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She takes a breath, and we step over the threshold.
It’s not an apartment, or the ground in hostile territory. It’s not even a stone room.
There’s…
A field.
A wide, grassy field, with trees in the distance and the sun peeking over the horizon. It’s absolutely gorgeous. I take a step farther in without thinking. My shoulder doesn’t hurt.Nothinghurts. Not my heart. Not my soul. Nothing.
Because…
My heart isn’t beating.
I was wrong. I waswrong. A wild certainty moves through me like a breeze. I can’t die out there, but in here?
Inhere?
I can.
I can make the trade for her, but only here.
“Conor,” Daisy calls.
Her voiceshocksme. It’s her voice, but darker, more expansive, ringing with power. Conor comes bounding over a low rise in the field like he’s compelled. I track him over the grass, following him, and so I don’t see her until he sits at her feet.
I stop breathing.
Daisy bends to pet Conor’s head, gracious, graceful, and…not herself.
She’s at least as tall as Hades. Taller. Her arms are covered in what look like tattoos, but I don’t think they are. They’re too…alive. Like veins of power all over her skin. Green and silver, in beautiful twisting patterns that end at her knuckles.
And…
She has wings.
Huge, black wings that flicker in and out of view every time I blink.
“Daisy?”
She lifts her head, straightening, and my heart flails.
Daisy’s stunning.
A sharp, harsh beauty my body knows isn’t entirely human. It’s more. The color is back in her face. Pink cheeks. Red lips.
And black,blackeyes. There’s no white.
When they meet mine, I feel her.
I’ve always felt her, but now I feel what she’s doing. It’s like a river inside my mind. A soft, searching touch.
This is how she finds the nightmares.
New meaning crashes in, strong enough to shatter my bones. This is what her mind does. It looks for pain and amplifies it into screaming nightmares.
Except Daisy doesn’t want that. She’s never wanted to hurt other people. She wanted to save her family from pain so much that she moved to the opposite side of the country.
All this power is a weapon, and she turns it on herself. She keeps it in her mind. Hurts herself instead.
