Chapter 18 The Present #2
When I discovered who he really was.
The way I searched Laura Collins, to find out if she truly killed those children.
She’s doing that.
But worse.
Somehow, I know the difference.
She’s pulling his consciousness out of the present, dragging it into the darkest corners of his memory.
“Cassian!” I scream, trying to reach him through the sound of my voice. But it doesn’t work. His shoulders tense. His jaw goes slack. He stands like a man sleepwalking through his worst nightmares.
The boy beside me flinches.
“Skye,” he says. “Stop her. You have to stop her or she’ll—”
“Devour him.” The words leave my mouth before I even think them.
Every nerve ending feels shredded, fire sparking through me in jagged bursts instead of flowing. I try to fan it, push it higher like before, but then I see Cassian’s face, and freeze.
It’s not blank. It’s broken.
His eyes are open, but hollow, like he’s seeing something no one else could survive. A thousand-yard stare turned inward. His lips part, and he makes a sound. Not a word. A whimper. The kind of sound a man like Cassian should never make.
And I know.
He’s reliving whatever happened with his sister. I can see it in the terror etched into his face.
He said she died in front of him. He didn’t go to her funeral. He never returned home, even though his mother is still alive. Why?
Because this isn’t just grief on his face.
It’s guilt.
Raw. Consuming. Tearing him apart.
My breath quickens, coming in ragged bursts as I try to push myself upright. But my body won’t listen. My ribs scream. My spine feels like it’s on fire. My power flickers in and out. But I don’t care.
“Cassian,” I rasp, my voice dry and useless.
He doesn’t blink.
Doesn’t flinch.
Doesn’t even breathe right.
Talon and Nathaniel rush to him, but as soon as they get close, the wraith reacts.
A shockwave of cold blasts out from Cassian. Not from him, but from her grip on him. It hits Talon first, slamming him into the far wall. He drops to one knee, groaning. Nathaniel barely stays standing, arms crossed in front of his face for protection.
I grit my teeth, taste blood in my mouth, and press one palm against the floor.
Move, I tell my body. Get up. Stand.
I reach for my power. I don’t need to control it anymore. I just want to access it. Whatever happens, happens. But please, let me help him.
It lets me rise to my feet, even though agony still spikes down my side like fire and ice at once.
The wraith sees it. Her smoky face jerks toward me.
“What are you going to do?” she taunts. “You’ve already lost.”
Fuck her.
I lift my hand and speak. Not to her, but to the bond between Cassian and me.
I can feel him at the edge of my being, tangled just beside Nathaniel and Talon.
Our bond is the strongest of the three. Maybe because I saved his life.
Maybe because I know more about him now—his past, his pain. Whatever the reason, I reach for it.
I do my best to let him hear me.
“Cassian, wake up,” I say. “Whatever she’s showing you, fight it.”
I know what it’s like to drown in painful memories.
Sometimes I feel like I’m nothing but one long painful memory myself.
There’s no light in my past. Nothing to look back on that isn’t tinged with hurt.
My grandmother—gone. Her house—just a ruin now.
My marriage to Mark—a ruse. A joke. No friends. No family. No purpose.
Even thinking about it feels like staring into a void that wants to swallow me whole.
So I reach in. I reach for Cassian. Not the way the wraith does. Not with violence or hunger. I don’t tear through his memories or sink my teeth into his pain. I close my eyes and just feel him.
Inside, he’s a storm sealed behind walls. Anger. Shame. Grief, sharp and endless. It reminds me of Nathaniel, but Cassian isn’t drowning in it. He’s holding it back. Contained. Controlled.
And deep beneath it all, hidden under layers of hardened silence, there’s something else.
Small. Warm. Faint.
A memory.
His mother’s arms around him. The smell of lavender and rosemary. Her voice humming something tuneless as she ran fingers through his hair. He must have been so young. Before the thing with his sister happened. Before all that loss.
He buried it to survive.
But it’s still there.
And when I touch it, just lightly, the wraith screams.
It’s a horrible, splitting sound that shakes the ground. She recoils, clawing herself away from him, and Cassian gasps.
He staggers forward, blinking like he’s surfacing from deep water. His dagger slips from his fingers.
His knees give out.
But I’m already there.
I catch him as he falls, wrapping my arms around his broad frame even as mine tremble from the effort. My body aches, power spent, soul frayed, but I don’t let go.
He grips my shoulders like they’re the only solid thing left.
“Skye…” His voice cracks. “She... she was in my head.”
“I know,” I whisper, brushing my palm along his jaw. “I saw it.”
His pupils are wide, rimmed with fear. His breath comes in sharp, uneven bursts. I’ve never seen him like this. I never thought Cassian could look like this. But maybe he’s not what he pretends to be.
Maybe, inside, he’s just as broken as I am.
I wish I could say this was the end. That reaching that fragile, loving part of him somehow drove the wraith away. But that’s not the truth. She still hovers behind us, like smoke trapped in a wind tunnel. There's no rage now. No attack.
Only silence.
And then she speaks.
“You’ve angered me,” she says, staring straight at me. “And I’m going to punish you for that.”
“Punish?” I manage to ask.
She doesn’t answer.
She smiles.
“You care about him,” she says, glancing at Cassian, then back at me. “So I’ll hurt him to hurt you. Try to stop me.”
Then she vanishes. No smoke. No sound. Just gone, as if she were never here at all.
The room goes still.
I turn back to Cassian, my heart pounding.
He looks like he’s been shattered from the inside out—pale, soaked in sweat.
“Cassian,” I say gently. “What did she show you?”
He doesn’t answer right away. His jaw tightens.
“She made me watch it,” he says at last, voice raw. “Again. The night I let my sister die. The night I didn’t move fast enough. The screams. The blood. Her pain.”
His voice cracks.
“And then...”
“And then what?”
“She took me somewhere else. Something I hadn’t remembered. I was younger. A kid.” He swallows hard. “My mom was crying. Begging. My father... he was a real piece of shit. A huge fucking asshole.”
He meets my eyes.
“She wasn’t trying to kill me, Skye. She was just showing me everything. Making it feel just as intense as the first time. What... what is she going to do?”
I close my eyes and reach for the part of him that’s still intact, still holding on.
The answer is obvious, but I don’t want to say it out loud.
If the wraith wants to hurt Cassian, really hurt him, she’ll go after the one person he still loves.
“She’s going to try and kill your mother,” I whisper.
And it feels wrong in a way I can’t explain.
The wraith isn’t supposed to care about the living.
She should be hunting Grim Reapers.
Hunting me.
But somehow, she’s found a way to do far worse.
And it’s going to be real difficult to stop her.