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“No,” she wheezed again and looked down at her chest.

This was her dream. Her body. Her rules.

She punched through her own chest like it was paper soaked in blood. Her hand sank deeper, through her body, through the dream. Up to the elbow, she stopped.

There it was—that fluttering, pulsing rhythm.

With Luck, she hadn’t needed to resort to such measures. The kid got cocky and accidentally showed her the way out.

This time, there was no such slip up. The only way out of the nightmare was to force a shutdown.

The grimble charged, its mouth open and screaming.

Taly waited until the beast made its final lunge to clench her fist, snuffing out that beat.

“Taly,” Skye said. But she didn’t respond. He shook her shoulder, gentle at first, then harder. “Taly, wake up.”

She was on her back, arms splayed where she fell. Her hair fanned out like a halo.

“Wake up,” he tried again, the words hitching.

Her chest no longer rose and fell with breath. Her fingers lay still, lifeless. The gentle flutter of her eyelids had ceased.

He grasped for the bond, the place it should’ve been—and found nothing but an eerie stillness, a silence so profound it felt like a scream.

His mind raced, a whirlwind of fear and denial. She was too pale, too still.

Not again. Please, please, not again.

“Taly…” he whispered, shaking her more firmly.

Ivain hovered behind him, worry etched onto his features. He held a finger to his lips. “Do you hear that?”

The world contracted to a singular, deafening void—the place where her heartbeat should have been.

Among the rising, uneven chorus of their own, hers was missing.

No heartbeat.

No breath.

Just a body on the floor, already cooling.

Taly was dead.

Chapter 42

Dying wasn’t easy.

It wasn’t peaceful or quiet or filled with the gentle whispers of loved ones guiding you into the beyond.

It was a terrifying drop into inky blackness.

A flailing, thrashing struggle to keep from getting pulled under.

Everything was cold and thick. There was no up or down, no direction, no light, noair.

Nothing but a single, shimmering strand of light in the darkness. A lifeline. A tether.