Chapter 1 The Present #2
Cassian’s head snaps toward the door like he’s already halfway down the stairs in his mind. His jaw flexes. I can practically see the war behind his eyes: do we test Death’s shiny new commandment, or do we handle this whole Rhea situation first?
Because Rhea doesn’t even seem to want to hold a conversation. The girl is speaking in riddles and lovey-dovey looks toward Talon.
“Wow,” she says now. “So you did it.”
I have no doubt she’s talking to me.
“Did what?”
“You captured your ex-husband,” she clarifies. “The help from my crows let you achieve your goal.”
Um… I did indeed. And where did that get me? I don’t bother with making small talk about it. I know where this is going. Yes, I agreed to the deal. Yes, Mark in the basement is living proof of that. Unfortunately. Yes, it’s my turn to show up.
Let’s just cut to the chase.
“What do you want?” I ask.
“Help,” Rhea replies.
“You never said what that help would entail.”
“You agreed anyway.”
She’s right.
It did seem like a very good move at the time. But you know, I didn’t exactly imagine this. I didn’t imagine finding out the person I’m indebted to has sour feelings toward me from the start because I happen to be sleeping with her ex-boyfriend.
That makes the deal not just bad.
It makes it volatile.
“Oh, spare me that expression,” she says suddenly. “I told you I didn’t come here to be malicious.”
My hands curl into fists at my sides before I can stop them.
“Could’ve fooled me,” I mutter, but she rolls right over it, like my defenses are a child’s tantrum and she’s heard worse.
“I need you to kill for me,” she says, voice steady.
I blink.
“Your… killer?” I wager.
“Yes,” Rhea confirms. “It’s a couple.”
“A couple?” Talon echoes, and this time his stillness cracks. I can see him sifting through memory, trying to build a timeline of her death from this little scrap.
“Nobody you know,” Rhea says straight away.
“Who are they?” I ask.
“They’re married,” she says. “They drive around the country in a white van. They look… harmless. Friendly. Helpful.” Her mouth tightens on that last word. “They pick up girls who look stranded.”
My stomach drops, slow and sick.
“What do they…” I swallow. “…do?”
“They murder them,” she says. Flat. “Obviously.”
Mhm… yeah. Because that’s what I meant. No, I meant how did they kill her. But that doesn’t seem to matter, in hindsight.
“I’ll give you names later,” she adds. “They change identities often. New plates, new hair, new states. But I know roughly where they’ll be in a few days.”
A few days.
She says it like she’s talking about catching a freaking train.
“But I cannot linger here to explain,” she continues, already moving past my shock, “so you’ll have to prepare yourselves quickly.”
Prepare ourselves.
My hand lifts before I can stop it, like something is about to get thrown at my face and I’m bracing on reflex.
“Sorry. No. Absolutely not,” I say. My voice comes out sharper than I feel, which is saying something, because I’m vibrating inside my skin. “I didn’t agree to help you like that.”
“Yes, you did,” Rhea says.
“I agreed when I didn’t know what it was!”
“Yes. And it was binding.”
“Binding?” I echo.
“You used a lot of my power,” she says. “Either you give it back, which I doubt you can, considering the amount it took to control thousands of birds at once, or…” She tilts her head. “…you do as I say.”
Hold up.
Wait.
I controlled her crows?
My pulse slams against my throat. Heat crawls up the back of my neck, crawling, crawling—
I didn’t want them to attack me, for fuck’s sake. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t even know that’s what I was doing. I was trying to survive. I was trying not to die.
This is so unfair it makes my vision sharpen at the edges.
It doesn’t even matter what else she’s going to say. I can feel it in my bones: this is already a sour deal, and I’m on the losing side.
“Or what?” I ask, voice low. “What are you going to do to me?”
Rhea lifts two fingers.
That’s all.
Air punches out of my lungs.
My vision tunnels. My knees go watery. A cold, oily pressure blooms behind my ribs, like something is curling around my heart from the inside, tightening, tightening—
I grab the edge of the nearest surface purely on instinct, fingers scrabbling for purchase.
“Ugh…” I choke.
Talon moves fast. He’s suddenly there, an arm braced behind my back, his hand clamped on my shoulder like he can physically keep me anchored to the floor.
“Stop,” he bites out.
Rhea’s gaze slides to him and her eyes soften once again.
“She needs to understand the extent of her debt,” she says.
My throat burns. My heartbeat is a battering ram.
I suck in air in ugly, panicked pulls, and every breath tastes like metal.
Rhea lowers her hand.
Instantly, the pressure eases.
“What the… What the hell?” I gasp.
Wow. I hate her for that more than I can articulate.
“That,” she says, nodding once, “is what happens when I tug on what you borrowed.”
I force my spine to straighten even though my legs are shaking under me, even though humiliation and fury are mixing into something volatile.
“You are a bitch, you know that?” I spit.
Rhea’s mouth tightens.
“I wasn’t always one,” she says quietly. Then, with a little shrug of inevitability: “But yes. I know that.”
She purses her lips like she’s done with the emotional portion of this conversation and would like to return to business.
“Skye,” she says, “you promised. You don’t get to back out now.”
I swallow hard, trying to get my heartbeat back under control, trying to shove my panic into a neat little box so I can think. But it’s hard to think right now. I hate that my anger has nowhere to go except outward.
“I won’t back out,” I manage through my teeth.
The second the last word clears my mouth, Cassian and Nathaniel move.
They procure the scythe-made daggers and attack.
Cassian closes the space so fast it’s almost insulting.
He cuts the blade toward her ribs. Nathaniel moves in sync, coming from the other side, not mirroring Cassian but complementing him, forcing her attention to split.
For a single, vicious heartbeat, relief flashes bright inside me.
Good.
Good, fuck her. Fuck the bitch who thinks she can hold my lungs hostage like a leash. And I’m sorry to Talon—sorry, I am—but if Rhea didn’t come looking for him for years, if she didn’t even try, then what was he to her? A pretty memory?
She doesn’t deserve him. He’s mine.
But she doesn’t even widen her eyes.
She slips between the attacks like she’s been waiting for them all along. A pivot of her hips, a ghost-step back, a turn of her shoulder. Cassian’s blade passes where her body was and hits nothing but cold air. Nathaniel’s slash catches the edge of her cloak and she’s out of it before it can snag.
And then she lifts her hand again.
My body reacts before my mind can. The pressure slams back down on me, sudden and absolute.
“Drop the daggers,” she says. “Or Skye suffers more.”
I try to suck air in and get nothing but a thin, humiliating sip.
Talon tightens around me immediately, one arm braced across my ribs, the other at my shoulders, like he can physically hold my organs in place if she tries to crush me from the inside. His hand is warm through my shirt. The contact should be comforting.
It isn’t.
It just reminds me that I’m small in his arms right now.
And when he looks at Rhea, it’s like he’s seeing the outline of someone he used to know… and realizing the shape doesn’t fit anymore.
“Rhea, stop it,” he says. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You’re hurting her!”
But she couldn’t care less.
“Drop them,” she says again, and this time there’s a faint edge under the calm. “Now.”
Cassian’s hand trembles.
Nathaniel exhales through his nose, slow, controlled, like he’s leashing himself too.
And I hate it.
I hate her. I really hate her.
Cassian lowers the dagger. The metal dips toward the floor. Nathaniel follows suit.
“Good,” Rhea murmurs.
Then she tightens her hold on me anyway, just for the hell of it.
Pain detonates down my spine and blooms behind my eyes. I arch against Talon without meaning to.
“Don’t,” she adds, “think about trying again.”
The pressure eases only slightly.
And before I can drag in a proper breath, shadows gather at her feet. Blackness climbs her legs and devours the hem of her clothes. The last thing to go is her face.
She looks at me, still folded into Talon’s arms, still fighting for air like I’m drowning on dry land, and her expression does that soft, gentle thing again.
“Don’t go near the trapped souls either,” she whispers. “Wouldn’t want to make any more wraiths, now would we?”
And then she’s gone.
For a long, long moment, none of us move.
Then, from the basement, Mark screams my name again.
“SKYE!”
And all I want—God, all I want—is to lie down and never stand back up again.
I don’t have that luxury, though.
“Can someone tell me how the fuck Talon’s ex knows about the wraiths?” I rasp.
Nobody can answer me, even if they try.