“Like I’m what?” My voice spikes before I can stop it.
He exhales hard, dragging both hands over his face, like he’s trying to wipe the words off his tongue. “Like you’re not yours. Like you don’t get to decide whether you burn yourself down for his little agenda.”
“I don’t get to decide!” I shout. “That’s the point. This isn’t optional.”
His mouth twitches somewhere between a grimace and a smile that’s too thin to mean anything good.
“Then we make it optional.”
I shake my head. “You can’t just—”
“Skye.” His voice drops, low enough it’s almost a warning. “I need you to hear me.”
I take a breath and let it out slowly.
“Everything we do here, Nathaniel, Tal and I, it’s because we hate injustice. I watched a psycho kill my sister right in front of me. I nearly died just watching it. And that’s when I realized there’s no divine power that gives a damn about punishment.”
His eyes lock on mine.
“I had to make it happen myself,” he continues. “And it wasn’t clean. It wasn’t noble. It was ugly and cruel—and exactly what he deserved. And no, it still wasn’t justice. But it was the closest thing to it. For Sabine. For my mother. For me. For every other girl he’d have done that to.”
He stands, crosses the room, and drops to his knees in front of me.
Before I know what’s happening, his hands find mine. My palms are slick with sweat, but he doesn’t flinch.
“I tainted myself a long time ago to do what’s right. Whatneededto be done,” he says, and the way he says it makes my pulse spike. “Nathaniel and Talon did too. We hate injustice, Skye. We hate it so much we forsook our lives to make things right, knowing there are powers out there,supernaturalones, far greater than us. We’re just human.”
The room feels too small. Too close. I can smell the faint trace of his cologne.
“So now,” he continues, voice rougher, “I don’t give a damn if it’s Death, God, or the universe itself handing down the orders. If they’re unjust, and they are, towardyou, I’ll burn that plan down. And if I can’t burn it, I’ll tear it apart with my teeth. Whatever the cost, Iwillmake it right.”
Something in my chest twists. It’s like someone just wrung my heart out, and I don’t know whether to drop it or clutch it tighter.
“But you helped me with the first wraith…”
“Because that was better than letting it devour you. It was sudden. We had to act. More importantly, it appeared because we fucked up.” He squeezes my hands. “Now it’s different. It’s like you’ve become Death’s errand dog or something.”
I blink at him.
“He’s doing it to me because I let you guys use the Skystone. And before that, I let you save a girl who was supposed to die. I helped you break the rules.”
“Did you really?” he asks quietly. “Did you actually have a choice in any of that?”
I think about it. I did keep saying they couldn’t mess with the balance of life and death. And it’s true—I couldn’t have stopped them physically back then. I didn’t have a body. But I was still there. I didn’t use my Reaper powers against them.
“You’re just a soul, Skye,” Cassian says, shaking his head. “Like the rest of us. You were wronged. And you’ve been waiting five years to get revenge on your murderer while working as Death’s errand girl, day and night. Death owns you. And it’s not fair.”
The wordownslands heavier than it should. It slams right into the part of me that still remembers being shoved into the ground by my ex-husband’s hands, air and light ripped away in one choking rush.
“I’m not owned,” I say, but it comes out too fast. Too sharp.
Cassian tilts his head.
“You’re on his leash, Skye. You’ve been on it since the moment you woke up with that scythe.”
I pull my hands from his, the absence of his grip sudden and cold. “That leash saved your ass. And Talon’s. And Nathaniel’s. More than once.”
He exhales through his nose.
