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My head spun, and as far as I knew I didn't even have a head. Cronus had crushed it into ash and nothingness.
"You have to come back," the second woman said, her raspy voice harder than the other, iron in her words. "Haley needs you. She's falling apart. You have to come back."
The darkness lightened, their voices louder. Those words echoed around my head, making me flinch with every pass.
She's falling apart.
Haley needs you.
How? I tried to ask, and when that didn't work, I tried to scream it. How do I come back? How do I claw my way out?
Death was nice and all,2 but no fucking way was I staying when I had a second chance. I didn't know how when I didn't technically exist and I hadn't realised I had a soul to begin with, but I wasn't about to pass up this opportunity.
Unless this was an elaborate scheme by Cronus. It wouldn't surprise me. That bastard was cunning and cruel. It was very on brand for him to give me everything and then rip it away. I'd had a mate who didn't look at me with pure hatred anymore, a mate who held me at my weakest and murmured reassurances, who saw me and not the value I had as a tool.
Haley needs you.
She's falling apart.
"That's it," the powerful woman encouraged, her magic rippling through the dark space.3 "Fight it. You're strong, Wynvail. You have one of the strongest souls I've ever seen."
"Keep talking about his mate," the man murmured.
"I don't want to torture him," the raspy woman sighed. Younger than the powerful woman.
Torture me? Why would she torture me by talking about my Halwen? Panic and rage fused inside me. What had happened? Was she okay? Had Cronus come for her after he unmade me?
A roar came from deep in the chest I wasn't supposed to have, and I slashed through the darkness, pulling on my magic—where the fuck was my magic?
"Almost here," the powerful woman said, coaxing me further out of the dark with her voice. Magic wrapped around me, tingling against my skin, and the emptiness around me filled in with shapes and muted colour. Not shadows but—was that a fucking wardrobe? "That's it, Wynvail."
"Think of your mate," the man said, low and rumbling. "She needs you."
"She—" the younger woman said haltingly. "She broke down in tears earlier. She was a mess—"
I shattered the death clinging to me with a bellowing howl of rage, surging up and grabbing the shoulder of the scarred, brunette woman hovering beside—my bed? It didn't matter where I was or how I was here, or how I had a body when it had been ripped apart to dust.
"What happened to my mate? Where is she?"
My yell echoed off the wood-panelled walls of the small room.
"Easy," the man warned, his voice deeper, foreboding. Chills froze my skin, and I snapped my gaze to a tall, black-haired fifty-something man. He hovered at my bedside, and my soul jolted against the unfamiliar confines of my body when his hand came down on my wrist and broke my grip on the brunette young woman. "She's the only reason you're still alive, so I'd treat her better if I were you."
The woman with pure power in her voice turned out to be a graceful redhead in her thirties with a porcelain face, elegant freckled features, and leather armour that criss-crossed over a deep forest green dress. Huh. I was expecting someone bigger, rougher. She might have a soft, careful voice but her aura was full of magic.
I shuddered, scrambling up the bed to put my back to the wooden headboard. I scowled, just to preserve some of my dignity, as if I wasn't terrified.
"Wynvail," the brunette said, snagging my attention. She didn't baulk under my glare, but her dark wings ruffled in irritation or concern. I'd never been good at understanding the body language of wings. "Haley's my friend, I'm Lili. She might have spoken about me."
"Liliana, Queen of Hell," the redhead corrected with a gleam in her eyes.
"And the Justice of Hell. The Balance who terrifies even the gods," the man added proudly.
My stomach knotted. "How the fuck am I alive, and what do you want from me?"
I might as well get the bullshit out of the way first. If I was expected to be their pawn or slave, I'd rather know now instead of letting the first taste of freedom give me hope. But fuck, I really felt alive. I was in a homely little bedroom, surrounded by powerful people, and none of it made sense, but I could breathe, and my heart thumped my ribs, and I could even wiggle my toes.
"I asked them to save you," the queen and balance and whatever the fuck else said, giving me a tentative smile. "Haley's my friend, and it's not right that you were killed just because you freed her other mate from being tortured for a hundred years. Plus, there's Cronus to consider."
