“Don’t.” My voice cracks sharper than I intend. Not from fear, but from the echo of Death’s voice still humming through me.
You will not use your Reaper power.
The words feel like a lock sliding into place inside my spine, as if someone turned up gravity just for me.
It should be illegal to cage someone inside their own body like this. It’s a crime against my sovereignty.
For fuck’s sake…
The room hasn’t changed. The concrete walls are the same. The generator hums in the background just as it did before. OnlyIam different now, and Mark can tell. He has always been able to sense weakness, like a predator scenting blood.
“Skye, please.” He leans forward, the strap across his chest catching. “I’m sorry. I’m so sor—”
“Save it.” My voice turns to ice. “Apparently, your hour isn’t mine to ring.”
He doesn’t understand what that means, but his body does. His spine folds, his breath catches, and I watch the fight drain out of him. Fear shifts into something else, something he knows too well. Bargaining.
It creeps across his face, familiar and revolting.
If I stay here any longer, I’ll do something I’m not allowed to do.
Then I’ll get punished for it, and he’ll still be breathing anyway.
That thought offends me so deeply that my body moves before my mind catches up.
I grab the door handle. I yank it open, step through, and pull it closed behind me without looking back.
They’re right there. All three of them.
Cassian. Talon. Nathaniel.
Their shoulders are tense, their eyes sharp in the low light. They look like family waiting outside an operating room, braced to hear whether the person on the table came back human or hollow.
“Is it over?” Cassian asks first, his voice low and heavy.
Talon’s mouth twitches into a grin he can turn into comfort whenever he needs to. “How’d it go, Little Grim?”
Nathaniel’s pupils are wide, the way they get when he’s been standing still for too long. “Tell me what you need,” he says.
They say all the right things, but so what? Everything inside me is a goddamn bruise anyway.
“Move.”
Talon steps back immediately, palms raised as if to show he’s not the problem.
Cassian shifts without hesitation, his instincts kicking in.
Nathaniel’s jaw tightens, but he clears the way, his gaze scanning my face, trying to read what went wrong.
I don’t wait for him to figure it out.
I stalk past them, through the corridor, into the main room where we spend most of our time that isn’t in bed. For a wild second, I think about running all the way to the roof and letting the wind scrape Death’s voice off my skin.
Instead, I pace.
Back and forth across the faded paint lines, counting them like prayer beads.
Ten steps. Turn. Nine and a half when my foot slips. Turn. Ten again.
