Nathaniel’s gaze flicks to my neck.
“There aren’t any marks,” he says. “Not like there were on Mark after you did that to him.”
“I know.” I swallow, pressing my fingers lightly to my throat. “That’s what makes it worse. It’s not physical.”
It was pressure on the inside. Pure freaking helplessness.
“But trust me,” I say, “it hurt a hell of a lot more.”
Goosebumps race over my arms. I rake my palms down my sleeves like I can wipe the sensation off. Like I can scrub off the memory of air cutting out, of panic sharpening into something feral.
My list of enemies has officially gotten longer.
Fuck Mark. Fuck Duvall. Fuck Rhea. Oh—and because my brain is a petty little accountant—fuck Death too.
This is all his fault anyway.
“Seriously,” I continue, pacing a short, angry line across the room. “Apparently she knows so much she could dub for second Death.” I laugh once. “Her and I are supposed to be… similar species, if I can even call it that, and I would never have guessed that accepting the deal with the crows would mean I’d get indebted to her.”
The word indebted tastes like rust.
“What the fuck?” I add.
Nathaniel exhales through his nose. The sound is small, but it’s the first crack in him I’ve seen since we stepped out of that room. He reaches back and closes the door behind us with a soft click.
“I don’t know, Skye,” he says. “But all we can do is fall in line for now.”
Internally, I know he’s right. Strategy. Survival. Don’t poke the bear when you’re bleeding.
I still hate it.
His eyes lift again—this time not to my throat, but to my face.
“I don’t want to see her choking you like that ever again.”
Something in my chest twists.
“Yeah… join the club.”
When Rhea vanished, Cassian went white with fury in a way that scared even me. He didn’t yell at first. He got quiet. Then he started pacing. Big, heavy steps.
We should burn it down,he’d rumbled.The whole system. The whole fucking hierarchy. Find Death and put a blade through whatever passes for his heart.
As if you can assassinate a concept.
That’s the joke, isn’t it? I already thought the world was a shitfest back when I was alive. Turns out it’s got a basement. And another basement under that. The more you dig, the more you hit.
We get a whole lot of it. We’re a lucky bunch.
Cassian wasn’t the only one who took it badly. Talon tended to me for a while, but once I stabilized, he just… stopped. Stared at the spot Rhea had been like his brain refused to accept the outline of her absence. Like if he stared long enough, she’d snap back into place. And then, when Cassian started talking again, Talon nodded along to all that madness.
Nathaniel is the only one who can keep his mind in one piece when everything around us is going to shit.
That’s why he’s here with me now and not with Cassian. Not with Talon.
I need his steadiness like oxygen.
Also because we have a job to do. A stupid, mundane, humiliating job that makes the whole thing feel worse.
