"Uh, duh. That’s the whole point."
"You got it for a reason," he grits out. "From Death, like you said. I doubt he’d approve."
"Death only cares about destroying the wraith," I argue.
"And that’s what you should focus on." He glances sideways at me. "Especially now, when we have no idea when she’ll show up again. We need to gear up, take control, and end it. Then… maybe."
I narrow my eyes.
“Why?” I ask. “What do you care when I get my revenge in?”
Talon opens one eye from the back seat. Nathaniel turns from the window. I keep my gaze fixed on Cassian. He exhales through his nose.
“Because you won’t stop there,” he says eventually.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you think a little haunting will be enough. But it won’t. You’ll want more. Closure. Justice. Blood. Am I wrong?”
I blink. For a moment, I don’t have a comeback, mostly because… he’s right. The thought of my ex-husband walking free, living a normal life after what he did—it’s poison in my blood. And yeah, I do want more than haunting. I want to see fear in his eyes. Regret. I want the truth. I want—
“Let her want it,” Nathaniel says quietly.
Cassian’s gaze snaps to him.
“If revenge is what keeps her going,” Nathaniel adds, “then let it. We aren’t any better.”
Another stretch of silence.
“All I’m saying is,” he says finally. “That if Skye wants revenge, she should conduct it fully from start to finish, not while fighting some monster on the side. And as I said before… I could kill that bastard for her.”
Um… what? I’m stunned.
“I thought you said you weren’t going to do that anymore,” I say. “Changed your mind?”
“That was before you turned half-human. And before you saved my life.”
Oh… fuck.
I open my mouth, then close it again. My throat’s too tight for anything clever.
See, the thing is, last time I asked them to kill Mark, it was partly because I wanted out. Out of whatever binding they’d put on me, out of this limbo, and into the afterlife so I could finally do what I actually wanted.
But now? It’s different. This time, I have no idea what would happen to me once my murderer’s gone. I doubt I’d just appear in the afterlife, sentence served, wings earned, and ready to punish Mark however I wanted. If that were the case, Death wouldn’t have given me this mission in the first place.
So if Cassian kills my ex-husband now, it’s not for my freedom. It’s not for anything noble. It’s just to kill him. Just revenge. Pure, undiluted vengeance. An eye for an eye.
“I owe you,” Cassian says.
If I weren’t so tangled up in my own thoughts, I think his words would’ve shocked me. The man has done a complete one-eighty in the past few hours. He used to treat me like I was nothing, some ghostly annoyance he could ignore, roll his eyes at, dismiss with a sigh.
And now?
Now he’s willingly talking to me. Joking, even. And offering to help me, without being asked.
Fuck. It’s the whole jerking-off-in-front-of-me-then-saving-his-life thing. Has to be. In his warped, emotionally-detached world, that probably makes us best friends or something.
But best friends don’t give each other orgasms, Skye. Did you already forget how he kissed you while Talon was finger-fucking you?
