Alex—the girl with the buzz cut—said she’d talk to Rhea and relay our request. Even though she was openly hostile the last time we talked, she really does want us to get rid of her killers.
And we really need help.
Because since last time, Rhea hasn’t appeared even once.
I don’t know when she wants to talk about “what happened,” but part of me has started believing she doesn’t want to at all. Still, we chose to believe her about the Skystones. For now. We locked them behind reinforced walls and left them there.
If the wraiths break out during our absence… well.
Too bad.
I guess it’ll be the end of the world. At least it won’t be next to us.
Cassian fires up the car and pulls us out of the cracked parking lot. The hospital shrinks in the rearview mirror.
“Probably gonna miss this place while we’re on the road,” I mutter.
Cassian casts me a sideways glance.
“Why? Grew on you?”
And, listen, in my mortal life, I wouldn’t have touched that building with a ten-foot pole. But I guess post-mortem, you see things differently.
“Well, I basically got born anew in there,” I say. “Get it? Since it’s a hospital.”
He stares at me for half a second, then rolls his eyes.
“Tough crowd,” I say, turning to look at the others.
“What?” Talon asks. “Sorry, Skye. Your asshole ex-husband keeps leaning on me.” He shoves Mark away. “Get a grip, man.”
Mark jerks against the seatbelt. Nathaniel plants a gloved hand on his chest and pins him to the backrest.
“Stop fidgeting,” he says. “Not only are you a pain in the ass, but you’ll chafe.”
Mark makes a muffled, outraged sound through the tape.
“Aww,” Talon says. “He’s upset. Someone get him a juice box.”
I snort despite myself, then glance at the side mirror. Two crows have taken their assigned posts, one on either side of us.
“Whatever,” I say. “It was a situational joke anyway.”
Mark growls through the tape and tries to squirm free. Nathaniel slides his forearm over to his neck.
“Stop,” Nathaniel says mildly. “Or I’ll sedate you for the drive, and you’ll wake up in a ditch with significantly fewer teeth.”
Mark stills. Very fast.
The road unspools ahead into the kind of empty you only get before sunrise—two lanes of blacktop with reflective paint that flashes in the headlights and then disappears again. The world beyond the beams is mostly suggestion: dark tree lines, low fields, the occasional fence post sliding past like a metronome. Everything looks closed.
It’s barely 4 a.m.
The sky is a dull, bruised gray.
“So,” I say, resting my head against the window, “what did Alex say when she popped in this morning?”
I wasn’t there when Alex gave us the last of the information before we left. The guys told me she came by, but we didn’t have much time to exchange anything because Mark was being difficult when we uncuffed him in the basement.
