Like an estate sale. Like inventory being divided among creditors.
She was being liquidated.
No.
The thought came from somewhere the fragmenting hadn't reached yet. Some stubborn core that had kept her alive when her parents died. That had kept her stealing when she should have starved. That had kept her mouth running when smarter people would have stayed silent.
Absolutely fucking not.
She'd survived worse than this. She'd survived betrayal and starvation and ten years of running. She'd survived the Forsaken realm. She'd survived Caelum's torture with her mind intact.
She was not going to let herself be parceled out like disputed property.
And Dante?—
He was there. Somewhere. She could feel him, faintly. A presence at the edges of her awareness. Familiar. Safe. Hers in ways she didn't have words for.
He'd come for her. She knew it with certainty.
The pulling intensified. The courts fighting harder.
She could sense them now.
The Violent court wanting her warrior's death. The Consumed reaching for her obsessive determination. The Lingering court pulling at her unfinished business.
And the Forsaken.
His realm.
Reaching for her because she'd died while he was consumed by rage. Unable to protect her. The exact moment of abandonment that defined those who came to his domain.
The Tower of Screaming Winds was calling. She could feel it. The place where she'd relive Caelum's attack until the concept of time lost meaning. Where she'd scream for help that would never come. Where she'd become nothing but suffering echoing through stone.
And Dante would hear. Every scream. Unable to reach her. Unable to stop it. Listening to her break while he stood helpless on the other side of barriers he couldn't cross.
She would rather cease entirely.
She refused to scatter. Refused to break. She was going back.
To him.
To her body.
To life.
She reached for the familiar presence. The sense of him at the edges of her awareness.
Reached and pulled with everything she had.
The pulling from the courts suddenly changed.
Something else was reaching for her now.
Darkness. Familiar shadows that had always been safe.
His power.
Threads of death magic reaching through the void. Anchoring instead of harvesting. Holding instead of claiming.
