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“You mustn’t go to him, little rebel.” My mercenary’s voice cut like a knife, demanding I stay.

I snatched my hand away, taking several steps back. The impression of his hand was still on my skin, blaring red. He’d hurt me? But Silas had never put a violent hand on me.

Never.

“What the fuck, Silas? Why are you acting like this?”

I rubbed my sore wrist and glared at him in accusation, but all the mercenary did was watch me retreat and cross his arms.

“Me? What about you, love? You haven’t made sense for days, going on and on about the Soul of Life and Death. I was forced to follow you here when you said this was the only way to corrupt your gem and call on the darkness inside you. That without him you couldn’t maintain balance. It’s you who isn’t making any sense, yeah?”

The whispers of the dead floated around my head—murmuring, calling, pleading. The volume overwhelmed me in an instant. I was weighed down by their outcry and desperation to reach me. To get me to listen.

I stumbled and swayed on my feet, trying to run toward the figure who hadn’t moved in all the time we argued, but Silas was already there, catching me by the shoulders.

“Leave him, love.”

“No!”

“You said so yourself, princess. It’s you who’s Death, not Rilas. You might be hunted by darkness, but you don’t have to become it to win. There has to be another way you can maintain the balance and send Rilas back,” Silas said in my ear, and despitenever hearing the words before, it felt as if I knew them. As if something inside me responded to them.

8

Nika

Jolting awake, a cry left my mouth, and Silas immediately scooped me up into his arms. He checked me for injuries while his magic swept the room, on high alert. I quivered and sucked in air like I couldn’t breathe.

I was hyperventilating, I quickly realized. Fear inched its way through my body, ever so slowly. Sensation crawled over my limbs, and I quaked inside Silas’s arms. The whisper of voices hadn’t left my head. They were still there, calling, seeking me out, reaching for me. I’d heard a similar chorus of whispers in that hallway before we found the dead woman. Their growing murmur was a warning.

A foreboding.

Silas’s eyes searched mine, his giant hands moving to cradle my face. “What is it, love?” Silas’s voice was soft and soothing. “Are you hurt? Did you see something? Was it that bastard again?”

My hands absently covered his as I tried to get control over my frantic breaths. The voices faded, and I could finally think again. “No. I’m…it was a dream.”

Slightly disheveled with his silver hair a mess around his face, Silas let loose a relieved sigh and wrapped his arms around me again. “A normal dream, or one like you had of Bane?”

I swallowed, voice shaky. “I’m not sure.”

“Not sure?”

“It felt different…like the one with my father, but it also didn’t. Nothing in it made any sense. You weren’t—the voices, they were here when I woke up. I still heard them whispering.”

I tried to turn my head to look around the room, but Silas reached for my face again and held it in place. “I was in this one, was I?” The muscles in his chest contracted violently. “What did I do to you, Nika? What did I say? Don’t skimp on the details because you’re afraid of hurting me. I need to know everything.”

I wasn’t sure if I’d made any sense, but I recounted what I could remember down to the minutest of details. Silas’s expression didn’t change, but I sensed his alarm.

“I don’t know what it means,” I admitted to him in a soft whisper. “The voices, the person in the fog, the things you said—I don’t know what any of it means.”

Silas hummed and leaned back against the headboard. Gently running his hand through my hair, he brought my head to his chest and wrapped a secure arm around my back. The steady pound of his heart was against my face.

He might not realize it, but whenever he was worried, he’d always hold me close as if he could protect me from everythingand everyone. And in his arms like this, it really felt like he could. I truly believed Silas was the reason I was alive at all.

“You said I called you Death?”

Nodding, I settled against him and let loose a sigh. “My mother said something to me before…” I started, latching onto the memory before I sent my parents into their afterlife. I remembered every word she’d murmured inside my head, so verbatim, I repeated, “’You may think Rilas is Death, but Death is balanced and just. If anyone’s Death, it’s you’.”

Lifting my eyes to Silas, I watched his brows furrow. “She said that to you? Those exact words?”