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“Do you not realize who he was? Lycus was the son of—”
“Does it seem like we care?” Cassian snapped. “There are no ancients here. If Mercury wanted to protect his misbehaving son from our wrath, he should have kept him on a tighter leash.” He swung his still materialized scale, no longer occupied by the demi-god’s power, into Florence’s peripheral vision. “Work, before I lose my patience with you.”
Florence drew her shoulders up. Her fingers tensed and pressed visibly into Sienna’s chest. “Ididn’t kill her, or let her get gutted. Why am I being punished like I did?”
Fenn dropped into a crouch across from her, at Sienna’s side once more, and glared straight at Florence. “Would you prefer I hauled you back to that house and forced you to heal the sister youdidcut up? If you make me do that, I will see to it you live every day of the rest of your life with recurring wounds to match. You will never have a single day of peace, free of pain or blood, again. Do you understand?” Florence stared at him, pale and obviously shaken by his threat. Or perhaps the venom even he could hear in his voice when he’d spoken. Seconds passed before she dropped her gaze down to Sienna and quietly said, “Th-this will take a while … I’m not used to healing other people, and she was mostly dead when I started…”
Fenn lowered to his knees. “I have all the time in the world.”
Florence’s jaw went taut, but she said nothing more.
She registered the heat first, surrounding her, quickly followed by the blinding white. It was as if she were floating in the light and no matter how she squinted, she couldn’t see past it. She wasn’t even sure she was on her feet or hanging sideways. Something pressed uncomfortably on her collarbone and Sienna reached up to rub at it, wishing she could make it stop. Whatever it was.
Finally, something with color and shading flickered ahead, catching her attention. Drawing her focus away from the encompassing heat and consistent pressure. Sienna urged herself closer, desperate to see what it was, to reach it if she could. Then suddenly it was right in front of her and she found herself looking through a keyhole, but this time the periphery was blinding light instead of darkness. It was disorienting, yet the familiar offered comfort.
A few seconds passed before Sienna realized she was looking at mirrors. Several mirrors, almost like a Halloween funhouse. The light around her practically reflected off the glass of them before someone walked into view, sideways and then entirely facing away from her. But the mirrors helped her see the woman’s features somewhat and Sienna was even more confused. “Piper?”
Her sister—or the woman who certainly looked like her sister—turned toward her, looking right through the keyhole viewpoint.
And then it was gone, leaving Sienna suddenly floating once more in blinding light.
She frowned, frustrated, and yelled at the universe. “What’s even the point of this? Let me out of here!” Immediately it felt as though something punched her in the gut, and then she remembered.
Lycus had literally shoved his hand inside her. Gutted her. Or maybe all he’d done was rip a hole in her torso, but the human body wasn’t meant to survive that, so it amounted to the same thing. The breath rushed from her lungs and she rubbed at the pressure on her collarbone again.
“Holy shitballs…” Did that mean she was dead? What about Fenn? What about Piper, and Maya?
Tears rushed her eyes, hot and fast, and Sienna found it hard to breathe. Only then remembering her nose had been broken, too. Was this death? Was this the afterlife? Or the in-between? Was she passing over, or whatever happened after Fenn transitioned the deceased? She had so many questions, and she didn’t want the answers to half of them.
Urgency filled her as her memories tumbled back in no particular order, bringing emotions with them. She spun herself around, looking foranything. Even another keyhole.
“Hello?” Of course, no one answered. “Hey! Fenn! Someone!” Her tears choked her and she gulped down a lump of terror and desperation. She wasn’t ready to be dead. She had so much to live for and so many people who would cry if she didn’t come home. “This isn’t right! It’s not my time!”
Her throat was raw and she’d surely have fallen to her knees if she were capable. But up and down didn’t seem to be part of her repertoire anymore. What she definitely had plenty of, apparently, were tears. She couldn’t make them stop.
The pressure at her collar was becoming more intrusive, too. Sienna continued to rub at it, all but digging at her own skin to make it go away. It felt almost like someone was pushing down on her.
The thought finally gave her pause and she sucked in a ragged breath, hand still hovering over her chest. She remembered, now, the sensations of Lycus’s final strike. The pain and heat and the sight of her blood going everywhere. But that heat had been the instantly explosive kind caused by injury. The heat she felt now was … more of an overall warming. Almost soothing. And if she focused, she realized she was sure it was emanating from the pressure at her collarbone.
What…?
Sienna closed her eyes, bringing herself only a small reprieve from the glaring brightness, and moved her hand awkwardly around her collarbone region. She imagined it like a thread, like the cord of a heating blanket, and that line was her link to life. Maybe she was in a hospital somewhere, and she had literally fallen into the light. Or maybe it was something else. She didn’t know, but instinct was all she had to go on, so she embraced it.
I’m not dead. Do you hear me, Fenn? I am not dead!
Her groping fingers closed around something solid, something that definitely wasn’t part of herself, and she sucked in a breath. She felt the solid thing jolt, as if in shock, and held tighter.
The keyhole image returned, flickering like a bad connection and discolored like negative film, in her mind’s eye. It reminded her of seeing the tendrils of energy being siphoned off of Lycus by Cassian’s scale, but she wasn’t sure what the connection meant, or if it meant anything. She only knew that she couldn’t let go of whatever it was she’d grabbed.
Strength suddenly poured through her, shattering the keyhole image completely and forcing a deep, cleansing breath into Sienna’s lungs. The surge was so intense that her back arched and her eyes popped open, and she realized the brightness was gone.
She was back in the warehouse where she’d nearly died, with Fenn leaning over her, his always beautiful and haunting eyes seeming particularly tortured. She could hear her own heart thundering in her ears and feel that soothing warmth from earlier still spreading through her, and though the sensation was strange, Sienna managed a smile. “Hey, lover.”
Life
Siennasatup,realizingas she did that it was no longer hard to breathe. There was no pain at all, in fact. She reached up, feeling the blood that had caked on her face crack and crumble away beneath her probing fingers. More blood stained her sweater, mostly over her abdomen and surrounding what proved to be a ragged tear in the fabric. All of it was evidence of the series of injuries she remembered taking. Injuries she could no longer feel, or see.
Fenn reached over, interrupting her perusal of herself as his bare fingers grazed over her jaw, pulling her focus back to him. He curved an arm around her back simultaneously and then she was up against his chest, his lips on hers, his hand in her hair. The desperation in this kiss was so much different from the raw hunger they’d shared before, but it burned through her all the same.
