And it’s—
God.
It’sdelicious.
It’sterrifying.
But I don’t even have time to process it, because Talon moves.
Just slightly. A tilt of his head, a slow flex of his fingers. Like he’s doing the math of me. Like he’s experiencing thiswithme.Throughme.
“Little Grim?” he asks, his voice rough, the kind of rasp you get from crying your heart out while thinking your friend is dying, and the Grim Reaper you knew was supposed to take his soul just vanished.
“Uh… hi?” I say, unsure.
I’ll admit it, I’m awkward as hell right now. But can you blame me? No one in their right mind would know how to handle a situation like this. I need a lifeline. A sign. Some kind of guide through this mess.
I look around for the only help I can think of.
Where is my goddamn raven?
But there’s nothing.
No shimmer of obsidian feathers in the air. No sarcastic caw echoing through the void. No weight on my shoulder. No flicker of that familiar presence that used to trail behind me like a shadow with wings.
Talon clears his throat.
“Are you okay?” he asks. “Should we, uh… talk about what just happened, or—”
Does he mean me saving Cassian? The whole interspecies fingering situation afterward? Or the part where I puffed out and grew a body?
Yeah. No idea which part he wants to unpack. And honestly, I don’t know if I want to talk about any of it. Thankfully, I don’t have to. Not yet.
“Not now,” Nathaniel interrupts him, his voice wound so tight it’s practically trembling. He doesn’t even look at Talon. His stare is locked on me, wide and unblinking, like I might vanish. Or detonate. Or both.
And Cassian…
He takes a step closer.
And that’s when my newly breakable body chooses to spiral into full-blown panic.
Because being near them when they couldn’t really touch me was one thing. But being helpless, vulnerable, in front of themnow?
I didn’t sign up for this.
How much do I actually know about them, anyway? Other than the fact that they’re sexy as hell, dangerously impulsive, and have murdered, in cold blood, two people right in front of me?
Um… nothing.
And clearly, they preferred to keep it that way.
They have secrets.
I’m their loose end.
A walking liability.
What if they preferred me as a ghost over a living, breathing human?
