Chapter 25 The Present
Iget spat out of the void in the exact same place I was pulled from.
Mark is still there, heaving, wild-eyed, staring at me like I’m about to finish what I started.
The moment I see that flicker of hope in his eyes, that pathetic, twitching belief that maybe I’ve changed my mind, I feel sick.
“Unbelievable,” I hiss, stepping back like he’s contagious. “What the actual fuck?”
He flinches. The straps bite into the metal chair with a sharp sound.
“Skye—”
“Don’t.” My voice cracks sharper than I intend. Not from fear, but from the echo of Death’s voice still humming through me.
You will not use your Reaper power.
The words feel like a lock sliding into place inside my spine, as if someone turned up gravity just for me.
It should be illegal to cage someone inside their own body like this. It’s a crime against my sovereignty.
For fuck’s sake…
The room hasn’t changed. The concrete walls are the same. The generator hums in the background just as it did before. Only I am different now, and Mark can tell. He has always been able to sense weakness, like a predator scenting blood.
“Skye, please.” He leans forward, the strap across his chest catching. “I’m sorry. I’m so sor—”
“Save it.” My voice turns to ice. “Apparently, your hour isn’t mine to ring.”
He doesn’t understand what that means, but his body does. His spine folds, his breath catches, and I watch the fight drain out of him. Fear shifts into something else, something he knows too well. Bargaining.
It creeps across his face, familiar and revolting.
If I stay here any longer, I’ll do something I’m not allowed to do.
Then I’ll get punished for it, and he’ll still be breathing anyway.
That thought offends me so deeply that my body moves before my mind catches up.
I grab the door handle. I yank it open, step through, and pull it closed behind me without looking back.
They’re right there. All three of them.
Cassian. Talon. Nathaniel.
Their shoulders are tense, their eyes sharp in the low light. They look like family waiting outside an operating room, braced to hear whether the person on the table came back human or hollow.
“Is it over?” Cassian asks first, his voice low and heavy.
Talon’s mouth twitches into a grin he can turn into comfort whenever he needs to. “How’d it go, Little Grim?”
Nathaniel’s pupils are wide, the way they get when he’s been standing still for too long. “Tell me what you need,” he says.
They say all the right things, but so what? Everything inside me is a goddamn bruise anyway.
“Move.”
Talon steps back immediately, palms raised as if to show he’s not the problem.
Cassian shifts without hesitation, his instincts kicking in.
Nathaniel’s jaw tightens, but he clears the way, his gaze scanning my face, trying to read what went wrong.
I don’t wait for him to figure it out.
I stalk past them, through the corridor, into the main room where we spend most of our time that isn’t in bed. For a wild second, I think about running all the way to the roof and letting the wind scrape Death’s voice off my skin.
Instead, I pace.
Back and forth across the faded paint lines, counting them like prayer beads.
Ten steps. Turn. Nine and a half when my foot slips. Turn. Ten again.
The men follow, but keep their distance.
“Skye,” Talon says finally, his voice softer now, palms open in that half-defensive, half-comforting way he does. “Hey. It’s okay if you couldn’t do it. The first one’s always rough. It gets inside your head. If you didn’t go through with it, that doesn’t make you—”
I whirl on him.
“I didn’t,” I snap, and he flinches because my voice could strip paint right now. I shove my hands into my hair, then tear them out again because my scalp feels like it’s burning. “I didn’t, but not because I didn’t want to.”
I was ready for it.
I knew what I had to do. I’d already made peace with it, or at least tried to.
And listen, I don’t mean to sound completely unhinged, but I’m kind of losing it here. I had a plan. Things were finally lining up. I thought, Okay, this is it. Closure. Clean break. Chapter ends, story done. But apparently the universe had other ideas.
The three of them freeze at once.
“What happened?” Nathaniel asks quietly. “Tell us.”
I breathe in, and it hurts.
I should tell them. We’re in this together now, whether I like it or not. Still, the words feel jagged on the way out.
“The void,” I say, and watch the word land. “Death.”
Cassian’s jaw flexes once, a flash of rage he barely keeps contained.
“He dragged me in,” I manage. “Like I was nothing. He just reached out and pulled me through, tossed me around like something he owns. And then he told me…” I let out a short, humorless laugh.
“I can’t use my Reaper powers. Not to reap, not to cut, not to stitch, not to call, not to pull.
None of it. Not until I mend the split.”
Nathaniel frowns. “The split?”
I swallow hard. “Until I merge with Pain. Become one again.”
Talon’s expression flickers between confusion, disbelief, and anger. “What? That’s insane.”
“Yes,” Nathaniel says quietly. “You should have every right to act on your own terms. That was the entire point of all this.”
Cassian studies me. “Are you hurt?”
I start to say no, but the word won’t come. “Yes,” I admit. “Not in a way you can stitch. It feels like the power is completely gone. Not like before when it was simply out of reach. There’s… nothing there.”
I start pacing because standing still feels unbearable.
Talon follows, keeping a few steps behind. “Hey,” he says softly. “We’ll figure it out, Skye.”
“How?” I turn to him. “We all know what’s coming next.”
Cassian exhales slowly. He glances at Nathaniel. “The wraiths.”
“Yeah,” I say, my voice rising. “The wraiths. We have twelve volatile souls in boxes, and a god who just put child locks on my everything. He expects me to stop the apocalypse without the one thing that made me capable of it.”
Nathaniel shakes his head. “That isn’t just unfair. It’s reckless.”
Talon lets out a dry laugh that doesn’t sound amused. “Unfair? She’s an innocent soul shoved into post-mortem labor, and her boss just said, ‘No powers, fix your trauma, and save the world.’ That’s not unfair, that’s divine cruelty.”
“I’m fine,” I say automatically, though even I can hear how false it sounds. “I’m fine, I just—”
The generator hum deepens, then steadies. Outside the high windows, something shifts in the air. A dark ripple moves through the sky, breaking apart and reforming. The hair on my arms stands on end.
All three men turn toward the glass.
Then the crows rise.
They explode from the ledges in a single, black wave—thousands of wings tearing at the sky. The sound is vicious, like cards shuffled too fast. Their cries cut through the walls, a raw, living storm.
Talon takes a slow step toward the window. “What the hell…”
“Is that him?” Nathaniel asks, already shifting into combat focus. “Is this Death’s idea of—”
“No.” The word bursts out before I can stop it. My mouth tastes like iron. “It’s not him. It’s them.”
My stomach drops.
The crows that helped me take Mark. Their owners are here to collect on the promise I made.
The birds climb higher, twisting into a jagged formation over the roof. Then, all at once, they go still. The sound cuts out like a severed wire.
For a heartbeat, no one moves. Even Mark, locked somewhere in the sub-basement, must feel it. Something’s wrong.
The air thickens, electric and wrong.
Then the cold hits.
It seeps through the floor, through skin and bone, into the gaps between my ribs. My lungs seize on the inhale. Every hair on my body stands on end.
My pulse spikes.
A thought slams into me.
Are we sure it’s the Grim Reapers coming?
What if this is the moment one of the wraiths gets out of the Skystones?
Something begins to take shape in the center of the room. The air folds inward, solidifying into a figure. My blood turns to static. My body moves on instinct. I reach for Cassian’s hand, search for Talon’s eyes, for Nathaniel’s calm.
Anything steady. Anything real.
That’s all I want.
But then I see it.
A glint of metal. The curved edge of a scythe cutting through the dim light. Shadows curl obediently around a pair of boots, then climb upward, forming the outline of a woman.
A Grim Reaper.
She’s tall, composed, haloed in the mist of dark. Long brown hair spills down her back. Her eyes, deep and unreadable, don’t blink. Her face is small, almost gentle. Familiar in a way that shouldn’t be possible.
And yet when our gazes meet, something inside me lurches so violently it nearly knocks me breathless.
Recognition.
“Hello, Skye,” she says smoothly. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”
She steps closer, her scythe dissolving into mist, her hand extending toward me like an invitation. The smile that follows is soft. Too soft.
My pulse spikes.
No. Not mine.
I turn.
Talon stands by the window, frozen. His eyes are wide, mouth parted, every trace of color gone from his face. It’s his pulse that spikes.
“Rhea?” he breathes.
And just like that, the world stops turning.
Rhea.
The last person Talon lost—
and the last person I ever thought I’d see.
In Talon’s story, he killed her murderers.
But she’s here. A Grim Reaper.
How is that possible?
I don’t know.
But whatever help she came for, it’s too late.
I have nothing left to give.