that split-second terror of nearly colliding head-on with disaster, only to swerve just in time. A brush with death that leaves you gasping, shaking, reeling.
What is it?
Gratitude?
Relief?
A mind-shattering, soul-wrenching what the fuck just happened?
Yeah. All of those.
My breath stutters, my chest rising and falling in uneven bursts. I press a trembling hand to the ground, fingers digging into the dirt as I try to ground myself. My scythe lies just out of reach a few feet away.
“You okay?”
I force myself to look up at Cassian, his huge frame towering over me. His brow is furrowed, his grip still firm around the other scythe. At least it’s not glowing anymore. Now, it looks almost ordinary—if you ignore the otherworldly carvings etched into the blade, which weren’t there before.
“I’m fine,” I rasp, pulling myself up from the ground, wincing as my body protests. Whatever the wraith did to me, it feels like I’ve been crushed under something massive. A bus, maybe. Or a really aggressive hippo.
“You?” I add, wrinkling my nose.
Everythinghurts me.
“Yeah,” he mutters. “She didn’t get me. Or any of us.”
The way he looks at me… I feel it. The weight of it. Thick, crackling tension. The kind that happens when people are forced to survive something horrific together—the type of bond that screams:Thank you, I owe you, I don’t know what I’d do without you—except the words feel cheap. Fake.
I saved him.
He saved me.
By all accounts, this is the part where I should say something poignant and meaningful.
Except, for some reason, I don’t want to.
Not right now.
Not in this moment.
Maybe not ever.
Even though, yes, fine, he did literally save my entire existence.
Shit.
I inhale sharply, willing my hands to stop shaking as I reach for my scythe. Cassian steps aside, out of my way. A little too quick, too sharp.
