Another pause. And I feel myself getting drawn to the answer like a moth to a flame.
“You have to die,” Cassian replies. He lets that sit for a moment before he continues. “And then you have to be brought back.”
“That’s the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard,” Talon says. But there’s no bite in his voice anymore. If anything, it’s the first time he sounds remotely convinced. Like he indeed has nothing left to lose. Like part of him was already waiting for someone to suggest death.
“Dying is the easy part,” Cassian says.
“I bet,” Talon replies. “How the hell do you plan to bring me back, then?”
Cassian doesn’t answer immediately.
And in that split second, something shifts inside me.
I make a choice. One without a return.
Or maybe I made it already when I decided to kill Leonard Garza. Maybe it happened then.
Either way, my shoes make a soft sound against the old church floor. I step out from my corner and come to face them. Both men turn. Cassian is completely unsurprised.
I meet their eyes—green, and then mismatched—and say, very plainly:
“What kind of death are we talking about?”
“Idon’t understand anything anymore,” I mutter, turning back toward my ICU room.
The hallway feels unreal. It’s too bright, and too clean, and too quiet, and too fucking long. Every step makes my boots squeak against the polished floor. Normally I don’t even hear it. Now it needles me, sharp and petty and relentless.
What the hell was all that?
Rhea’s grip is still on me. Not on my skin but deeper. Like she reached past bone and muscle, wrapped her hand around my soul, and squeezed just to prove she could.
The fact that she threatened me so openly has me rattled. And yeah… it has me in a chokehold.
Pun intended.
Because I’m cornered. That’s the ugliest truth of it. Cornered by someone who knows exactly what I am, exactly what I’m afraid of, exactly what I can’t afford to lose.
And the worst part?
She knows about wraiths. She knows what’s coming. She knows what’s at stake here. And she still expects me to do her dirty work like I’m some kind of mercenary.
Me.
Amercenary.
“I’m not a killer,” I say the second I reach my door, dragging a hand down my face as I shove it open. “I killed Duvall because I had to. That was self-defense.”
I step inside.
Nathaniel is right behind me, close enough that I can feel him without looking.
“You won’t have to kill anyone,” he says.
I want to believe him. God, I do. But wanting doesn’t change the reality: I don’t have much of a choice in any of this.
“Easy for you to say,” I mutter. “You weren’t the one getting choked out by a magic hand. She pulled the most cartoon-villain move imaginable.”
I turn so I’m walking backward for a couple steps, keeping my eyes on him. At least his beauty can lift me up a bit.
