“Nyssa?” Voren asks, moving closer slowly. “Who is threatening you?”
“The snake. Didn’t you hear it?”
“I can’t even see it.”
“It said dying once wasn’t enough.”
“Shed your mortal coil,” Dreven murmurs.
“I did that,” I spit out. “I’m not doing it again!” I turn on my heel and march across the damp grass, shoving my hands into my hoodie pockets as the wind whips up around me. No. Just no. Been there, done that. Not doing it again. Not giving the slayer line a chance to get its hooks into Rynna. Not today, arseholes.
Voren ghosts into my path, and I shoulder past him. He doesn’t stop me; he never forces, he freezes. Dastian keeps pace on my other side, humming under his breath like a live wire trying to be polite. Dreven is a pressure at my back, a storm held on a leash.
“Nyssa.” Dreven’s tone is the one mortals would kneel for.
“Don’t,” I snap without looking.
The wind grabs my words and flings them at the cliff. The sea takes them and pretends it didn’t.
The snake scrapes along the slab behind us. Metal on stone, a tolling note that rings right up my spine. It’s not loud. It’s decisive. The air thins. My palm flares like I’ve pressed it to the sun.
“You can’t escape this,” the snake hisses.
“No? Watch me.” I keep walking.
The gods are speechless behind me. They didn’t expect this, but it’s tough shit. I died. I sacrificed myself to save them, to save the world, because we all know if they had fallen, that beast would’ve breached the veil and swallowed BlackFen Edge whole before moving on to the next hapless village.
Tears prick my eyes.
I can’t do it again.
Not now. Not because some fucking snake tells me to. If I die fighting evil and saving people, that’s the job. Willingly giving up my life for a second time in two days is more than my mental state can handle.
“Leave me alone,” I shout and break out into a run. It’s miles back to BlackFen, but fuck me, I will run it twice to outrun this snake.
The first fifty metres feel righteous. The next ten feel stupid. The headland is open, the wind a blade, and I’m running from a steel snake.
Shadows slide over the grass ahead. Dreven steps out of them like he’s always been there. He doesn’t touch me; he just exists exactly where I want to be.
“Move,” I warn.
“No,” he says. “Breathe.”
I skid to a halt because ploughing straight through a god of shadows feels like a bad idea even for me. Dastian arrives a beatlater, crackling with weather that forgot the forecast, and Voren is just suddenly there, cold pushing back the Atlantic.
“Out of my way,” I snap.
“Negotiate,” Voren says. “Ancient things love terms.”
“It wants my mortality. Terms start at ‘no’ and end at ‘fuck you.’”
Dastian grimaces. “Strong opener. Needs finesse.”
A wave smashes the cliff below with a sound like a spine snapping. The air changes. Pressure drops. Every hair on my arms lifts. It’s the same wrong hush I felt when the beast built itself out of my sins.
“Tough shit,” I say and duck around Dreven to run again.
“Let her go,” I hear him say on the wind. “We can’t force her.”
