I reach into my bag for the last bone, my skull, the same one Nathaniel carved once upon a time. I shift it to my grip and start to slip past her, eager to end this conversation and get on with it. The moment I move, her body glitches, and a second later she is standing directly in my path.
Not friendly. Definitely not friendly. That sharp, nasty energy is back in full force.
“We noticed you’re taking your time with the couple,” she says. “At first we thought you might need a moment to settle back in after everything you went through. But we don’t want to wait anymore.”
“Yeah, I totally get it,” I say, forcing brightness into my voice. “It must be exhausting, hovering so close to your goal. I’m sorry. This is literally the last thing I need to handle before we do it.”
“Is that so?”
“Yup.” I try to step around her again. I really need to end this. “Let me finish this quickly so you can be on your merry way to oblivion, okay?”
“Alex saw Cassian fill a tank with water not that long ago,” she says, cutting me off.
The air shifts. My pulse does something unpleasant.
“Oh yeah?” I say, keeping my tone light.
“He looked like he was about to kill them then and there.”
“Ah, I see.” I force a casual smile that I do not feel. “Well, you might not know it about Cassian, but he looks like he’s going to kill someone all the time. I’m sure he just wanted to get everything prepared ahead of time.”
Rhea smiles back, but it never reaches her eyes.
“You’re lying,” she says softly.
There’s no hesitation in her voice, only that eerie certainty that makes my skin prickle. Her gaze pins me in place, sharp as a knife’s edge, and the air thickens until it hums with invisible pressure. Even the crows around us go still. She’s trying to remind me who’s in charge again, and my pulse stutters in response.
“Come on, Rhea…”
“You told him not to kill them.” She tilts her head, and shadows ripple down her neck. “He was about to do it.”
So she isn’t buying my story for a second.
Fucking hell.
The crows begin to stir, their wings beating in a jagged rhythm, and the Grim girls waiting in the trees twitch like marionettes.
“How about you calm down, hm?” I try, forcing the words out like they might soothe her.
Nothing works.
Rhea’s power lashes forward like a whip, and I have to dart sideways to avoid it.
“Oh, fucking hell,” I curse. “You don’t understand. I need to do this!”
“Liar!” she screams, then lunges.
I twist away, barely dodging as her hand clips my shoulder. The touch burns cold, searing through my incorporeal form. Pain flares white and violent, like frostbite slicing through flame. Unlike with things and people anchored to the corporeal world, I can’t reject her touch. Rhea belongs to the in-between, and because I’m half-dead, I can’t fully adapt to the living plane. No matter how hard I try, she will always be able to reach me.
So the only solution is to run.
I streak through the air like a comet, every gust cutting through me and every muscle screaming at me to move. Rhea’sshriek follows like a banshee’s wail, and if I didn’t know her, I would think she was a wraith.
Below, the girls in the trees react. Their heads snap up in unison, and their forms dissolve and reform in bursts of static. The crows scatter, then surge back together, thousands of them wheeling into a spiral so dense it could blot out the moon, if the moon were out.
I clutch the last bone to my chest. “Come on, come on…”
Rhea cuts me off. She flickers ahead in a blink, her hand shooting for my arm again. I twist in midair and we collide. For a heartbeat the world bends around us, two half-souls locked in a power struggle neither of us can fully win.
