Page 22 of Forgotten (The Soulbound #1)

I suppose I have to fight.

There's no other around it.

No way in hell did I think I'd be out here post-mortem, throwing hands with some undead abomination. I thought death would be, I don’t know, better than that? But no, turns out if you interact with the world even a little bit, it interacts right back. And sometimes it does so with claws and slashers for teeth.

Fine.

I guess I’m about to rearrange a fucking wraith’s atoms.

“Wow. You're a real ugly thing,” I inform her, inhaling deeply. Probably a bad idea, considering she’s a walking corpse wrapped in supernatural rage, but I’m already dead too, so what’s a little ectoplasmic lung damage at this point? Courtesy? Manners? Please.

Before she can start salivating like an undead golden retriever, I swing.

I saw what happened when the last Grim Reaper tried to slice this thing—big mistake. The damn wraith just caught the scythe mid-air like she was in some kind of supernatural WWE showdown.

So… She’s strong. Stronger than I like. Then again, that Grim Reaper was already running on fumes, so maybe it wasn’t a fair fight.

Either way, I’m not about to test my luck.

I don’t aim for the wraith.

I aim for the air around her.

My scythe slices through the air with a whispering swish, carving into the writhing, oil-slick shadows coiling at her feet. The blade hums—not the satisfying crunch of bone or the wet resistance of flesh, but something worse. Something unseen. Something existential.

The wraith spasms, her form flickering like a dying streetlight, and then—oh. Oh, there it is. That perfect little tremor in her expression.

Pain.

Good.

I bare my teeth, twisting the blade mid-swing, and shove harder.

We’re not done yet.

Her shape ripples, contorting like some deep-sea creature under water, but she doesn't disappear. No, she surges forward again, faster this time, her disfigured face twisted in fury.

“You're going to pay for what you did,” she rasps. “I'm going to make you feel what I feel.”

And that’s my cue to leave, except, nope—her claws, long and writhing like sentient ink stains, shoot toward my chest. I twist, dodging just in time, but it still hits me. Not physically, no—this is worse. It’s a gut-deep, soul-level wrongness, like a thousand hornets have entered my body, trying to burst it apart.

I grit my teeth. No. Fuck that.

I pivot, using the momentum to bring my scythe around in a wide, vicious arc, cleaving through more of her shadowy mass. The wraith jerks back, and the air itself screams—somehow both silent and deafening—like reality itself is cringing at her existence.

Nathaniel moves in beside me, his knife flashing. It's useless, of course—might as well be attacking a hurricane with a spoon—but miraculously, it works. She shifts, distracted for a fraction of a second, and that’s all I need.

This time, I aim higher.

I bring the scythe down hard, straight for the jagged, glitching mess where her shoulder should be. There's resistance——like cutting through thick, tangled roots—but then something gives. A chunk of her peels away. She screams.

Not just a spooky ghost noise—this is a real, guttural, full-volume, suffering wail.

Good. That means I'm making progress.

“You think I regret watching you die?” I bite out, yanking my scythe free and spinning it in my grip. “I don’t. If I had to do it all over again, I’d still stand there and watch you choke on your own sins.”

The wraith lunges.

I dodge—barely. Her arm sweeps past my face, and the chill of it seeps into my skin. My vision blurs for a second, a headache stabbing behind my eyes like a migraine that personally hates me. But I push through it, gritting my teeth because, well, I don’t have any other options.

I didn’t survive five years of monotony, just to give up now.

I need my ex-husband killed.

And I want these three men to do it.

As if they hear my thoughts, are moving now, flanking her and trying to drive her toward me.

“There!” Nathaniel shouts. “The Grim's scythe is still here!”

What?

I snap my head toward where he’s pointing and—yep. Sure enough, another scythe is lying there, just… reflecting light where the lady Grim Reaper vanished.

Which is weird.

Because that scythe should’ve disappeared out of existence the moment she moved on. Grim Reapers don’t leave behind souvenirs. It doesn’t make sense. But at this point, neither does my entire afterlife, so I don’t waste time asking questions.

Unfortunately, I also make the worst possible mistake: I take my eyes off the wraith.

The moment I glance at the scythe, she moves—not with the jerky, haunted-house horror movie movements I’ve come to expect. No, this time, she straight-up vanishes.

One second, she’s in front of me, and the next—

Darkness swells. A whisper, so close it slithers down my spine.

“You should have watched your back.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

I spin—too late.

Something cold slams into my ribs. My breath locks in my throat, like I just inhaled an entire winter storm. I feel like I’m drowning.

Not in water.

Not in air.

In her .

The wraith’s grasp sinks deeper, and I feel it—her hate, her rage, the twisted, rotten hunger that makes her more than just a lost soul.

She isn’t just trying to kill me.

She’s trying to become me.

No.

No, no, no.

I thrash, but it’s like fighting sleep paralysis with extra steps. The scythe in my hands feels heavier, like it’s being sucked away, like I’m being sucked away.

“I will eat you alive,” she hisses, her voice curling inside my skull.

A second too late, I realize what's happening. I don't just feel like I'm drowning in her hate—I actually am.

She’s pulling me into wherever she’s supposed to be.

And I can’t stop her.

The world around me blurs. The voices of the men—Cassian, Talon, Nathaniel—fade like they’re coming from the other side of the veil.

And then, just when I think it's all over, the wraith wails again.

She drops me. I crash to the ground like a living thing, thudding against the floor. My scythe tumbles out of my grip, clattering against the ground.

I don’t have the time to reach for it.

Because she’s reeling back.

Her clawed, shifting hands—the things that look like they were designed specifically to yank souls out of bodies—are scrabbling at her own chest.

A scythe—the other one, the one belonging to the other Grim Reaper, the one that was lying on the floor—is lodged in her goddamn stomach.

Or, in the place where a stomach is supposed to be.

Cassian stands behind her, fingers wrapped around the weapon’s handle, looking about as blank as a stone tablet. But his eyes? His eyes are burning—wild, primal, like he’s one wrong move away from going full unhinged feral protector mode. Or maybe he’s already in it. Maybe this is feral protector mode.

He just did save my undead ass.

The wraith makes a sound that’s somewhere between a choke, a laugh, and a death rattle. She scrabbles at the blade, trying to yank it free, but the damage is done. The scythe… has already started to glow.

I don’t know how. I really, really don’t. But thank the gods it does.

The glow spreads.

The glow spreads—not in the nice, divine, purifying light you’d expect from a Grim Reaper’s weapon, but in a weird, creepy, crawling way. Like ink spilling backward. Like the blade is slurping her up.

Cassian doesn’t flinch. His grip is ironclad, like he’s been stabbing wraiths since birth. If he’s even remotely disturbed that he’s wielding a literal Grim Reaper’s weapon, he sure as shit doesn’t show it.

The wraith convulses violently, but instead of fading or breaking apart, she seems to draw strength from the chaos around us. Her form flickers in and out of visibility until she warps and teleports to another corner of the space.

“Not today,” she snarls, her voice now even deeper, with a terrifying clarity that makes the hairs on the back of my neck rise.

I’m still on the floor, gasping, wheezing, struggling to reorient myself.

I need my weapon.

I need my scythe.

“You cannot destroy me. I am already dead,” she says. “You cannot kill what’s already dead.”

Fantastic.

She lunges again—faster, meaner, uncomfortably efficient. And for a brief, soul-crushing second, I’m actually glad I didn’t leave Cassian’s room when he asked me to.

I’m glad I got to see his penis.

It’s a really nice penis.

The only thing I’d like to do more than see it?

Touch it.

Then, I’d have no regrets left. I could perish in peace.

But then—Cassian.

“GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM HER!” he roars, but like, at me . Right now .

Before I can process what’s happening, he swings the scythe down in a perfect arc, his movements so sharp and practiced it’s like the universe left this weapon just for him. The blade catches the wraith in a line of searing light, splitting her darkness apart. She screams again, but this time, the scream is cut short as the glow intensifies, eating through her shadowy form.

I don't know what Cassian’s doing, but it's working. Actually working. His attack is stronger than before. And he doesn’t stop there. Each strike sends her form twisting in agony.

Until… they don’t.

Without warning, she pulls back.

Just like that.

Her expression twists, her jagged claws flexing, her body morphing into something even less visually appealing. I see the raw, bitter hatred in her eyes, the kind of deep, personal loathing normally reserved for people who ruined your life.

And then—she vanishes.

One moment she’s there, flickering and writhing under Cassian’s blade. The next, the air thickens, darkens, and she’s gone—like she never existed. Just a fart in the void.

I barely have time to process before her voice slithers through the air, low and mocking.

“You think you’ve won?” she hisses. “I'm going to come back.”

I whirl around on the floor, ready to tell her to eat shit, but she’s already gone.

My heart slams against my ribs, a brutal, frantic rhythm. Something hot and electric surges through my veins—adrenaline, panic, disbelief, all tangled together into a sensation so raw it borders on hysteria. It’s that split-second terror of nearly colliding head-on with disaster, only to swerve just in time. A brush with death that leaves you gasping, shaking, reeling.

What is it?

Gratitude?

Relief?

A mind-shattering, soul-wrenching what the fuck just happened?

Yeah. All of those.

My breath stutters, my chest rising and falling in uneven bursts. I press a trembling hand to the ground, fingers digging into the dirt as I try to ground myself. My scythe lies just out of reach a few feet away.

“You okay?”

I force myself to look up at Cassian, his huge frame towering over me. His brow is furrowed, his grip still firm around the other scythe. At least it’s not glowing anymore. Now, it looks almost ordinary—if you ignore the otherworldly carvings etched into the blade, which weren’t there before.

“I’m fine,” I rasp, pulling myself up from the ground, wincing as my body protests. Whatever the wraith did to me, it feels like I’ve been crushed under something massive. A bus, maybe. Or a really aggressive hippo.

“You?” I add, wrinkling my nose.

Everything hurts me.

“Yeah,” he mutters. “She didn’t get me. Or any of us.”

The way he looks at me… I feel it. The weight of it. Thick, crackling tension. The kind that happens when people are forced to survive something horrific together—the type of bond that screams: Thank you, I owe you, I don’t know what I’d do without you —except the words feel cheap. Fake.

I saved him.

He saved me.

By all accounts, this is the part where I should say something poignant and meaningful.

Except, for some reason, I don’t want to.

Not right now.

Not in this moment.

Maybe not ever.

Even though, yes, fine, he did literally save my entire existence.

Shit.

I inhale sharply, willing my hands to stop shaking as I reach for my scythe. Cassian steps aside, out of my way. A little too quick, too sharp.

Like he’s… scared of me.

“That was… something,” I manage to say, once I feel like I won’t immediately crumple into a heap of ash.

The other two are already moving, scanning the space as if expecting the wraith to reappear at any moment. Talon crouches over the shattered Skystone, poking at the pieces like they might bite him back. Nathaniel tightens his grip on his knife, which, realistically, we all know is about as useful as a plastic spork against a wraith, but sure, buddy, you hold onto that false sense of security.

Talon lifts a handful of the fragments. “Shattered,” he mutters. “So I guess now we know what happens when the soul of a murderer escapes the prison, huh?”

“Yeah,” Cassian replies. “Not really keen on doing that ever again.”

But nobody is addressing the actual issue here. The giant, neon-lit elephant in the room.

My gaze meets Nathaniel’s.

And he knows.

He fucking knows.

“She's coming back.” The words drop like a funeral bell. “This isn't over. We need to clean the murder scene, get rid of the body, and dig up every goddamn book about the veil and the beyond we’ve ever skimmed through to find out how to get rid of a wraith.”

Talon hums. “That’s gonna be a lot of reading.”

“Yeah,” Nathaniel agrees grimly. “It is. But we don’t have a choice.”

I drag a hand down my face. My pulse is still jackhammering, my hands still aching from how hard I’d been gripping my scythe—like it was the last lifeline keeping me from being swallowed whole.

I'm shaken.

Cassian hurt the wraith. Or… something like that. Which means it can be beaten.

The problem? We have no fucking idea where it went.

And we cannot just sit around waiting for it to crawl back out of whatever abyss it just slithered into. Whether these guys like it or not, they just threw some real weird shit into the world, and it's now on us—on me—to fix it before it gets even weirder.

Nathaniel’s already rolling up his sleeves like we’re about to do some light tidying up instead of covering up a full-blown homicide. The corpse—the candy maker, the monster, the thing —is slumped in the corner like a broken puppet, her expression frozen in a mixture of horror and oopsie-daisy, I got what I deserved .

Talon scoops up all the shattered Skystone fragments, while Cassian—who apparently never lets a crisis stop him from being a problem—turns to me.

“How do you make this thing small?” He lifts the scythe. “I've seen you do it. You make it like, I don't know, a keychain or some shit. How do I do that?”

I stare at him.

“How the hell would I know?”

“Because you do it?” he barks back.

A-ha. The niceties are officially over. Good to know I can rely on him for saving my life and for being a consistent pain in the ass. I should have named my raven with his name instead. It would fit even better.

“Pain does it for me,” I say, trying for a neutral tone but instead sounding like a whole-ass bitch. “And unless you’ve got a pet raven that does mystical bird shit on command, I don’t think you’re gonna have much luck.”

Cassian’s expression twists like he doesn’t like that answer. Well, figures.

“This thing is impractical,” he mutters, shaking the massive weapon in his hand. “It’s bigger than all of you. Combined.” He clicks his tongue, then turns toward Pain, who is currently sitting on one of the candy maker’s creepy body-part-in-a-jar collections.

“Try doing it to mine,” he orders the bird.

“What?” I blink at him, because clearly, he’s lost his damn mind. “That's not how it works.”

Cassian rolls his eyes. “You don’t know until you try.”

Nathaniel, still elbow-deep in corpse management, lets out a short, deeply exhausted snort. “Guys. We have better things than experimenting with the Grim Reaper's weapon-turned-supernatural-phenomenon in the middle of a crime scene. We have clean-up to do.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t clean up properly while dragging around a giant death sickle, can I? Cassian shoots back. “And in case anyone forgot, this thing is our best bet at beating the scary-ass flying motherfucker when it comes back.”

He turns to my raven again. “Pain. Shrink it.”

Without a second thought, he flings the massive scythe at my bird like it's a goddamn snack instead of a weapon explicitly designed to sever souls from flesh.

Pain lets out an extremely offended squawk, fluttering its wings in what I can only describe as deep personal offense. The scythe doesn’t hit him, thankfully—because if it had, I’d be drafting Cassian’s obituary right now—but it does crash onto a shelf, toppling over a jar of something that looks like Satan’s own phlegm. A syrupy, pus-colored goo dribbles down, hitting the floor with a plop.

Cassian arches a brow at me. “Well?”

I stare at him. Then at the scythe. Then back at him.

“Are you brain damaged?” I say flatly. “Did you seriously just throw a fucking Grim Reaper weapon at a bird and expect magic to happen?”

But before I can start listing the ways in which this man is a walking safety hazard, Pain—my alleged spiritual other half—hops onto the scythe, gives it a long, judgmental once-over, and lets out a gravelly croak that sounds suspiciously like watch this, bitch .

A ripple of something pulses through the air.

I know how my scythe shifts when I will it to change—it’s smooth, intentional, like it’s folding in on itself with purpose. But this? Thise one flickers, as if it’s being rewritten in real time, the carvings along its blade twisting like ink bleeding across a page.

And then, with a sound like a blade sliding back into its sheath, the damn thing collapses into itself.

Three daggers drop where it once was.

I gape at them.

Pain, that absolute little shit, plucks the first dagger up in his beak and hurls it at Cassian.

Cassian, to his credit, catches it midair without missing a beat. He glances at the blade in his palm, turns it over, weighs it like he expected this.

“Nice,” he mutters.

I blink. My eye twitches.”Nice?” I shriek. “WHAT THE—oh, you traitor.”

Pain doesn’t even pretend to care. I know we’re supposed to be one—me and the bird, partners in crime, bonded in fate—but this? This is some Judas-level betrayal.

Cassian, meanwhile, takes his sweet time flipping the dagger between his fingers, testing the grip, before finally—finally—he smirks.

“Well, well,” he murmurs, glancing up at me. “Looks like there's one for each of us.”

I inhale sharply through my nose.

“That’s not—Pain doesn’t just—” I throw my hands up. “You don’t even know how to use those!”

He blinks.

“I don’t know how to use daggers ?” He blinks at me, like I just suggested he doesn’t know how to breathe. Then, like a maniac, he casually tucks the dagger into his belt before sauntering over to scoop up the other two. “Funny.”

He flicks a glance at Pain, who is preening smugly on the shelf, clearly pleased with himself.

“Good bird,” he purrs.

I feel physical betrayal at a molecular level.

And worse? Worse ? I feel a very inconvenient sense of satisfaction creeping into my chest at the praise. Because that’s the real problem with having my soul split in half—when that other part of me does something to piss me off, I hate it. But when it gets praised?

Ugh.

Am I Skye the Angry, or am I the good bird Cassian is talking about?

…I want to be the second one. Not gonna lie.

Not that I’d ever say it out loud.

Cassian casually tosses a dagger to each of the others before turning back to me, his eyes narrowing. He’s slipping back into that cold, unreadable statue mode—except something is different now.

Because something changed when he saved me. Whether he wants to admit it or not.

For me, it’s obvious in my raven’s behavior—Pain is practically vibrating with self-satisfaction, fluffing his feathers like Cassian just personally knighted him.

For Cassian? It’s that new softness in his gaze. And maybe—a little bit of hunger .

The same hunger I saw when he was jerking himself off in front of me.

Just a little.

His eyes narrow even further. “And you,” he says, voice like a promise and a threat all at once. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

“First thing after we clean up,” Nathaniel chimes in from over the body.

The way he says it sends an actual chill down my spine.

“If you think we’re going easy on her, you’re wrong.” His tone is too calm. Too final. “Get your ass over here.”

And just like that, I kind of wish I hadn’t survived that damn wraith attack.

At least for, like, five minutes.

Until I remember I’m already dead, and being threatened by a very serious-looking serial killer shouldn’t bother me.

Right.

Right?