Page 100 of Reaper’s Curse

Lines of fire cut across my palms, and I screeched, yanked against the guards’ hold. Sticky wetness ran over my hands, snaking lines down my arms. The drip-drip of the fallen drops upon the ground turned to cannon fire in my ears.

They’d cut me! Sliced open my palms.

My body began to vibrate, and wind whipped around me.

I could mist, like I had the first day I’d approached the palace wall. I wouldn’t be able to pass through the guards’ hold. I’d still have mass and would simply be invisible to them. Appearing as a sparkling black and red haze. But if they couldn’t see my physical body, I might gain the upper hand.

My entire body tingled with the transition kindling.

A boot slammed into my back, knocking me to my knees, shutting down my collector’s eye and sputtering out my misty shift.

“Stay with us, Ms. Gunn,” General Beckett said. “I understand that nifty ability was not part of the original heal, and we need all the elements to match.”

The guards pulled and spun my body around, likely to face the pit on some unspoken order.

“Think of what you did that day and repeat.”

The blindfold ripped away, and the vision of the warehouse full of afflicted came into view. And then, with a shove at my back, I plummeted into the pit. Into the midst of confused, undead citizens.

I screamed. Hit the ground face-first.

Bone and muscle cried out. Searing pain shot through both of my palms. And my face…reaping hell… My cheek burned, and a metallic wetness coated my teeth and tongue.

Feet kicked and bounced off my sides. Weight dropped on top of me, afflicteds tripping and falling over my body. I rolled onto my back, attempted to shove them off, but they kept coming and coming, and I was drowning in bodies, forced into the ground. Crushing my chest and pressing the air from my lungs.

The light from the windows above disappeared, obscured by the avalanche of flesh crashing down around me. Over me. Every push for space was met with a fist of knives and fire. The slip and slide of my blood-covered palms made it difficult to find purchase.

My muscles groaned, head pounded, and I couldn’t see. Couldn’t breathe.

My collector’s eye ignited, and everything before me became swathed in a white canvas.

I screamed. Screamed for all the aches racing through my body. Screamed for all the afflicted lost to their lives and trapped in the pit. Screamed for all the frustrations attempting to work with the Crown and solve the demon reap.

And with my screams, the fire on my skin abated.

The ground beneath me cooled, then it froze, and a mist bloomed all around me. The haze of the pit began to match the haze in my head, because my body…my body was giving in to the pressure and pain. I was holding on to conscious thought with a whisper.

Beyond the thrumming at my temples, I recognized a pounding at the oversized doors. Hits against metal accompanied by the guards’ shouts and Winter’s hollers.

Was the prince trying to come to my rescue? Save me from General Beckett’s experiment? His magic surrounded me, weakened as it was, and how could that be? Wasn’t he still wearing the binding shackles?

His magic should not be in play, unless…

Somewhere, someone shouted my name. Someone who wasn’t Winter. And the afflicteds were parting, creating a path for another―the Killian.

I was outside the palace protections and wholly primed. As promised, he was coming to take my life.

I averted my gaze. My head complained with the movement, but I didn’t want to watch his haughty approach. Instead, I stared at the glass roof through the flailing of limbs that encroached on my view.

A cloud of night and stars shot across my view, and the world around me burst into darkness and ice, explosions, grunts, and bellows.

I closed my eyes and gave myself to the chaos.

“Raven.”

My name whispered across my skin. Warmth brushed along my hairline, my temple.

“Come on, Black Bird. Open your eyes.”