I wasn’t sure how to process what he was saying. It didn’t make sense.I wasn’t dead, was I?Dahes’ gaze was assessing, and I knew he was in my thoughts. I couldn’t block him out, didn’t have the energy to anymore. My mind kept crumbling, my thoughts kept racing. I was starting to think again, starting to let myself be something more than a ghost.
“Little ghost,”Dahes repeated the word in my mind, then spoke out loud. “I can’t harm what’s already gone. Your Token made you into a ghost, Magnolia. When you activated it that night, you gave yourself the ability to walk the thin veil between the living and the dead.”
A ghost.
No, that wasn’t true.
“It is,”he said.“You know it’s true.”
I thought back to whenever I used my power. I was translucent just like them, varying shades of gray. I could walk through things—through walls and doors and even people if I wanted to. No one could touch me.
Then I thought of all the hunts, all the times I almost died, all the times Ishouldhave died. Dahes was never worried about me, even climbing the Senith Cliffs or crossing the Sands, he never thought I’d die.
“Yes,” he breathed, reading my thoughts. “Because you couldn’t, not in that form. Whenever you use your Token, your life pauses, you exist but don’t. It’s truly marvelous.You’re marvelous.”
I could become a ghost.
My Token made me dead. It made sense why Dahes had an obsession with me. I became the very thing he ruled over, yet I was the only dead thing he couldn’t control.
“It’s a shame though,” he drawled, still right in front of me. My lips parted, terrified for where this was going. My breath left me in a puff of air, hitting Dahes’ face as he leaned forward, and I swore the walls were closing in on me. “The very thing your Token made you—the necessity you needed to get back to Masin—will ensure you never see him again.”
My heart was pounding. My stomach was in my throat. My lips still parted like I couldn’t snap my jaw back into place. “Wh-what do you mean?” I stuttered, refusing to take in the meaning of his words.
But my mind already came up with the answer, even though Dahes didn’t confirm it yet.
No.
No. No. No.
He couldn’t be.
“Everything you went through was to someday be reunited with him,” he said slowly, drawing this out. “All you ever wanted was to see him again.”
Hael’s chains rattled next to me, and I briefly saw his fists clenched before my eyes blurred.
I didn’t have a voice anymore. Couldn’t think properly to form words.
“You can make yourself dead,” Dahes continued, staring right at me, watching me, “yet you’ll never be able to see the person you love again.”
He paused for entirely too long. I wasn’t moving, wasn’t blinking. My lungs were the only thing still working as I took ragged breath after ragged breath…
“Everything you went through to save him was for nothing,” Dahes drawled. “Masin is dead.”
No. No. NO?—
This couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t real, wasn’t true…
I took a step back, my legs stumbling over the chains. “No, you’re lying,” I choked, sobs already wracking through me. My head was shaking so much it hurt.
My ears were ringing, my eyes burned. Those three words kept hitting me over and over again, but I refused to process it.
Masin is dead.
Masin is dead.
Masin is dead…
“No—” I shook my head again, I might have been screaming the word out loud. “No, you’re lying!”
