And underneath it—pain. Sudden, splitting bursts through my joints and bones, like I’m being unmade and put back together on loop, too fast, too raw.
I suck in a breath that only half fills my lungs. My chest tightens, then releases. Then tightens again. I ache. Then I don’t. Then I ache again.
It’s awful.
Nathaniel spins around. “Skye?”
Cassian curses under his breath, jerking the wheel. “Skye, stop it.”
“Stop what?” I somehow snap, my voice breaking as my body rebels, as I keep glitching out of my own skin. “You think I’mchoosingthis?”
Talon turns, his gaze dropping first to my chest, barely covered by my hand, then lower, to the sharp triangle formed where my thighs cross as I huddle on the floor. His eyes jump to my face, narrowing to try toseeme through the flickering.
And for once, his smirk disappears.
“Oh,” he says, voice low andserious. “She’s flickered out of the clothes. Like she rejected them or something.”
Nathaniel moves first. Calm, controlled, terrifying in how focused he gets. His mismatched eyes lock on mine like they’re trying to anchor me in place. When he speaks, his voice is that slow, falsely gentle tone he used with the drowning pool girl. The one that saysI don’t know what you are, but I need you to stay very, very still while I figure it out.
“Skye, focus,” he says, calm as glass. “Remember how you calmed down before? You can do it again. Just breathe.”
“Uh-uh,” I mutter weakly.
But then Cassian jerks the ambulance around a corner with so much force that the world slides sideways—and so do I.
No. Literally.
One second I’m in the vehicle. The next, half my body is inside the floor. Inside. The. Floor.
My legs are gone, sunk through the metal. My spine’s halfway through the base, stuck between dimensions. I feel it. The cold, the hum, the sheer wrongness of being partially ghost, partially girl, and entirely fucked.
“Someone fix her!” Talon snaps, his cocky edge stripped away, replaced with something that sounds suspiciously like panic.
“I’m trying!” Nathaniel grits out, crawling toward me.
Then Cassian.
“Skye.” His voice cuts through everything. Sharp. Unyielding. Commanding. “Stay.”
Like I’m some unruly animal. Like I’ll listen just because hesaidit.
And yet, gods help me, Ido.
Something inside me jerks to attention. Not my mind, not my will. Deeper. Instinctual. Like my bones recognize his voice even when my skin doesn't.
My power stutters.
The glitching stops for a breath, a blink, a heartbeat.
And then, I choke.
On air. On nothing. My lungs seize because they’re not there, until suddenly they are. My chest snaps into reality like someone slammed the door on a hurricane. Gravity grabs me all at once.
I hit the floor.
Hard.
Solid.
