He glances once toward Talon.
“No one’s going to blame you if you walk away, Little Grim,” Talon says in a tone too flat to be casual.
And that’s when it hits me.
This is not a conversation about logistics.
This isn’t strategy.
This is… an invitation?
They think the act is done, the curtain dropped, and now they’re asking if I plan to take a bow with them or leave the stage. If I’m going to officially stitch myself into their mission of righteous slaughter.
Gods.
Nathaniel’s gaze is a needlepoint. Cassian looks like he’s already gearing up for the fight he’ll start if I say no.
And Talon, leaning back like he couldn’t care less, has tension ghosting along his jawline that betrays the truth: he’s braced. Waiting to be disappointed. Or relieved. Or both.
So I lean forward, copy Nathaniel’s hunter-poised posture, let my eyes drift across all three of them.
“Actually…” I start, pursing my lips. “There’s something you should know.”
I swallow once.
“I wasn’t just… gone. Death pulled me into the void.” Beat. “Again.”
Nathaniel goes statue-still. Which is saying something, considering “statue-still” is his baseline.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
“He told me the wraith wasn’t the last one,” I say. “There will be more. A lot more.”
Silence. The kind that feels like the floor just dropped out from under us.
“And,” I continue, because why stop now, “the kid who healed me? That was my raven. In human form. His name is Pain—which is honestly the most accurate name I could have given him. He’s not some random Grim Reaper who wandered into our situation and decided to help. He’s mine. Part of me. The part that now walks around as a snarky teenage boy judging my existence harder than any of you ever have or could.”
The three of them don’t even blink.
“I mean, I even talked with him right after Nathaniel left me in the room. Before I went into the ICU room you guys set up for me. A really amazing room by the way, so thanks for that. It might have been the best thing I’ve walked into since… well, since not dying. But anyway, Pain told me something else—turns out he’s been doing my Grim Reaper job for me ever since I got a body, and uh… That’s not really over for me either. The dead don’t really stop dying, huh?”
No one laughs.
No one even breathes.
They just stare at me like I’ve turned them all to stone with a single sentence.
Which, fine. Call me Medusa. I’m the one who dropped the gaze-paralyzing truth bomb.
But that isn’t the part that’s making my stomach drop.
Because here’s the thing I’ve learned, after all this time tangled up with my monsters who believe they’re righteous:
There is nothing,nothing,these three worship more than freedom… and justice.
And what I just dropped in their laps?
It’s the opposite of both.
