Page 21 of Forgotten (The Soulbound #1)

“Fucking hell.” Cassian exhales sharply through his nose. “She killed you?”

The Grim Reaper just stares.

And yeah. Yeah, I get it now. Laura Collins didn’t just kill over a hundred people—she killed this Grim Reaper, too. And by the looks of it, someone the Grim Reaper loved. And now, after all this time, after waiting for justice, for karmic balance, after being the one who should have been able to personally escort Laura’s soul into whatever flaming pit of despair awaited her… she’s been robbed of that satisfaction.

A hollow, awful feeling settles in my gut.

“What now?” I ask the men, staring at the blue orb between Talon's fingers.

“Now?” Nathaniel turns toward me, eyes blank like I just asked if the sky was real. “What do you mean by now? Nothing changes.”

“But—” I try to say.

And that’s when the woman wobbles midair like a drunk. Her hand flies to her forehead, fingers digging into her temple like she’s suddenly hit by the worst hangover of her afterlife. The glow of her scythe flickers.

Not like mine does from time to time. Differently.

Talon notices it too.

“What's going on?” he asks her.

The Grim Reaper’s lips part, but no sound comes out. Then, finally, she forces out a whisper.

“I…” Her throat works around the words. “I don’t know.”

Talon’s fingers tighten around the orb—the soul of Laura Collins, trapped. “If you're expecting sympathy from us—”

“I'm not,” she snaps, sudden and sharp. But even as she glares at him, her form shudders again, and she sways. Her hand grips at the air, like she’s trying to hold onto something that isn’t there.

Nathaniel cocks his head, intrigued.

“We’ve seen this before.” He looks at me when he says it. “Haven’t we?”

But he's wrong.

“No, this is different,” I say.

It’s difficult to pinpoint the difference, but I feel it in my gut. This isn’t the same as what happened to me.

The way she flickers—it’s not like when I started tethering to the living world, not the same slow, creeping shift from incorporeal to something more solid.

Her glow is fading, not strengthening.

Like an ember suffocating under cold ash.

“What did this person do?” I ask her. “What did Laura Collins do?”

She turns her eyes to me, and her expression is unreadable—something between exhaustion and rage. Her fingers twitch at her side, like she’s debating whether to summon her scythe, but it wouldn’t matter. The glow has dimmed too much.

“She took everything,” the Grim Reaper finally says. Her voice is hoarse, like she’s speaking through dust and time. “She killed my child.”

The words land like a stone in my chest.

“Then she killed me,” she adds. “And I've been waiting all this time to make her pay. She made me watch.”

Oh. Oh.

This has escalated real quick. I glance at the men, waiting for one of them to say something. It’s their whole “hunt down murderers and bring justice” crusade, after all. Not mine. I’m just here for my personal revenge. And, well, because they have some voodoo powers over me because of that whole skull-carving thing.

Anyway, what now?

“We made her pay,” Talon interjects, and for once, his usual sexy ginger rogue shtick is gone. Now there’s just a flicker of something else—something raw. Righteous fury. The same thing that drives them to do what they do. “We made her suffer.”

“Not like I would have.” The woman flickers, her form thinning out like cheap smoke. Her fingertips go see-through, and for a second, she looks less like a Grim Reaper and more like a Fata Morgana. A ghost. A fading memory.

But here’s the thing about ghosts: they loiter. They linger. They’re the nosy neighbors of the afterlife, always peeking through the curtains of reality. And if this one is slipping through the cracks—if even limbo won’t keep her—then, well…

“What's happening to you?” Nathaniel asks, and for once, he actually sounds concerned.

I don’t answer. Because I know what’s happening. I’ve always known.

In fact, I was counting on it happening—to me. You know, after we deal with my darling ex-husband. But these three? Oh, they absolutely cannot find that out.

The woman cannot answer, so Nathaniel’s piercing gaze lands on me.

He’s demanding answers.

“She’s—” I try to say, but my throat tightens around the words like a trap snapping shut. Because if I say it, if I confirm it, the truth will be out.

And Talon? Talon tilts his head, eyes narrowing like a cat who’s just caught the scent of something interesting. “She’s what, Skye?”

I hesitate.

Because the second I spill, they’ll connect the dots. The second I tell them, they’ll realize.

That once a Grim Reaper’s killer dies… the Grim Reaper stops being a Grim Reaper.

And if they realize that? If they put it all together? They won’t kill my ex-husband for me.

Fuck.

“Skye,” Cassian says, his voice a slow, dangerous thing. “What are you not telling us?”

But before I can spit out a lie so beautiful it deserves an award—

The woman gasps.

No, not just a gasp. She sucks in air like it’s her last meal and then immediately starts choking on it. Her hands claw at her throat, her body convulsing like she just realized the air is, in fact, poison.

Talon reaches for her, but his fingers pass right through her wrist.

The fading speeds up.

Her glow flickers, dims. She's got that dying firefly aesthetic, except fireflies don’t look at you with pure, existential horror.

She stares at me. Mouths something.

Help me.

But I can’t.

If I do then…

Oh, for fuck’s sake!

“She has to reap her murderer’s soul,” I blurt out, because apparently, I cannot be evil for my own benefit. “She needs to do it now, or she’ll disappear forever—her revenge unfinished, her pain meaningless. She’ll move on. I don’t know why—I thought a Grim Reaper only moves on once their murderer is actually dead, but… this Skystone must be making it seem like the soul has passed on, even though it’s just trapped.”

And the instant those words escape me, I regret them.

Because now, they know.

Talon’s grip on the blue orb tightens like he’s holding the world’s deadliest stress ball. Nathaniel’s expression flickers—realization creeping in ever so slowly. Cassian? Cassian just stares at me with the kind of gaze that could cut glass.

“And if we release the damn soul, what happens then?” the last one asks, voice all steel and fire.

I swallow hard. “Then she gets what she’s been waiting for.”

But we all know what he’s really asking.

“Skye,” Nathaniel warns me.

Meanwhile, the woman is trembling so hard she looks like she’s seconds away from vanishing. Her form flickers, her breaths coming in wet and ragged, like her body just remembered it was supposed to be alive once.

Uh. I don’t want this to happen to me.

You see, this is not what I signed up for. My genius plan involved my three emotionally stunted serial killer besties murdering my ex-husband so his soul would just… pop right out, like a cork from a cheap champagne bottle. Then I’d collect it, drag him to a nice, cozy torture chamber, try out every single medieval device known to man, and finally, retire to the afterlife.

This? This looks painful. This is not the dramatic, cinematic release I envisioned. And I cannot stand it.

Fuck.

The woman chokes again, her knees buckling, and this sound—this awful, raw, helpless sound—escapes her lips. And I see it.

I see me in her.

I see the same rage, the same pain, the same unrelenting hunger for justice. I see her waiting, hoping, believing that when this moment finally came, it would put something inside her back together.

And now she’s losing it. Now it’s slipping through her fingers, and she’ll never get it back.

I can’t let that happen.

I need to tell the truth.

“If you release the soul, she’ll snatch it up, extract her revenge, and then— poof —her karma rebalances, and she moves on. No afterlife limbo, no ghostly unfinished business. Just one last murder, and then curtain call.”

The Grim Reaper's form flickers again, weaker this time.

“I don't have much time,” she rasps.

Her eyes burn into mine. Begging .

“So, no matter what we do, now that her killer’s gone, she’s about to disappear?” Talon drags his tongue over his teeth like he’s trying to decide whether to punch someone or devote himself to learning how to set the whole afterlife on fire. “We either let her take revenge and blink out of existence like a deleted file, or we lock the killer’s soul away and force her to fade?”

“Uh…” I wince. “Yeah. That about sums it up.”

“That's bullshit,” Cassian snaps.

Nathaniel’s gaze flicks from the woman to the Skystone in Talon's grip.

“That’s it?” he asks. “Those are our only choices? Really?”

“Yes,” I say.

He exhales hard. “We’ve been working under the assumption that Grim Reapers are immortal. Untouchable. Permanent.”

“Yeah, well, we were fucking wrong.” Cassian’s fingers curl into fists so tight I hear the knuckles crack, his teeth grinding like he’s about to file them into fangs. “We've been lied to. We’ve been played . And you know what? I hate being played.” His gaze flicks to me. Then, it snaps to the woman. “Let her have her revenge. She’ll vanish, but at least she gets justice. She’ll get what Skye—” He cuts himself off, his jaw flexing like even saying my name physically hurts him. “What Skye deserves .”

And now I have no idea whether I should be scared of him or, like… pat him on the back for his uncharacteristic emotional awareness. Wow, thanks for thinking of me, Cassian! So sweet! But honestly? It doesn’t even matter.

Because the Grim Reaper in question? She’s about to Irish exit this shit show either way.

I, however, am stuck with these three lunatics, which means I’m the one who’s going to be fucked when this is all over.

“And then what?” Talon asks. “That bitch—the Candy Maker—just moves on? She gets reincarnated like she was just some regular fucking person? Like she didn’t murder children? She gets the same fate as them?” His voice cracks, rage trembling beneath it. “This is why we’re doing this. This is why we fucking kill them. To stop it.”

And, unfortunately for my peace of mind, he’s right. If Laura Collins moves on, she’ll just be another faceless soul in the karmic car wash, getting scrubbed clean of all her sins after a few celestial alleged punishments.

No one knows what the punishments actually are.

And let’s be real—there probably aren’t many child Grim Reapers who chose to personally hunt down the creepy grandma who handed them poison-laced candies.

These men are right to want her soul locked forever.

But then again… don’t we all fuck each other over in some way? If we never let anyone move forward, doesn’t that mean we all just stay stuck? Maybe that’s what it means to be human—to be both sweet and cruel, to love and destroy in the same breath.

And yet… if I start thinking about my ex-husband like that—like someone who might deserve a fresh start—I feel something dark and ugly coil inside me. I don’t want him reborn. I don’t want him forgiven. I want him to rot. To suffer. And if I could, I’d bottle his agony and sip it like a fine wine for the rest of eternity.

“Please…” the woman rasps out.

Cassian scoffs.

“This is so fucking wrong,” he mutters, his voice almost breaking. His eyes burn, his chest rising and falling too fast. “She killed the Grim Reaper's kid.”

For once, he doesn't look like a man carved from stone, all sharp edges and untouchable resolve. The cracks are showing. There's empathy in him now—messy, violent empathy. The kind that burns cities to the ground.

Talon stares at the woman, his jaw tight. Nathaniel exhales sharply, dragging a hand down his face.

They're all conflicted.

For so long, they’ve told themselves that blood evens the scales. That fate is just a game they can rig. That their knives, their vengeance, their body count could ever be enough. But now, standing in the wreckage of their own convictions, staring down the ugly, chaotic truth—they see it.

No matter how many monsters they kill, no matter how much blood soaks their hands, the universe refuses to balance out in the way they want.

“Life and death aren’t black and white,” I say, before my brain can stop my mouth from making things worse.

The woman shudders, the last threads of her existence fraying apart, unraveling into nothing.

“I'm running out of time,” she breathes. “I can feel it.”

A whisper of a plea.

“Talon,” I say quietly.

His mismatched eyes snap to mine, sharp and stormy.

“Let her have it,” I say. “Let her take what's hers.”

A flicker of hesitation. A war raging behind his eyes. Then—

A curse under his breath.

His grip loosens.

The blue orb pulses.

The moment he releases it, the moment the soul is no longer contained, the woman moves.

Not a slow drift. Not a graceful step. She lunges for it.

Her scythe is mid-swing before anyone can react, its glow flaring in one last, oh-hell-no burst of power as she hacks through the air, aiming straight for the soul of Laura Collins.

But she does not make it.

Oh. Oh no.

Something worse happens. Something ripped straight from the dark corners of my pre-afterlife nightmares. Back when death was still an unspeakable mystery.

The sound that follows—

Oh my god .

It is wrong. It is the auditory equivalent of frost, mixed with the sound of reality folding itself into a pretzel. It is fracturing and splintering and tearing, a noise that should not exist in a world that values structural integrity.

And the air? It doesn’t handle it very well, either. The space around us shreds . A force explodes outward, slamming into all of us. Even the men—who have witnessed unspeakable horrors and committed at least 80% of them—recoil. The world itself seems to inhale, like reality is trying to eat the sound to make it stop.

And then—

Silence.

A silence so thick, so dense, it feels like the end of the world.

And the orb—what’s left of it? It begins to unravel. Thick, black smoke seeps from its core like veins of rot, coiling into the air. The glow is gone.

No blue light.

No soul.

No Laura .

The Grim Reaper stands there, scythe frozen mid-swing, her expression an open wound of confusion and horror—emotions far too human for a thing that’s supposed to be beyond this kind of loss.

Then, she stumbles.

For a horrifying second, I think she’s about to just cease existing , her entire being wavers this much. But then she catches herself. Her scythe hits the ground with a clatter, and somehow, it sounds alive—like a part of her just hit the floor and doesn’t know what to do with itself.

“Where is the soul?” she gasps.

Yeah. Fantastic question. Because whatever is now rising above the Skystone—this writhing, shifting, ancient-looking… thing —it sure as hell isn’t Laura Collins anymore.

Shadows coil around it like living tendrils, not swirling, not flowing, but twisting in a way that bends the mind, warping shape and space with every flicker of motion. The edges don’t just blur—they bleed, shifting between forms, as if even it can't decide what it is.

“Try reaping it!” I bark, because that’s all my brain can manage at this point.

It doesn’t matter that this thing does not, in fact, look like a soul. It should be one. It should be something we can destroy.

“Pick up your scythe and reap it!”

She doesn’t move.

And, technically, I shouldn’t help her. This is not my problem. This is not my soul to reap, and I don’t feel the pull of it. But does my body give a single damn about the rules? No. No, it does not.

So, against all common sense, I extend my hand toward Pain. The scythe materializes in my grip, and I clutch it tight.

“Come on,” I mutter, catching the Grim Reaper’s wrist just before she collapses. She slumps against me, shaking, breath shallow and ragged, and yet—still—she reaches for her scythe again.

But the thing in front of us?

It doesn’t wait.

It shifts.

And gods help me, the way it moves is wrong. Not unnatural. Not even demonic. Just wrong .

The shadows around us react immediately—lurching, peeling away from the ground like they’re sentient now. They stretch impossibly long, slithering toward us.

My body figures out what’s happening before my brain does.

Every instinct is screaming at me. Run, run, run —but I don’t move. I can’t. We don’t need to escape it. We need to end it.

Beside me, the Grim Reaper clenches her jaw, her breath scraping hoarse from her throat as she swings—pouring every last ember of strength into her strike.

The scythe carves through the thick dark—through it .

And then it stops.

It doesn’t slice.

It doesn’t even graze.

It stops. Mid-air.

For a second, my brain short-circuits, scrambling for an explanation. I reach for logic, for rules, for some kind of universal constant to explain why the weapon designed specifically to reap souls has just been full-on denied—but nothing comes. Then, the darkness shudders—spreading wide.

And I see it.

I see the thing gripping the scythe’s blade.

My dead heart stops.

Because Laura Collins’ soul has become… something.

Something that should not be.

And it’s looking right at us.

She has a face—well, half of one. The left side? Fine. Aged, wrinkled, a little worse for wear, like she’s lived all the years she never got to. But the right side—oh, buddy, the right side—is missing more than just flesh. It’s missing self. Identity. It flickers like a broken film reel, cycling through rage, grief, terror—expressions peeling away from her like she’s unraveling thread by thread, piece by piece, caught between existing and being gone.

Where her right eye should be, there’s nothing. No, worse than nothing. A hole. A black-hole-level fuckery wound in reality itself.

The men freeze.

The men. Freeze .

I have never seen them hesitate before, and I can’t say I like it. Like, not one bit. This is the exact moment where I realize—horribly, tragically—that my murdery little entourage is, at the end of the day, only human.

So, if we don’t want to get annihilated by a howling glitch in the universe, I have to protect them.

I straighten my spine.

I clench my jaw.

I look Laura Collins’ wrongness directly in its empty, empty eye.

“ You ,” it says.

Except it doesn’t say. It doesn’t use words. It infects my mind with meaning, a soundless scream crawling beneath my skin, coiling like a parasite around my bones.

“ You were watching me die.”

And she’s right.

I was.

I was watching her die, and—oh, yeah—I enjoyed it.

Not that I plan on sharing that particular tidbit with her, but judging by the pure, undiluted malice radiating off of her, I don’t think she’s in a forgiving mood anyway. So, I do the responsible thing. The mature thing.

I double down.

“You deserved it,” I say.

It—she—tilts her head, that eerie, not-quite-human motion that screams I am about to do something you will regre t. And then—ah, fuck me—she smiles.

I do not like that.

I say it again, because I am an idiot: “You deserved it. You deserved worse.”

She laughs.

No, wait—laughs is the wrong word. That sound is not meant for human ears. It’s not even meant for dead ears. It’s the sound of a piano wire snapping. The screech of metal grinding against bone. The concept of agony, distilled into pure auditory suffering.

Behind her, Talon crumples, hands over his ears, looking like his soul is trying to eject itself from his body. My raven flaps wildly, like it wants to inflate and burst.

But the Grim Reaper beside me?

She does not move.

She does not flinch.

She does not tremble.

And that’s when I realize— she does not hear it.

The chill that clung to her, the unnatural presence that made my instincts scream danger—it’s slipping away.

She’s fading.

For real, this time.

“No. No, no, no—hold on!” I grab her wrist, my fingers digging into her skin. Colder than mine has ever been. And that’s saying something. “Stay with me. We can fix this.”

Her half-lidded eyes lift to mine, and I see something in them I never wanted to see.

Acceptance.

She exhales, soft, barely there.

No more fight left in her.

“Stop,” she breathes. “You can't.”

“Please,” I whisper. The word barely reaches her.

Her form is disintegrating now—head to toe, black clothing, raven and all—turning into nothing, slipping out of existence.

“No!” I tighten my grip, but my fingers sink through hers like air. She’s slipping through my hands. Gone, gone, gone. “You're not done yet! You—”

But she gives me the faintest shake of her head.

“I think… I think it's okay. I forgot… what it feels like already.” A single tear slips down her cheek. “To let go.”

The world slows.

The scythe clatters to the ground once again. This time she won’t pick it up anymore.

And then—just like that—she’s gone.

Just…gone.

I stare at the empty space she left behind, my own breath caught somewhere deep in my chest. It’s wrong. It’s so fucking wrong.

And in her place…

The thing that was once Laura Collins lingers.

“What the fuck is this thing?!” Cassian’s voice slices through the ringing in my ears like an axe through rotten wood—jagged, messy, and slightly panicked.

“A wraith!” Nathaniel shouts back. “I read about them once. A being that’s neither dead nor alive. Vengeful bastards.”

The thing cocks its head, its mouth stretching way too wide.

A wraith? No. No, that can’t be right. I would have heard about something like this. I would have known.

“How do we get rid of it?” My voice wavers, and I realize it’s still staring at me. Fixated. Like I’m an all-you-can-eat buffet and it hasn’t eaten in centuries.

I swallow hard. It has to die. It has to. The energy rolling off it is pure rot, the kind of wrong that makes your teeth itch. This thing should not exist. Not near me. Not near them. Not anywhere.

“That’s the thing,” Nathaniel says. “I have no fucking clue!”