I grip the dagger tighter, jaw clenched, every muscle in my body pulled so tight I feel like I might snap.
“You’re a fucking abomination,” I tell her. “You shouldn’t exist.”
She just smiles.
“Oh? Does that hurt?”
She moves.
Fast.
In the blink of an eye, she’s on me—claws aimed for my throat—but I don’t retreat. I step in. Ilether hit. Her claws tear through the edges of me, but I twist the dagger and drive it straight into the center of her shadowed chest.
The scream that erupts from her isn’t sound.
It’s memory.
Mymemory.
Every horrible moment I’ve ever lived—my own death, the cold fingers around my throat, the betrayal, the suffocating loneliness of the afterlife, the look on Mark’s face when he saw the ravens on my willow tree. It all slams into me at once, like a thousand flashbacks detonating behind my eyes. I stumble—but this time, she stumbles with me.
She’s feeding.
Iampain. I’m exactly what she wants.
But just because she wants me... doesn’t mean she cansurviveme.
Because I’m not just haunted. I’m cracked wide fucking open. I’ve lived with this rot inside me for so long I know every inch of it. It’s layered. Twisted. Drenched in rage, guilt, and the weight of every soul I’ve ever touched.
So if she feeds on pain, then let’s see if she can handle more than she’s ever tasted.
I stop fighting the ache in my chest and let it rise. Wave after wave. Everything I’ve buried, every wound that never healed, every word I never said. I bring it all forward. Iweaponizeit.
“This what you want?” I whisper. “This what you’ve been chasing all along?”
I feel her latch on, pulled to me like a magnet to heat and horror. She wants to consume it, like she always does, but I’m not offering scraps this time.
I’m serving a goddamn feast.
“Take it,” I say. “Takeallof it. Choke on it.”
My ribs ache like every breath carries a thousand ghosts. My skin buzzes with old bruises. My soul tears wide open, and through that rip pourseverythingI’ve held in just to survive.
All of it.
My loneliness.
My fear.
My jealousy.
My thirst for revenge.
I don’t stop. I keep going.
And shereels.
The wraith jerks back, her smoky form flickering like a film melting in the projector. Her claws twitch. Her voice catches. She’s still tethered to me, still drinking from the well of my pain, but I bet it burns going down.
