Sundered (The Soulbound #3)

Chapter 1 The Present

Nothing with Death is ever easy.

He really likes to pretend he’s simple. But simple isn’t the same as easy. Not when you’ve seen past the veil and ended up one of his work dogs.

I come to my senses after an indeterminate amount of time, spat out of the void and left to pull myself together. As per usual, I don’t feel great after a meeting with the lord of skeletons, coldness, and black Grim Reaper hoods, a.k.a. Big Daddy Death. As per usual, I don’t bear any good news.

I peel my eyes open, crust scraping at my lashes, and try to rub away the grit, only to realize how heavy my arms are. Lifting one feels like hoisting a dumbbell welded into my bones.

That is… not good.

“Oh, god,” I groan, making the attempt anyway. It’s pitiful. My arm jerks halfway up before flopping uselessly against my side, like it’s been fired from a catapult made of wet noodles.

“I doubt any god is watching,” someone replies dryly. “Unless you’re counting that boss of yours.”

I turn my head—slow, syrup-thick—and force my eyes fully open. It feels like I’m peeling something glued shut; the skin drags painfully across the surface of my eyes and hurts.

But at least, I see this.

Nathaniel sits at the edge of the bed, legs spread, forearms resting atop his thighs. The posture reads relaxed, but his eyes ruin the illusion. They are sharp, observant, and cataloging every inch of me before finally landing on my face.

A warm, stupid flutter coils in my stomach.

Why is there a sexy serial killer sitting at my bedside?

“You know what they say. Don’t speak ill of the dead.” I pause. “Kind of hard not to, this time.”

He smirks, the faintest tilt of his mouth, and shakes his head. Just barely. The man would rather chew glass than show anything resembling a big emotion. I don’t dislike it, though. I know what’s hiding within his soul regardless.

“We’re back at the hospital?” I ask, managing to push myself higher and rest my head against the backrest. Private room, hospital bed. It’s sterile and oddly clean for an abandoned building. “How long was I out?”

“Three days.”

The number flips my stomach. “Three—“ My voice cracks and I have to swallow before I can force it out again. “Three days?”

“You were out cold,” he says. “Your heartbeat was gone and you weren’t breathing for the first twenty-four hours. Talon was convinced you were dead-dead. Cassian wouldn’t leave the room. I told them both to calm down but…” his jaw tightens, just barely, “I wasn’t sure you were coming back either.”

I blink at him, trying to decide whether I just imagined the tremor in his voice.

You’d think a man who peeled my soul apart once upon a time wouldn’t care whether I woke up again. And yet, maybe something has shifted between us. If Cassian of all people could thaw around me, maybe Nathaniel isn’t as far behind as he thinks.

Still. Me being gone for three days, and clinically dead for one of them?

That’s new.

I wiggle my fingers, checking for signs of pain beyond the bone-deep exhaustion. No stiffness, no pins-and-needles. Blood flows fine.

Do the rules of biology not apply to this body anymore?

“Wow,” I mutter under my breath. “Guess it’s really hard to get rid of me now, huh?”

That earns the softest push of breath from him.

“Thank fuck for that,” he murmurs. “I assume your vengeful streak couldn’t let go of the mortal plane yet. Still some unfinished business?”

He cocks his head to the side as he says that, a single lock of black as night hair falling against his pale, porcelain skin. His eyes go back to the dissecting nature of his and his stare turns more intense. Either that, or it’s all in my head.

Nathaniel looks terrifying and is terrifying; there’s no false advertising with him. The way he watches you, you can’t tell if he wants to carve you open for parts or whisper his most private sins. Or maybe slice straight through the bullshit, like he’s trying to do with me now.

But I don’t have the clean answer he’s fishing for.

Sure, it would be easy to say I stayed in a mortal body because I wanted to punish my husband for murdering me. And I do, with the same inevitability as breathing. Natural. Reflexive. In-fucking-escapable. But that isn’t the full truth.

“Uh…” I stall, because saying it out loud feels like officially kicking off the apocalypse.

The wraiths.

Death hinting that there are more coming.

That teenage boy—my raven warped into a human body.

There’s too much of it stacked in my head.

“Unfinished business is kind of an understatement,” I say at last. “And I’d rather explain it when all three of you are here. Or four. Where’s the kid who healed me with those freakishly bizarre powers?”

Nathaniel doesn’t look away. If anything, his gaze sharpens. That’s the trouble with him: the second a stray current of wrongness hums near him, he feels it. The man practically sniff-tests the air for secrets, then connects dots no one asked him to connect.

Which is why his voice gets even smoother. Even more deceptively casual.

“He’s gone.”

“Gone?” My voice comes out scratchy. “Gone where? Did Death pull him back? Did he just disappear? Did he—“

“Relax,” he cuts in. “He left on his own. Said he had something to take care of. We haven’t seen him since. He said he’d return.”

Oh, great…

“That sounds entirely trustworthy,” I mutter, leaning back until my head thunks into the pillow.

If Death was telling the truth, and I think he was, even after tricking me into believing Laura Collins’ wraith was the last, then the teen isn’t some external little helper. It’s basically a splinter of me. A piece that broke loose and ran.

Which means the question isn’t what I plan to do with him…

It’s whether I even want to help myself.

I’m not exactly a walking advertisement for emotional wellness.

Half the time I still don’t know how I wasted an entire life orbiting Mark, carving myself smaller and smaller until I disappeared.

I gave up everything just to fit inside someone else’s gravitational pull.

That doesn’t exactly scream inner peace and enlightenment.

So maybe Pain is just that version of me: reckless, self-erasing, destruction turned flesh.

It would fit the teenage aesthetic.

Nathaniel is still watching me, like he can hear thoughts scraping against bone inside my skull. Another second and he’ll be able to read them. So I mask up, exhale the doubt before it fogs between us, and force something that looks like a smile.

“Why are you looking at me like that? Still worried I’m going to keel over and die in front of you? I feel pretty solid. Painfully solid. You don’t ache this much if you’re about to evaporate.”

His mouth tugs too.

“Scared?” he echoes. “Perhaps. It’s been a long time since I wanted someone to not die this badly.”

My brow lifts. The rest of me stays still.

“Careful,” I murmur. “You’re about to intrigue the hell out of me.”

His eyes narrow faintly. “Why? Is it so intriguing that I want you to stay alive?”

“Close,” I say softly. “Not quite.”

He reclines, the metal in his eyebrow and lip catching the light as he tips his head back. His eyes, one milk-white, one glacial blue, look like pale twin voids, devouring everything they touch. Not windows, not mirrors… Singularities with gravity.

Given what lives in his soul, maybe that’s accurate.

“What is it then?” he asks.

“It means that underneath everything you’re dragging around… you still have a heart.”

He doesn’t blink. Just cocks a brow.

“Ouch.”

“Just calling it like it is.”

And maybe I am being unfair. He’s clearly been here for a while.

The proof is scattered everywhere: the empty coffee cups in the corner, the blanket draped over his chair, the open book abandoned on the nightstand.

The man doesn’t just have a heart; he has more than enough of one to sit vigil for three days straight.

The question is why.

Why does he still want me here?

I fucked two of his murdering friends. I’m literally Death’s courier. Nothing about anyone’s existence has improved since they dragged me into theirs. Any sane person—or rather, any person with a functioning attachment to logic, like Nathaniel—would have already cut me loose.

There are a dozen cleaner ways for them to find out who’s a killer. They don’t need me.

“You’re thinking too hard,” he says.

“You’re too observant,” I reply.

“Hazard of the profession.”

“Which part?” I tilt my head. “The pretending-not-to-care part? The ex-doctor-turned-morgue-expert part? Or the serial killer part?”

His head cants to the side.

“Why choose?” he murmurs.

Ah. The implication is murderous.

Cute.

I huff a quiet breath through my nose.

“Fair,” I say. “All those skill sets overlap beautifully when you’re elbow-deep in other people’s insides.”

He licks his lips, and something sparks in his eyes. Conversation shifts on its axis. There’s a moment where two people land on the same frequency without naming it, and you feel it humming under your skin.

That’s where we are now.

“Are you implying I want to be deep in your insides?”

“Don’t you?”

The smile that curls across his mouth is a dark, carved thing.

“I’m a man of science,” he says, leaning forward, forearms on his knees. “Purely hypothetical curiosity. A girl resurrected in a custom-built body? That’s a once-in-a-lifetime experiment.”

I let my lashes lower. “Yes,” I murmur. “I imagine both our minds would be… extensively blown.”

“And yet,” his gaze slips down, then back up, “we didn’t go there yet. I wonder why.”

I wonder why too, but my pulse doesn’t cooperate, and this ridiculous new body of mine overheats far too fast. I need distance. A breath. Something.

“You still haven’t answered why you’re looking at me like that,” I say. “Or why you’re here.”

He laughs softly. It’s a decadent, unguarded sound that sparks heat down my spine.

“I told you,” he says. “I’m not a good man. Maybe I stayed so long waiting for you to wake up… for very selfish reasons.”