Page 60 of Wraith

I was wearing a suit.

Panic surged within me, and I forced my head up. The theater. I was in the theater.

Kael knelt beside me, his fingers adjusting the cuffs of my jacket, his expression one of quiet satisfaction. “Much better,” he murmured. “You almost looked unworthy.”

I jerked back, muscles straining against the exhaustion in my limbs. “What the hell?—”

Kael caught my chin in his hand, tilting my face toward him with a gentleness that made my skin crawl. “Shh,” he soothed. “You don’t have to be afraid.”

I tried to shove him off, but my body was still sluggish, still too weak. What had he done to me?

“Please,” I rasped. “Don’t do this.”

Kael sighed, running his thumb along my jaw as if considering my words. Then, slowly, he reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew something delicate—a single dead flower.

He tucked it into my lapel with care, brushing invisible dust from the petals. “Now she’ll recognize you.”

Terror clamped down on my throat. I thrashed, trying to break free, but Kael was already lifting the blade.

The cold press of steel kissed my skin.

“I won’t let you stain your final look,” Kael murmured, pressing a folded towel beneath my chin.

The knife slid across my throat.

Pain, heat, the sudden wetness of blood spilling down my chest, soaking into the towel. My body convulsed, my vision tilting as darkness clawed at the edges.

And just before it consumed me, I saw her.

Lilith.

She stood at the edge of the stage, smiling.

Waiting.

I existed before I realized I existed.

There was no pain. No breath, no heartbeat. Just awareness.

I blinked, but my body didn’t move. Because it wasn’t mine anymore.

Kael crouched in front of me, adjusting the flower in my lapel, smiling like he’d just completed a masterpiece.

“There. Now she’ll forgive you.”

I tried to speak, tried to move, but I was frozen in place, trapped in the suit, in the body he had dressed for her.

Kael stood back, admiring his work, hands resting on his knees. “You know, you should be grateful,” he mused. “She could’ve let you rot the way we left her. But she’s generous. She wanted you to look perfect.”

Kael dusted off his hands, then turned to face the darkness stretching across the stage.

“Lilith,” he called softly, reverently. “I brought him home.”

A breath of cold air caressed my cheek, colder than death itself. And then, from the shadows, her whisper curled around me like silk, sealing my fate.

“I know.”

Thirty-Eight

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