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Fey struggled to draw an even breath, leaning back against Joy as she breathed in, her breaths wet and ragged. She tried to match her sister’s even, slow breathing.

It took longer than Fey would have liked, but eventually, her sobs lessened, and Joy’s soothing worked. She took deep, even breaths, willing the fear to subside.

“I’m okay,” she told Joy, finally. “I’m okay. It was a dream, that’s all. Just a dream.”

Wasn’t it?

Joy’s hands slowed their soothing path over Fey’s back and stilled. She leaned over Fey’s shoulder, cocking her head to look her in the face.

“A dream?” Joy repeated, Fey’s fears reflected in her bright blue eyes. “And you’re sure it wasn’t something more?”

Sometimes a dream is just a dream—a random assortment of thoughts and images cobbled together into a nonsensical story while you slept. Sometimes they reveal the things that we struggle with during our day-to-day lives, the myriad problems and anxieties we encounter throughout our waking moments laid bare before us. And sometimes they mean something more. A warning. A message from the Goddess herself.

Fey shook her head, swallowing. “No,” she insisted. “It was just a dream. A regular dream.” She laughed humorlessly, looking down at her hands and remembering that horrible emptiness where her power should have been. “A nightmare.”

Joy watched her as though she still wasn’t sure. But finally, she nodded, accepting the statement.

They stayed entwined like that a while longer, Joy holding her in a gentle embrace while the dream faded into a bad memory.

“Do you want me to stay?” Joy asked softly.

“No,” Fey answered. She took Joy’s hand and squeezed it gently. “I’m okay. Truly.”

Joy smiled in return and planted a kiss on Fey’s tear-streaked cheek.

“You sure?” She asked, her eyes twinkling. “We wouldn’t have to sleep, you know.” She teased in a breathy voice.

It had been an offer Joy had made for Alice years ago. An offer Alice had taken her up on, night after night. An offer Fey wasn’t at all surprised by.

She smiled. To Joy, who saw love in everything around her, joining Fey in bed would be as natural as breathing. There would be no shame in it, no strings attached. Just a night of comfort. Love.

It was tempting after the night she’d had. Oh, so tempting to forget it all and invite Joy to share her bed, if only for the night. But Fey shook her head. “I’m sure,” she said. And meant it. “Now get out of here. Let me rest.”

“Fine,” Joy huffed, hopping from the bed and wriggling her hips as she left. “But the offer stands if you change your mind.” She winked at Fey over her shoulder, before opening the door and slipping out into the hallway.

After Joy left, Fey pulled her sweat-soaked sheets from the bed and grabbed herself a spare blanket from her closet.

Wrapping herself in the blanket, she lay back in bed and waited for sleep to calm her.

It was a long, long wait.

Chapter 5

People are remarkably predictable when they know they are going to die. Fey had killed enough of them to know firsthand that almost everyone reacts to their impending death in the same few ways.

It starts with bargaining. Bargaining is a type of denial, Fey reasoned, of refusing to accept the inevitable, even when it’s standing in front of you, masked and deadly. Once the split second of shock wears off, and her victim realizes who—and what—is standing before them, most of her assignations launch straight into bargaining.

Fey had been offered gold. Sex. Power. She had been told that they could give her anything and everything if only she would spare their lives. They could give her things beyond her wildest dreams, her darkest wishes.

And when bargaining inevitably fails, they cry. Sometimes, they run, and very, very rarely they try to fight.

It’s always more fun when they fight.

But the rarest cases are when someone simply accepts their fate.

Fey could count on one hand the number of assignations who had done so. Who had seen her, blades in her hands, and truly understood what was happening, that there was no way out, and… just accepted the inevitability of it. She respected them for it, respected them for being brave enough to accept death with their eyes wide open.

True to his word, Dameon brought Willow to them within the week, and when Willow saw the three of them, unmasked and waiting, their sigils and Blade’s marks unhidden, Fey saw that awareness hit her. Saw the moment Willow realized she was going to die. And when Fey saw her accept that fate, and face her death head on, she loved her a little for it.