“Yes.” I fold my arms. “For example… I could haunt Mark. Withtheirhelp.”
That gets him. His mouth tightens like a wound pulling shut.
“You’re helping her get revenge?” he asks the men.
They nod.
All three.
No hesitation.
He doesn’t see the confession tucked inside:
they don’t just standwithme —
they standforme.
“Why?” Pain asks, suspicious.
“Because we care about Skye,” Cassian replies. “And we intend to see her even the score. Simple as that.”
Simple. Exactly. For once, nothing is buried under strategy. No hidden leverage. Just loyalty sharpened into action.
Pain absorbs that, breathes once, the line of his shoulders loosening by a hair.
“Alright,” he says softly. “I’ll bite. What exactly do you need from me?”
Well, look at that.
He wants a swing at Mark just as much as I do.
“You’d have to control the crows long enough for us to get to Mark’s street,” I tell him. “Just long enough for me to stand under that willow and have him watch them swallow his yard.”
“Ouryard,” Pain corrects.
“Yes. Our yard.”
He turns toward the window, eyes narrowing. “You want to scare Mark with them?”
“For starters,” Nathaniel answers.
“There’s more planned,” Talon adds.
Now Pain’s expression shifts; the barest memory flickers behind his eyes. The ghost of fingers crushing our windpipe. His. Mine. The overlap where Pain ends and I begin. He remembers as I remember; the thought of making the person who hurt us feel small. The need to retaliate.
He watches the crows a moment longer, jaw working once, twice. Then he turns back to me. Something hungry and distinctlyravenflashes through his gaze.
“All right,” he says slowly. “I might take some pleasure in that. But I can’t control these crows. They’re not mine.”
I blink. “What?”
Ever since I became a Grim Reaper, crows have lingered near me like satellites. Always there when I stayed somewhere too long. If Pain is the personification of my Grim Reaper power… shouldn’t they be his?
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Exactly what I said,” he replies. “They don’t answer to me. They’re not mine. They belong to the others.”
A cold feeling slides down my spine.
