Page 20 of Forgotten (The Soulbound #1)

Laura Collins’s basement looks like a child's nightmare brought to life.

The walls are lined with shelves stacked neatly with glass jars—rows upon rows of them, each labeled with meticulous, almost loving care. I step closer, my stomach twisting as I make out the contents.

Teeth. Locks of hair. Tiny, brittle bones.

In other words, fucked up to the moon and back, with a quick detour to Hell.

“Jesus,” Talon breathes. “She really was sentimental about her work.”

Mhm. Work .

“You think?” I ask sarcastically, eyeing a particularly large jar filled with what looks like neatly preserved milk teeth. The label reads Little Smiles, 2017-2022 in looping, whimsical handwriting.

Oh, absolutely not.

Cassian exhales sharply, his fingers flexing at his sides as joins me. He picks up one of the jars and holds it up to the dim light. Inside, a collection of tiny ribs gleams against the glass.

“The Grim was right about this,” he growls. “The punishment's too weak.”

Honestly, it’s almost heartwarming to know that he and Nathaniel gossip about what I say behind my back like two scandalized old ladies at a sewing circle. Next thing I know, they’ll be sipping tea and clutching their pearls. But then again, if I were a human keeping a nearly friendly Grim Reaper on a leash with my two besties, I’d probably want to spill the hot gossip too.

And I concur. The punishment’s definitely too weak.

“It's the only one we can give,” Nathaniel argues. “Torture and death. Pain. That's it.”

Cassian makes a disgruntled noise. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he’s actually disappointed—not because he expected her to be innocent, but because this particular killer is just so aesthetically disgusting.

“We should do more,” he mutters.

I turn away from the jars and look at the rest of them.

“More, huh?” Nathaniel's lips twitch. “And what, exactly, would that entail?”

Cassian doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, he slowly scans the room, taking in the horrors Laura Collins left behind. The jars, the tiny fragments of lives she stole, the meticulous cruelty woven into every detail.

Then, without warning, he throws the jar in his hand against the concrete wall.

Glass shatters. The tiny ribs scatter, brittle and pale against the cold stone floor.

A tense silence follows.

“Well,” Talon lets out a low whistle. “That’s one way to process your feelings.”

Nathaniel sighs, rubbing his temple. “Cass, you’re making a mess.”

Cassian ignores them both. He turns back to the table where Laura Collins is slumped, half-conscious, her limbs still useless from the biological cocktail Nathaniel made coursing through her veins. Her eyes are wide, darting between us, but her body doesn’t respond.

She can’t run. Can’t fight.

She can only watch.

And for the first time since we brought her here, I think real fear finally sets in.

Good.

“We should let her rot here,” Cassian mutters, his voice low. “Find a way to trap her soul inside these walls. Make her stay with everything she's done. Make her restless and miserable forever.”

Hell yeah. Maybe he’s not as much of an asshole as I thought he was.

I blink at him.

No. Wait. Wait a damn minute.

Am I actually losing it?

Sure, he’s got a soft spot for the families that lost their kids, but he’s still a criminal. He’s literally suggesting we turn this basement into a ghost-infested paranormal crime scene. We’re talking full-on spooky house with an extra side of bad energy and child-murder lore.

This man is not a hero. He is a psycho .

And I’m not even talking about what’s going to happen to the balance between life and death here anymore. This is just plain wrong.

But Nathaniel hums, tapping his chin like he’s actually considering it.

“Clever,” he muses. “But difficult. You know soul binding within walls of a building is a fickle matter. Sooner or later, this building will perish, and she'll get free. We don't want any hauntings.”

Hauntings.

I swear I feel the temperature drop ten degrees.

Listen, I may not have a PhD in Black Magic Fuckery, but even I know that when you start casually discussing trapping souls like they’re fireflies, you’ve gone off the deep end.

The only thing I do know? This is a catastrophically bad idea.

“We could figure it out,” Cassian insists. “We could try breaking her first. Maybe we don’t kill her right away. Maybe we take pieces of her, one by one, like she did to those kids. Maybe we—”

“Enough,” I snap.

They all turn to look at me.

I don’t know what the hell just came over me, but something in Cassian’s tone makes my skin crawl. Not because I dislike him. Not because I disagree. Not because I think she deserves a shred of mercy.

But because I recognize that rage.

It reminds me too much of my past.

“I'm not telling you to be merciful,” I say, quieter now, controlled. “I'm saying we don’t need to turn this into something worse than it already is. We already know what she is. We know what she’s done. We don’t need to drag it out just because we’re pissed.”

Nathaniel watches me, eyes sharp. Calculating.

Then, after a long moment, he smiles .

Not his usual smug smirk. Not his usual I-know-something-you-don’t expression.

This is different.

This is almost… approving.

Cassian exhales sharply and turns back toward the table, rolling his shoulders.

“Fine,” he mutters. “Let’s just get it over with, then. I have no problem killing the usual fuckers, but this one? Even I feel weird about it.”

Which is saying something.

By the looks of it, everyone agrees.

Nathaniel steps forward, retrieving the vial of tetrodotoxin from his coat. The final dose. The one that will stop her heart for good.

Laura Collins lets out a weak, strangled sound—a pathetic attempt at a plea.

I don’t look away.

“You don’t get to beg,” I tell her. “Not after what you’ve done.”

Of course, she cannot hear me. But I don’t really care in the moment. It just feels like something that needs to be said.

“You’re a bad person,” I mutter. “And bad people get punished. Your only misfortune? You’ll get punished by these bastards rather than the big guys upstairs.” I gesture vaguely toward the sky.

I stay quiet about the fact that I have no clue how the system would actually punish her. But weirdly, it’s comforting—these three men who break the rules. They won’t hesitate to deliver the blow, to induce the fear, to actually dish out some tangible justice.

Even if it’s just a fraction of what she deserves.

Nathaniel crouches down, his voice a whisper as he tilts her chin up. “You believe in Hell, Laura?”

A flicker of something in her eyes. Desperation. Terror. She cannot move much, but somehow, I see the shift clear as day. Something primal. The understanding that this is it . That whatever power she thought she held—over her victims, over their families, over the sick little world she built for herself—is gone.

Nathaniel tilts his head, studying her.

“I think you do,” he murmurs. “I think you know exactly what’s waiting for you on the other side. And I think… you’re terrified.”

He takes the syringe, filling it with the final dose. Lifts it, rolling it between his fingers before pressing the needle lightly against her throat. Not piercing—just resting there.

“But you know what else I think?” he continues. “That hell is too good for you. See, we’re not your typical executioners. We’re not like you—killing for the fun of it.” He gestures vaguely. “My friends and I? We see things. The supernatural. Death itself.”Dramatic pause. A little too long for comfort.”If you were just any other murderer, you might’ve been lucky enough to simply die,” he continues, voice dipping low. “But you? You’re special. So we’ve got something special planned for you.”Then, just when you’d expect a knife twist or some unhinged monologue about justice, he… casually drops the syringe into her lap. Just plop. Like a weird party favor.

And then, because clearly, this moment wasn’t theatrical enough, he reaches for his eye.

For a second, I think, Oh God, he’s about to rip his eyeball out . But no—he just pops out a contact lens.

It takes me a second to realize what’s happening. His left eye—the one that’s always looked a little too extra—shifts. The overly bright, fake blue sharpens into something unnatural, something glowing, something just like the other two have.

Across from us, Laura Collins sees it too.

And based on the way her face drains of color, I don’t think she likes what she sees.

Nathaniel leans in, close enough that his breath ghosts over her clammy skin. “You see this eye, Laura?” His voice is sweet, almost pitying. “It lets me peek into other realms. Souls, Grim Reapers, ghosts…” He smiles. “And let me tell you something—what I see in you? Rotten filth.”

Laura’s lungs make a noise. A wheeze.

“I can also see what awaits you,” Nathaniel continues. “And oh, Laura, you are going to have so much time to reflect on your sins.”

That’s it. That’s the moment she breaks. Not physically—because she literally can’t—but spiritually? Existentially? Her entire aura shrivels . If she had a soul left to piss itself, it would have done so.

Nathaniel leans in even closer.

“We could let you slip away. Let you drift into the arms of whatever afterlife was meant for you.” His fingers trail down her throat, pausing just over her pulse. “But that would be kind , wouldn’t it?” His smile is razor-sharp. “And you, Laura? You don’t deserve kindness.”

Then, he turns to me. “Skye, I believe it’s time for you to watch and learn.”

I blink.

“What exactly am I learning?” My mouth is dry. I’m hyper-aware of the fact that I feel more than I used to. Sometimes, it’s good. Right now ? It’s bad.

I don’t want to feel weird sympathy for the awful thing strapped to the chair. I also really don’t want to know what Nathaniel means by “special punishment”. I used to be curious about this stuff. Not anymore. But something tells me I’m about to find out anyway.

Nathaniel’s fingers tap lightly against the syringe resting on Laura’s lap.

“You’ve been curious about what we do with souls, haven’t you?” He asks me. “Well, you’re in luck. Because this one?” He locks his eyes with Laura. “This one’s going to be instructional.”

A sharp prickle of unease dances along my spine.

She deserves this. She deserves this. She deserves this.

Talon moves first, dragging a chair across the floor with that slow, scraping noise that makes everything worse. He pulls up a seat across from Laura, reaching into his pocket like he’s about to pull out a gun, but instead, he retrieves a round, blue marble. It shimmers under the dim light, pale spots swirling inside like a storm trapped in glass. He rolls it across his knuckles with an expression that makes my stomach twist.

It’s the same look he gave me when we first met.

Cruel.

“You know what this is, Laura?” Nathaniel continues. “This little thing is called a Skystone. A curious little thing. Legends say it was never meant for human hands.”

He picks the syringe back up, rolling up Laura’s sleeve.

“‘Breath of the Sky,’ some called it,” he continues. “Others? ‘The Stone That Holds Echoes.’”

Laura’s eyes flicker to her arm. She knows what’s about to happen. She knows because it’s exactly what she was doing to her victims.

Nathaniel leans in.

“Long ago, before men knew how to trap souls in ink or bind them in rituals, the sky itself did the work for them. When the gods exhaled their last breath, the remnants fell to earth, solidifying into these—Skystones.”

He slides the needle in.

“But breath is life,” he murmurs. “And breath is death. And for some… it’s a prison.”

A cold pressure creeps up my spine.

Talon smirks, flicking the stone into the air and catching it.

“See, Skystones aren’t just rare—they’re hungry,” Talon says. “They were never meant to hold human spirits, but that’s exactly why they do it so well.” He tosses the stone once more. “They're like a vacuum. Once you push a soul inside, it stays there. No afterlife. No reincarnation. Just... existence—trapped, endless, suffocating.”

“Too good of a fate for her,” Cassian scoffs from the corner, arms crossed, face contorted in an expression of absolute disgust.

I have to give it to him—he does an admirable job pretending to go along with the group, even though I know he’d prefer to prolong the Candy Maker’s death for as long as humanly possible—just to commit some extra vile sins to her in the name of justice.

Must be difficult for him.

In a way, we’re both suffering right now. Me, because I cannot stand this anymore. Him, because it’s simply not sadistic enough.

“You see, my friend here thinks you don't deserve even that,” Nathaniel murmurs. “And I quite agree with him. But alas, we are mere mortals, bound by the limitations of our feeble existence.”

He clicks his tongue, cocks his head, and gives Laura a look so chilling it should be illegal in several dimensions.

“Maybe once we get to the beyond, we’ll give you what you really deserve.”

And then, finally, he slams down the plunger.

Laura’s body jerks. A little. A weak, pitiful tremor as the poison invades her system. No dramatic screaming. No writhing. Just her eyes widening and face contorting against her will.

And then, silence.

The soul is a fragile thing. It clings to the body even as the heart slows, as the brain flickers and dims. For most, it's a gentle, inevitable separation. A quiet fading into whatever lies beyond.

But not for her.

Talon flicks the Skystone into the air one last time before catching it in his palm. He holds it over Laura’s chest, his grin widening.

“And now, Laura,” he murmurs, “let’s see what a monster’s soul looks like.”

I brace for the usual tug—the pull of a departing soul snapping toward me like a rubber band. But, as expected, it doesn’t come.

Nothing.

Laura’s soul isn’t mine to take. We’re outside my jurisdiction, which means—for the first time—I’m standing at the scene of a death, not as a Grim Reaper, but as some helpless, irrelevant spectator.

It feels weird.

I’ve seen souls leave bodies at least a thousand times, and not once have I felt any satisfaction from it. But this… this is different.

The tiny blue light of Laura’s soul drifts upward, slow and serene, like a balloon someone forgot to tie down. It looks just like every other soul I’ve seen—pure, luminescent, soft around the edges. No ominous red glow, no cursed aura screaming serial killer energy like Talon seems to think there should be.

And yet, I can feel her Karma now. It’s heavy. Rotten. Thick with the weight of over a hundred deaths—some children, some parents, some just unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Laura Collins didn’t just kill. She collected lives like trinkets, leaving only sick mementos behind.

Talon tsks, rolling the Skystone between his fingers.

“Yup. No different than the rest,” he mutters. “That’s why we’re here.”

And then everything goes to hell.

A sharp gust sweeps through the basement, kicking up dust and sending a prickle up my spine like I just licked a battery. Talon moves his hand toward the flickering blue light, and Pain caws so loud it sounds it rattles my bones.

Then I feel it.

A shift. An intrusion.

The air distorts, bends inward like something is pressing into the world from the outside. A whisper of something cold, something inevitable, something I shouldn't really feel, but do anyway.

And then she appears.

A Grim Reaper.

Talon’s fingers are just about to brush Laura’s soul when the flicker of blue jerks, like a fish yanked on a line. The shadows stretch unnaturally across the walls, curling toward the center of the room.

From the darkness, she steps forward.

Tall. Cloaked in black. A scythe in her hand. A raven on her shoulder.

She looks like me—except somehow more me than I am. Her clothes are darker, her scythe beads are black instead of white, and her raven? Smaller than Pain, with a longer beak and, dare I say, suspiciously kind eyes.

There’s no inkling of a smile on her face. Just cold calculation. She’s me, but… like the version of me I was before. Not now.

She looks at me. I look at her. Her chin tips up, her ghostly forehead creasing just enough to show the faintest hint of confusion—but not enough to register as a real emotion.

“This is my jurisdiction,” she says in a monotone so flat it makes the concept of emotion itself feel like a myth. Then, without so much as a glance at the living people in the room, she turns her attention to Laura’s soul.

The moment she speaks, the temperature here plummets. It’s not just a chill—it’s the kind of cold that seeps into your marrow, hollowing you out from the inside. My breath doesn’t fog, but I feel like it should.

Which is stupid. I am literally the same supernatural being as her. I should not be affected.

And yet, here I am, reacting just the same as the guys.

I glance at them. I can see the shivers on the exposed parts of their skin, though they all pretend they’re not affected.

“That so?” Talon drawls. “Because from where I’m standing, she’s already halfway to nowhere.”

The woman steps closer, her boots making zero sound on the stone floor. The raven on her shoulder flutters its wings but doesn’t take flight. It seems glued to her, which is the total opposite of how Pain and I are.

But she doesn’t even acknowledge Talon. Probably, just like I did in the past, she doesn’t even consider the possibility that a mortal could see her. Nope. She’s all business, laser-focused on her job. Only when her gaze lands on the soul in front of her does her expression shift—just barely. A flicker of something. Recognition? Disgust? Hard to say.

“So the time has come,” she mutters to herself, slowing her movements.

I glance at Cassian, expecting indifference, but instead, he’s staring right at me. And not in his usual “whatever” way. His eyes narrow, just slightly. Like he’s actually uncomfortable being this close to her .

Like he’s caught the same strange, creeping feeling that’s twisting in my chest.

Something’s wrong here. I’ve met others like me before—rarely, but it’s happened. And every time, it was like two delivery drivers passing each other on their routes: cold, impersonal, a nod at best. We did our jobs and moved on. I never felt like they were anything more than passing shadows in the afterlife, just fellow cogs in the great, cosmic death machine. Now? Now I feel like I’m standing next to a glitch in the system. A “you were never meant to see this” kind of mistake.”Do you know this soul?” I ask, noticing the weird, laser-focused look in her eyes.

She doesn’t even look at me. Just tightens her grip on her scythe, fingers curling around the shaft with the kind of force that makes metal groan.

But she answers.

“I do,” she says, steady as a heartbeat. But there’s something under her voice—something weighty, like history pressing against her tongue. Like she wants to explain, but the universe has other plans.

Because before she can say another word, Talon moves.

Fast.

Faster than she can react.

The Skystone flashes as he flicks his wrist, sending it sailing toward the tiny blue soul floating above Laura Collins’s corpse. I don’t know if it’s instinct, training, or whatever got her so fixated on this particular soul, but the Grim Reaper reacts instantly—her scythe blazes with silver light as she swings in a downward arc, aiming to slice through the soul before it can be taken.

She’s too late.

The Skystone collides with the flickering blue light, and in an instant, Laura’s soul is gone. Sucked inside, sealed away. No afterlife. No judgment. No peace.

Just… nothing.

The Reaper freezes. The raven on her shoulder lets out a sharp, echoing caw—a noise that feels like it just clipped my soul on the way out.

And I recognize it. Because I reacted the exact same way.

Her gaze snaps to Talon—the bastard responsible for the tiny, seemingly harmless marble that just snatched her target away.

And then, the realization dawns.

The woman blinks. Once. Twice. Then her head tilts, just slightly, as if her brain is buffering. Because the man—along with the other two chaos gremlins standing beside him—is looking straight at her.

Her scythe-wielding, very much supernatural, should-be-invisible-to-mortals self.

They see her.

And finally, she understands what just happened.

They stole her damn soul.

Her gaze swings from Talon to Nathaniel and then finally lands on me.

“What the hell is going on here?” she asks, voice sharp.

And, well… I have no idea what to tell her. Because how do you casually explain to someone that they’re currently looking at the only three mortals in existence who can see Grim Reapers and decided—completely unhinged and of their own free will—to hijack the natural order of life and death like it’s their personal plaything?

I open my mouth, but no words come out.

Because, really—what the hell am I supposed to say?

“Surprise, bitch?”

“Welcome to your worst-case scenario?”

“Congratulations, you just got spiritually mugged by the afterlife’s least qualified participants?”

Before I can land on an answer, she takes a slow, measured breath and says, voice tight, “Give it back.”

She’s angry. But underneath it, there’s something else. Something raw.

Not just wrath.

Desperation. Talon doesn’t give her a break. He tosses the marble into the air and catches it again.

“Oh? You mean this?” He grins. “Nah. Think we’ll keep it.”

Her fingers whiten around the scythe. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

Unfortunately, they do. Somewhat.

Nathaniel sighs dramatically, stepping forward. “Believe me, we’ve heard it all before.” His mismatched eyes glint just like the others’.

The woman’s lips part just slightly, just enough to let a very human frustration seep through her carefully constructed Grim Reaper persona. But there’s something else in her eyes too. Something darker. Something that makes me take a step forward before my brain can catch up.

“What was she to you?” I ask, nodding at the cooling corpse of Laura Collins.

Her gaze snaps to mine. “She was mine to reap.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Silence. A long one.

For a second, I think she won’t answer. But then—

“She took something from me.” A breath. A pause. Then, softer: “Someone. And, well…”

Oh, fuck me.

I don’t even have to ask. I already know where this is going.

For all their sins, the men at my side at least have some kind of reason behind their murders—twisted and batshit as it may be. But Laura? Laura Collins killed for fun. She collected victims, hoarded their bones in her fucked-up shrine of nostalgia, and probably ranked her kills on her entertainment fucking list with a red cozy pen.

I study the woman in front of me. Mid-thirties. Long brown hair. Soft features, despite the cold Grim Reaper act. And if I had any lingering doubts about what she meant by someone, they disappear the moment she glances at Laura Collins’ body again.

“You’re her victim,” I say.

The woman doesn’t confirm it outright, but she doesn’t deny it either.

Which means we are so fucking screwed.

Because if we thought this was just about taking out a serial killer, turns out we’ve also stumbled into an afterlife revenge saga with more layers than a cursed wedding cake—and I have a feeling we’re about to be force-fed every single one.

Apparently, there are shades of grey in every situation.

And we? We’re about to find out just how many shades of them exist in this one.