We stand together, my men and I, shoulder to shoulder, facing dozens of wraiths that hover in the air like vast shadow-things sent to wipe us from the earth. Blood covers us, still dripping from the bodies of the murdered couple. Lila lies crumpled in the corner and Mark sits in silence, oblivious to the monstrosities only we can see.
This was meant to be my fight.
From the very beginning, Death reached for me. He placed me here, exactly like this. Not Cassian. Not Talon. Not Nathaniel. Not any other Grim or person.
Me.
And now he’s waiting for me to do his bidding.
Flashes of a life I almost had blink through my mind. It would have been beautiful. To leave all of this behind and go somewhere safe and different, somewhere none of it could follow us. Nathaniel might have opened a practice. Cassian might have taught self-defence. Talon might have spent his days elbow-deep in engines, happy with the honest simplicityof fixing things. And I could have finally stopped tracking the passage of time and just let it move. The way I never have. Not once in my life.
But some of us only get moments. I am grateful for all that were given to me, and selfishly, all I still ask for is just one more.
Just one moment to say goodbye.
“Nathaniel, grab me!”
My hands find Talon and Cassian. I trust Nathaniel to be the fastest of us when it matters. He has always had the shortest distance between thought and action, and he doesn’t fail me now. His hand closes around me before any of the wraiths can reach us.
I squeeze my eyes shut and think of somewhere far away. Somewhere without the weight of everything we’ve been through.
When I open my eyes, we’re standing on a hillside. The sky is flat and pale. Fog sits low across the slope below us, thick enough that I can’t see where the hill ends.
The guys are catching their breath, one by one.
Cassian is the first to spin around, check that I’m safe, and take in where we are.
“Where are we?” he asks.
I almost smile. He still has hope. He wants an answer so he can start preparing for the next fight, as if there’s a way to get ahead of this one.
There isn’t.
Five minutes, maybe ten, before the wraiths find us here.
“I don’t know,” I say.
My voice comes out too calm, and I watch all three of them go still at the sound of it.
“Skye.” Talon says it carefully. “We’re going to figure this out.”
I shake my head.
“I know this looks hopeless.” Nathaniel steps closer. “But it isn’t. There are things we haven’t tried. Objects, spells — there has to be something—“
“We don’t have the time,” I say, as gently as I can.
It’s cold here. The grass under our feet is short and coarse and wet, gone almost brown in patches. The whole world is shades of grey.
Buttheyare not grey. Not even a little.
All three of them, so vivid against it, and each one a stronger presence than the last, as if they’d made some private bet to outshine each other and kept it going ever since.
Cassian crosses to me. His hands come up to my shoulders. Then, as if he’s afraid that will be too much, he tries to take my face in them instead. He can’t seem to decide, and in the end he settles for a single finger under my chin, tipping my face up until I’m looking at him.
I let him do all of it.
“Skye,” he breathes. “Come on.”
