Sure, it would be easy to say I stayed in a mortal body because I wanted to punish my husband for murdering me. And I do, with the same inevitability as breathing. Natural. Reflexive. In-fucking-escapable. But that isn’t the full truth.
“Uh…” I stall, because saying it out loud feels like officially kicking off the apocalypse.
The wraiths.
Death hinting that there are more coming.
That teenage boy—my raven warped into a human body.
There’s too much of it stacked in my head.
“Unfinished business is kind of an understatement,” I say at last. “And I’d rather explain it when all three of you are here. Or four. Where’s the kid who healed me with those freakishly bizarre powers?”
Nathaniel doesn’t look away. If anything, his gaze sharpens. That’s the trouble with him: the second a stray current of wrongness hums near him, he feels it. The man practically sniff-tests the air for secrets, then connects dots no one asked him to connect.
Which is why his voice gets even smoother. Even more deceptively casual.
“He’s gone.”
“Gone?” My voice comes out scratchy. “Gone where? Did Death pull him back? Did he just disappear? Did he—“
“Relax,” he cuts in. “He left on his own. Said he had something to take care of. We haven’t seen him since. He said he’d return.”
Oh, great…
“That sounds entirely trustworthy,” I mutter, leaning back until my head thunks into the pillow.
If Death was telling the truth, and I think he was, even after tricking me into believing Laura Collins’ wraith was the last, then the teen isn’t some external little helper. It’s basically a splinter of me. A piece that broke loose and ran.
Which means the question isn’t what I plan to do with him…
It’s whether I evenwantto help myself.
I’m not exactly a walking advertisement for emotional wellness. Half the time I still don’t know how I wasted an entire life orbiting Mark, carving myself smaller and smaller until I disappeared. I gave up everything just to fit inside someone else’s gravitational pull. That doesn’t exactly scream inner peace and enlightenment.
So maybe Pain is just that version of me: reckless, self-erasing, destruction turned flesh.
It would fit the teenage aesthetic.
Nathaniel is still watching me, like he can hear thoughts scraping against bone inside my skull. Another second and he’ll be able to read them. So I mask up, exhale the doubt before it fogs between us, and force something that looks like a smile.
“Why are you looking at me like that? Still worried I’m going to keel over and die in front of you? I feel pretty solid. Painfully solid. You don’t ache this much if you’re about to evaporate.”
His mouth tugs too.
“Scared?” he echoes. “Perhaps. It’s been a long time since I wanted someone to not die this badly.”
My brow lifts. The rest of me stays still.
“Careful,” I murmur. “You’re about to intrigue the hell out of me.”
His eyes narrow faintly. “Why? Is it so intriguing that I want you to stay alive?”
“Close,” I say softly. “Not quite.”
He reclines, the metal in his eyebrow and lip catching the light as he tips his head back. His eyes, one milk-white, one glacial blue, look like pale twin voids, devouring everything they touch. Not windows, not mirrors… Singularities with gravity.
Given what lives in his soul, maybe that’s accurate.
