My head spins like I’ve been shaken by the shoulders one too many times.
Cold creeps into my fingertips, and for a second I can’t tell if it’s coming from the woman in front of me, her Grim Reaper aura doing its ice-queen thing, or from the dread cracking straight through my bond with Talon.
I look at him.
And Talon… Talon is justgone.
He’s standing there like something inside him shut off without warning, like a switch got flipped and all that’s left is the body waiting for the rest to catch up. His face is blank in the worst way, the way a room looks after someone packs up and leaves.
The bond doesn’t let me misread it.
It drives the feeling straight into my chest: disbelief first, sharp and bright, and then guilt, pitch-black and thick. It’s so heavy it nearly knocks me back a step.
Rhea.
I don’t know her. But Talon does. Painfully so. And the way he’s looking at her makes one thing sickeningly clear:
She shouldn’t be here.
“Rhea?” he croaks again.
She blinks once. Her kind brown eyes crinkle at the corners.
“Talon,” she breathes. Soft as a feather. And it would almost be funny—almost—if it didn’t feel like someone just poured salt straight into my open ribs. It hasn’t been even a day since I was loudly, stubbornly insisting I wasn’t jealous. I acted like the idea ofherwas nothing. Just a background noise and a chapter already closed.
How could I know it would open again?
He told me whatever he’d had with her belonged to the past.
But watching her look at him—
There’s warmth behindherdead eyes. It suggests thatsheloves him.
“Rhea.” Talon swallows, and I feel it like it’s my own throat closing because our bond is being a cruel little funhouse mirror right now. “You… you’re—“
“A Grim Reaper,” she offers. “Yes. Your new love and I share that in common now.”
His new love.
Something hot flares low in my belly, sharp enough to make me nauseous.
Well… yeah. She does love him. Sheabsolutelydoes love him.
My fingers twitch at my sides.
I want my scythe so badly my palms ache. Because this girl hasn’t technically done anything to me yet, but my body is already voting on the situation.
Remove. Problem. Now.
Too bad I’m standing here empty.
Death took my power like a plug ripped out of the wall, and Pain isn’t here to bend the rules for me. Which means I’m stuck in my own skin, watching a stranger with history flutter eyes at my man.
Rhea finally tears her gaze off Talon. Then she looks at me. And it’s not just her eyes that land. Her power does, too.
Ice races up my arms, sharp enough to sting.
“Ah,” she muses. “That split of yours is nasty, Skye.”
