Chapter 4
“Idon’t understand anything anymore,” I mutter, turning back toward my ICU room.
The hallway feels unreal. It’s too bright, and too clean, and too quiet, and too fucking long. Every step makes my boots squeak against the polished floor. Normally I don’t even hear it. Now it needles me, sharp and petty and relentless.
What the hell was all that?
Rhea’s grip is still on me. Not on my skin but deeper. Like she reached past bone and muscle, wrapped her hand around my soul, and squeezed just to prove she could.
The fact that she threatened me so openly has me rattled. And yeah… it has me in a chokehold.
Pun intended.
Because I’m cornered. That’s the ugliest truth of it. Cornered by someone who knows exactly what I am, exactly what I’m afraid of, exactly what I can’t afford to lose.
And the worst part?
She knows about wraiths. She knows what’s coming. She knows what’s at stake here. And she still expects me to do her dirty work like I’m some kind of mercenary.
Me.
A mercenary.
“I’m not a killer,” I say the second I reach my door, dragging a hand down my face as I shove it open. “I killed Duvall because I had to. That was self-defense.”
I step inside.
Nathaniel is right behind me, close enough that I can feel him without looking.
“You won’t have to kill anyone,” he says.
I want to believe him. God, I do. But wanting doesn’t change the reality: I don’t have much of a choice in any of this.
“Easy for you to say,” I mutter. “You weren’t the one getting choked out by a magic hand. She pulled the most cartoon-villain move imaginable.”
I turn so I’m walking backward for a couple steps, keeping my eyes on him. At least his beauty can lift me up a bit.
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.
Pack clothes.
I huff and shove my hands into my sleeves, rubbing at my forearms again like I can scrub off the memory of fingers around my throat.
“So,” I say, dragging the word out until it’s nearly a growl. “We’re doing what she wants.”
Nathaniel doesn’t even bother with comfort lies.
“She said she’ll let us know soon where that couple is,” he murmurs. “So we should pack to be ready.”
“Mhm.” I let the sound drip. “Like good little bitches.”
I cross the room and drop onto the bed in a graceless flop. Meanwhile, Nathaniel opens the wardrobe.
“What do we even pack for something like this?” I ask. “We don’t know where those killers will be. Or what they’ll be doing. Or if they’re armed. Or if they—“
“If they’re expecting an ambush,” he finishes for me without looking up.
I blink.
I mean… yeah. There is a possibility they might be paranoid about being chased, or something. You never know.
He reaches in, checks a shelf, and sets something aside.
Then, flat as fact, he says, “No one knows exactly everything going into a kill.”
I stare at him.
Slowly, I cock a brow.
He must feel the shift in the air, because he pauses, and turns his head just enough to look at me over his shoulder.
“What?” he asks.
“You don’t know everything going into a kill?”
Nathaniel’s lips do something that might, in another person, count as a smile. Just a faint tilt at one corner. It makes him feel like less of a statue and more of a man.
Only it doesn’t last.
In hindsight, there’s nothing Nathaniel could do to lose that petrine quality in my eyes.
He is and always will be half-made of it.
Even when he kisses me, even when I feel the heat of his body and take stupid comfort in the proof that he’s alive, there’s always that underside of him that doesn’t move. An immovable essence.
”I do know everything,“ he admits at last. “But that’s only because I make sure to spend enough time and resources finding it out.”
He turns fully then, leaning back against the wardrobe frame.
“Others,” he continues, “realistically don’t achieve that level of detail.” His gaze flicks to the side, measuring the room. “We don’t have the luxury of recon right now.”
The urge to smile claws at me. I don’t fight it.
“Is that eating you up?” I ask.
He watches me for a beat. Feels weird. Like if I move first, I’ll lose something.
“What do you think?”
“Yeah,” I say, and shift deeper onto the bed, propping myself up on my elbows. “It does.”
“More than you could imagine,” he agrees.
And I mean… we could die here. Honestly. Any moment, any day, with the wraith still out there. We could’ve died already at the Candy Maker’s. The threat of imminent death should feel sharp—
—but it’s gone stale. Dull from repetition.
Still.
“Okay,” I say, and sit up a little more. “So what’s worse?”
His brow twitches.
“The fact that we gotta do it,” I continue, “or the fact that we gotta do it fast?”
In other words: what’s going to piss you off more?
The danger…
…or the speed.
I watch his throat work when he swallows.
“Speed,” he murmurs. “I hate being rushed.”
“Thought so.”
He gives me a look—half suspicion, half what game are you playing now?—and it makes my mouth want to twitch. I’d love to pretend I’m just making conversation. I’d love to pretend this is casual, harmless.
It’s not.
There’s too much inside me. Fear that’s been sitting in my stomach for days like a stone. Adrenaline that never fully drained. The kind of tension that makes your skin feel too tight, like you’re wearing your own body wrong.
“What do you usually do?” I ask. “When you three go after… them. You know, not like with Candy Maker. That one you already had figured out beforehand.”
“Do you really want to know?” he counters.
“Yeah, of course.”
His tongue touches his lower lip for half a second. I like it when he does that.
“First we… let off some steam,” he says. “Cannot go on a hunt all tense and sloppy.”
“Why?”
“Sloppiness makes mistakes.”
He modulates his voice into that calm, clinical type. A little low, a little seductive, and very intimate. And suddenly, I don’t care what he’s saying anymore, or why we’re here. We could have a conversation about the moon for all I care.
Heat blooms low in my body.
“Nathaniel…”
“What is it that you want, Skye?” he asks.
My pussy begins to throb.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Come on, Skye,” he breathes.
I act like I don’t know, but I do know. My eyes slide over his chest, then lower.
Wetness gathers, sliding warm between my folds. I feel it dampening the inside of my underwear, then warmer still as it slicks lower, threatening to slip onto my thigh.
“Come on, what?” I breathe. “I’m just asking about your process.”
“Process?” he echoes.
I squeeze my legs together, trying to catch my own clit on the seam of my pants.
I don’t even know what this is. A recoil from fear. A way to burn off adrenaline. A need for an exit. Either way, I want him to touch me. Just like that. Here and now.
I mean… what do we have to lose anyway?
Nathaniel’s eyes cut down.
“I see what you’re doing,” he murmurs.
He steps closer.
“What am I doing?” I ask.
“You’re rubbing your thighs.”
“Oh, really?” I look down then back at him. His eyes seem hungry now.
“Do you need help, Skye?” he asks.
My pussy clenches. God. I do.
“Tell me,” he presses.
His cock is already straining against his pants, thickening by the second. He doesn’t hide it. He stands there letting me look.
We have the same effect on each other, I suppose. But he doesn’t like being rushed, and we don’t have a lot of time. So what are we about to do, I wonder?
He exhales once, sharp through his nose.
“I want to touch myself because of you,” he says plainly. “Because you’re sitting there getting wet over tension and danger like a little slut. And you won’t even admit it.”
Like a little slut.
Nathaniel never called me names like that before.
My lips part.
I like it.
“Am I your little slut?” I echo.
“You sure look like it.”
I bite on my lower lip.
“Then do something about it,” I challenge, and I hate that my voice wobbles on the last word. “Do something about it, Nathaniel.”
He shakes his head slowly.
“Nope.”
He shakes his head slowly. “Nope.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know if you’re ready for that,” he murmurs.
I feel the wetness pooling harder.
“Oh, believe me,” I say. “I’m ready.”
He steps closer.
My stomach flips like I’ve just missed a stair.
My thighs clamp again, sheer instinct. My pulse goes feral.
He stops at the edge of my space, close enough that I could reach out and grab his shirt or hook a finger into him and drag him in.
“Are you ready for me to be a little sadistic?” he asks. “For you to be a very willing girl?”
Willing.
My pussy flares hot at the word. Wetness slips lower, warm against the curve of my thigh. I rub my legs again, trying to catch friction, trying not to moan.
Nathaniel’s jaw flexes.
“Skye,” he says quietly. “Stop rubbing.”
My body freezes. Heat spirals up my spine.
I obey.
The silence after is vicious.
He watches me hold still, watches my breath stutter, watches the way my hands tense like I’m restraining myself from grabbing what I want.
His gaze lingers a beat too long.
“Good,” he murmurs. “Now answer something.”
He smiles.
“Do you love Talon?”
The shift is so sudden, I gasp. He’s too damn calm. I feel like I’m a small thing under his microscope. But somehow that makes everything hotter. I swallow.
“Yes.”
Nathaniel nods once, like he expected it.
“And you can love two men at once?”
My heart beats too hard. My body stays painfully still, but inside I’m shaking.
“I already do,” I whisper.
His nostrils flare.
“Just two?”
I let out a breath that doesn’t even feel like mine.
“Three,” I say.
Nathaniel’s throat works as he swallows. His voice turns lower:
“Three, huh?”
My heart kicks. Hard.
I don’t look away.
“Yes.”
That single word changes everything.
Because he steps forward like I pulled a trigger. I gasp softly, and he steps between my knees.
“You should be scared of me,” he murmurs. “It’s not even a threat. It’s a fact.”
“Maybe,” I say. “But I’m not.”
His thumb strokes once over the side of my neck. “Then you’re too turned on to think straight.”
He’s right. The wetness is obscene now, pooling, hot, dripping slowly down the inside of my thighs. I want to grind against anything. It could be his thigh, the mattress, his hand, whatever. But I stay still.
He watches me tremble.
“Stand,” he orders.
My legs shake as I obey. Heat pulses between them, slick and needy.
“Lie down.”
I do, breath shallow, watching him with wide, hungry eyes as he kneels beside the bed and pulls something from beneath it.
A kit.
It’s just cold metal, straps, alcohol wipes, coils of thin rope, instruments I can’t name. Looks like Nathaniel in a box. Shouldn’t turn me on, but does.
“This,” he says quietly, “is why you should be scared.”
My pussy clenches so hard I whimper.
He leans over me, bracing one hand beside my head.
“Do you trust me?” he asks.
“Yes.”
His composure snaps cleanly back into place. He shifts his weight and slides one hand up my thigh.
Not to my pussy.
Just close enough that I feel the heat of his fingers brushing near where I’m soaked.
“Good girl,” he says softly.
My breath breaks.
His fingertips trail higher, grazing the slick on my skin, smearing it upward.
“Let’s see,” he whispers, bending close to my ear, “how long you’ll remain one.”