Cassian, Nathaniel, and Talon don’t know about my plan. Not yet. I’m going to tell them, just preferably closer to the moment it matters, when they don’t have enough time to talk me out of it.
I’ve been thinking about what Cassian said, about how I should stop playing the hero and run if things go south. A week ago I would have agreed without hesitation. Now I can see the shape of it more clearly. That instinct is just fear dressed up as common sense, and I promised myself I wouldn’t let fear steer me anymore.
So I wake before sunrise while the hospital is still quiet and slip out of Talon’s bedroom where the four of us ended up after last night. I head for the trees in sweats with one of the guys’ jackets pulled over the top. My grave is right there, only a couple of steps from where I drop onto the grass and close my eyes.
“Rhea,” I whisper, sending her name into the dark space beyond the veil.
The answer isn’t words. It’s sensation. Her mark is still there, unmistakable, a familiar pull that tells me she hasn’t gone far. I remember the first time I felt it, when she appeared here and I didn’t yet understand what I’d taken from her or that I was indebted at all.
I understand now.
There’s a thread between us, thin but real. What used to feel dangerous and heavy enough to get me killed has dwindled into something small. Returning her power would wipe the debt clean in an instant and I wouldn’t owe her a thing.
But I don’t do it.
Instead I focus on this feeling and send her a message.
Come here.
For a while nothing happens. I just sit with my eyes closed and the feeling growing stronger inside me.
And then I feel her standing in front of me.
I open my eyes.
“You came,” I whisper.
“I almost didn’t.” Her voice is steady but there’s ice underneath it. “I wasn’t sure you’d earned that.”
I get to my feet.
“I know you think I broke my promise.”
“You did break your promise.”
“I had a reason.”
“There’s no reason good enough to keep those two breathing.”
“There is,” I say. “And you already know it.”
Rhea’s eyes narrow.
I take a slow breath and keep my hands visible. I’m not here to fight her. I just need her to hear me out.
“The belief that you need their deaths to move on is manufactured,” I say. “The whole system was built to give Grim Reapers a purpose. Not to give the dead peace. You know how many souls you’ve reaped. Name one who got peace from watching their killer die.”
The silence stretches.
She doesn’t answer.
“You can’t,” I say quietly. “Because it doesn’t happen. They’re still dead. They still lost what they lost. Watching someone else die doesn’t undo a single second of it.”
Her jaw goes tight.
“You spent years hunting down the man who killed you,” she says. “Years. And now you’re going to stand here and tell me revenge doesn’t work.”
“I was wrong to do it.”
