“Go,” he says without looking up. “I’ve got her.”
The three of us hit the corridor running.
“Possession,” I say. “It’s the only thing that works.”
“If she could do that, why not one of us?” Talon asks.
“Strength of will,” Cassian says.
That tracks. Lila was already fractured. Exhausted, hypervigilant, hanging on by the thinnest margin. And right before she lost herself, she was arguing she wasn’t weak. Fighting it. Losing.
Rhea picked the most vulnerable person inside the wards and used her like a key.
“We need to get to the basement.”
I grab their hands and pull.
We land at the top of the stairs. Talon catches the wall. Cassian does the same.
Rhea is here. I can feel her crawling under my skin.
“Quickly.”
Before I reach the bottom step, something hits me. Not physical. Deeper than that. A shockwave of something supernatural that slams through my chest and knocks me clean off my feet.
My back hits the stairs.
“Skye.” Talon is on me in a second, hand at my shoulder, the other behind my head. “What’s going on?”
I look up at him. “You didn’t feel that?”
“Feel what?” Cassian pulls me up by the arm. He keeps his other hand at the small of my back even after I’m steady.
They didn’t feel it.
Whatever just happened, it happened on a frequency only I can reach. That’s not good.
I lean on them for the shortest moment, then push through the basement doors.
What I find makes bile climb up my throat.
A girl stands in the middle of the room with a knife in her hand. The edge is bloody. Blood runs down her arm and pools at her wrist. Between us, the wife slumps in her restraints, head loose against her shoulder. Down her neck runs a thick red line. Dark, gooey blood spills from it onto the floor.
She’s dead.
“You fucking bitch!” the husband screams. His restraints groan as he thrashes. Lila looks at him for one breath, then back at me.
That’s when it sharpens.
This isn’t Lila. Black smoke tendrils curl around her body like reins. Her eyes are solid black.
Rhea is wearing her like a suit.
“What have you done?” My voice barely leaves my mouth. “Rhea…”
“I did what I had to,” Rhea replies through Lila’s mouth. “And now I will finish what I started.”
She lifts the knife and steps toward the man. Grabs his head with one hand, blade at his throat.
