All it takes is closing my eyes and a little focus. Then the fight in the hospital, between the boy and the wraith, pushes into my mind so vividly I can almost taste the electric tension crackling between them.
That’s how I know he’s still alive.
His energy hits jagged and sharp. It’s frantic, relentless. Not desperate, but driven. The wraith, on the other hand, feels like rot—powerful, invasive rot. It seeps into death and spreads decay until nothing remains. Even from here, it scrapes at the edges of my mind like claws on glass.
I blink, and the world snaps back into place. The car. The others. Cassian’s arm still clamped too tightly around me.
“He’s alive,” I whisper.
Nathaniel looks at me through the mirror. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.” I nod, one hand clutching my stomach as something inside me tightens and pulses. “And I need to help him. Now.”
Cassian’s grip tightens. Just slightly. He doesn’t want me to go. But I’ve already made up my mind.
I glance at each of them, just for a moment, then pull the buzzing in my belly to the surface. I shape it, control it, hold it captive.
“I’m going to teleport,” I say. “See you when it’s over.”
And then I’m gone.
The energy inside me bursts outward like stone splitting along a fault line. For one breathless instant, I am everywhere and nowhere.
The car vanishes around me. I feel Cassian’s arm grasp at empty space.
Then: light. Heat. The scent of copper and ozone.
And impact.
I burst into the hospital hallway like I’ve been launched from a slingshot fueled by rage and instinct. My boots skid across the tile for a heartbeat before I catch myself.
The air hits me first. It’s scorched and buzzing. The kind of thick, electric heavy thing that makes it clear the fight is getting deadly.
Then I see them.
The boy is fighting like hell. His scythe slices through the air in arcs of raw, blinding light, tendrils of it coiling and lashing like a living storm. But there’s a heaviness to his swings now, a slight hitch in his stance. His arms are veined with silver-blue wounds, glowing faintly, and his knees keep dipping like they might buckle.
And the thing he’s facing—
The wraith towers over him, her body fractured and reassembling itself in bursts of sickening motion. Limbs twist the wrong way. Her mouth stretches open in silence, but I still hear the scream, cutting through my mind like broken glass.
She senses me. Turns.
And so does he.
His head jerks up, sweat and smoke streaked across his face. For a split second, relief flickers. Then it’s gone, buried beneath something harder.
He’s angry.
What the hell for?
“No,” he croaks. “You weren’t supposed to—”
But he doesn’t finish. And I don’t ask.
Because whatever he meant, whatever plan I just shattered by showing up, it’s too late to fix it now.
The wraith turns fully.
