Chapter 15 The Present #2
The boy doesn’t flinch. His face is pale, drawn, not scared exactly, but sharpened with urgency. His eyes flick to me.
“Skye. You know I’m right. Break the circle. You know I’m not lying.”
“I—” My voice catches in my throat. I do feel it. But how can I trust a feeling? How do I know it’s something worth risking everything for?
I don’t know if I can trust myself. I don’t know if—
The wraith moves.
One moment she’s just a smear of smoke in the hallway.
The next—
She’s charging.
Cassian stiffens. His whole body turns to stone in front of me.
It takes a second. A blink. Then his dagger clashes against her claws with a deep, sickening clang that reverberates through the room. A tray crashes to the floor. Dust erupts from the cracks beneath us. Cassian is knocked back half a step.
But he doesn’t falter. Doesn’t waver. He just digs in harder, boots grinding against the tile, and growls from somewhere deep in his chest.
The wraith hisses, the sound rattling through us like a tuning fork struck wrong.
Nathaniel moves in from the other side. Talon lifts his weapon.
And the boy—
He’s still trapped. Still glaring at me.
“Skye!” he shouts. “This isn’t the way. Stop hesitating and listen to me!”
My breath stutters. My mind splits between panic and instinct.
I watch the wraith swing at Cassian again. He blocks it, his dagger slicing through her, but missing anything vital. She doesn’t flinch. Just absorbs the hit and reforms like smoke.
The boy yells again. “Break the goddamn circle!”
Fuck.
Cassian blocks another blow. Then another. Finally, Talon darts in from behind, slashing her back, but it barely fazes her.
Worse, it triggers her.
Rage. Pure, sharp, unnatural.
She spins in a blur, claws flashing, and hurls Talon across the floor. He crashes into a hospital bed with a grunt, the metal frame shrieking as it topples over him.
Everything explodes at once.
Nathaniel throws something. It fizzles mid-air, dissolving before it hits. Whatever it was meant to do, it’s already failed.
The wraith turns back to us, eyes locking on me again.
“Get back, Skye,” Cassian growls.
She strikes him again, trying to get to me. His shoulder jolts from the impact, his arm trembling with the effort, but still, somehow, he begins to press the dagger against her, angling it toward her chest, toward her heart.
Then she wraps her arm around his, and her claws begin to dig into his bicep.
The first drops of crimson hit the tile.
That’s what breaks me.
My hands shake. My body hums with the power Cassian poured into me, still burning beneath my skin like lit oil. I close my eyes and will it to move. To answer me. This time, I want to control it before it controls me.
I can’t just stand here. I have to act.
And I do.
The moment I open my eyes, I’m in front of the boy, not Cassian, and without thinking, I drag my foot across the rune circle.
The lines shatter.
The boy stumbles back as it releases him, his eyes flashing brighter than I thought possible. Not human bright. Not quite Reaper bright, either. Something else.
Behind me, Cassian grunts as the wraith recoils, her head snapping toward the broken circle as if she felt it too.
The boy doesn’t hesitate. He steps forward once, twice, and the shift is instant.
The temperature plunges.
What I felt before wasn’t cold. This is.
He changes.
The scythe doesn’t appear in his hand, it erupts from it. One second, there’s nothing. The next, it unfolds from his palm like it was growing from bone.
I’ve never seen anything like it.
And clearly, I’m not the only one. The wraith hisses, sharper now. Her attention rips away from Cassian and lands on the boy with a soundless scream.
Whatever she planned for Cassian, it’s forgotten.
Now, the boy’s the only thing that matters.
Her whole body shifts toward him.
She lunges.
And the boy meets her head-on.
“Run,” he tells us. “I’ll handle her.”
What?
Cassian lets out a low, disbelieving laugh. There’s no humor in it, just the raw edge of adrenaline. He steps beside me, blood dripping from his arm in thick lines. His eyes, mismatched, stormy and unflinching, stay fixed on the boy.
Then he nods.
“Fuck it,” he mutters, wrapping his uninjured arm around my waist and pulling me tight against his side. “Let’s go, Skye.”
“What?” I blink. “We can’t just leave!”
Cassian doesn’t answer.
Not with words.
His grip tightens, and he yanks me toward the exit. Blood soaks the cuff of his sleeve, but he doesn’t even flinch. The others follow without hesitation.
Talon catches up first, limping slightly but fast. His jaw is clenched. His eyes, razor-sharp. Nathaniel’s right behind him.
“Wait,” I twist in Cassian’s hold. “He might die in there!”
I remember what Death said. The wraith hunts Grim Reapers. And apparently that’s what this boy is. She can destroy him.
But Cassian doesn’t stop. Doesn’t even slow down.
“What do you want to do in there, huh?” he snaps. “Ask that bitch nicely to stop trying to murder anyone?”
“No, but—”
“Our plan failed, Skye,” he cuts in. “We didn’t bind her. I didn’t take her down. You’re not strong enough to fight her. We need to fall back. Now.”
“But the kid—”
“He’s not just a kid,” Cassian says, still dragging me along. “He’s a fucking Grim Reaper. And some fucking pumped-up version of one at that.”
He turns the corner with me still locked to his side.
Behind us, the air splits open, like steel screaming against glass. Like a soul being torn from the world.
It’s the wraith.
But it’s also him.
The boy.
I twist around just in time to see it.
The hallway is boiling with shadow and smoke. His scythe glows now, bright and pulsing.
And the glow doesn’t stay contained. It spills from the blade in threads of silver-blue light, curling up his arm and across his shoulder like starlit veins running just beneath the skin.
What the fuck?
Cassian keeps moving. We’re nearly at the end of the hallway when the next pulse hits. It’s a wave of pressure, like time collapsing. My knees buckle, and his arm around my waist is the only thing keeping me upright.
“Come on,” he says, steadying me.
A second later, we’re bursting out of the building. Cassian doesn’t let go of me. He helps me into the car and slides into the backseat beside me. Nathaniel jumps into the front, with Talon right next to him.
Before I can catch my breath, we’re already speeding away.
“We need to go,” Cassian mutters. “Somewhere she won’t follow.”
“She’ll follow us anywhere,” I say quietly.
And I know it’s true. No matter where we run, that monster will come. I don’t know how, I just feel it in my bones, the same way I knew the boy we met today wasn’t lying.
I still don’t know who he is. Or what he is exactly.
But I know one thing: he stayed behind so we could get away.
He gave us a chance to escape. To survive.
He chose to save us. To save me.
And I couldn’t do a damn thing to help him.
Even charged up by Talon and Cassian, I was useless. I couldn’t summon my scythe. I couldn’t land a single blow. I couldn’t stop her. I still can’t.
And just like that, the truth hits me.
This can’t continue.
I need to get stronger.
Right fucking now.