Page 56 of The Crow Games

“We can’t know what’s done it to her,” Liesel said sharply, her bell-like voice gone shrill.

“It’s the shades that’s done it,” Nola barked. “Just look at her. She’s having nightmares we can’t wake her from, and it was your sister who gave her the wax to keep them out of her ears!”

“Don’t fight,” I slurred, uncertain if anyone understood me. My tongue felt too big for my mouth. A hand grasped mine. I tried to blink to clear my vision. My head was in someone’s lap, a person with a violet scarf in their hair—Ruchel, then. Four blurry faces hovered over me. On the ceiling above them, tumultuous shadows rippled like a black ocean caught in a storm.

The hand holding mine wore a sea-colored scarf. Blue. What a surprise.

“If you didn’t do it on purpose, Emma,” Ruchel said, voice cold as ice, “then stop refusing to answer my questions.”

“I’ll not be interrogated like a common criminal,” Emma bit out.

“You are a criminal,” Nola shouted. “We all are! That’s how we got here, you fool!”

“This isn’t a courtroom!” Emma fired back.

“Everyone calm down,” Blue said flatly. “If we let things get too heated, we’ll have revenants in here ready to toss us. If this is shades, we’ll just have to wait for—”

The darkness pulled me under again.

When I awoke next, I was in my bed. My compartment was dark, the curtains pulled shut. I’d tossed the blankets onto the floor at some point, and my body was covered in sweat. I had just enough energy to sit up and no memory of how I’d gotten in here. I leaned my weight against the bone wall, too exhausted to keep upright on my own.

Fist trembling, I knocked on the wall.

Shadows poured in through the vent, and Asher appeared, his silvery white hair the only part of him I could see clearly.

“Shades,” I whispered, and my chest heaved. “I have nightmare spirits in me.”

“It looks like it,” he said gently. His patient presence loosened something in my chest.

Shadows crept up my bed and along my blankets, then up my arms to cool the sweat from my neck. I sighed, leaning into them.

“Shades won’t kill you,” he soothed. “It’s no fun for them if you’re dead. Blue thinks they’ll move on once they’ve drained your energies dry. You’d recuperate what you lost with rest.”

But recuperating gray magic was much more complicated. And apparently Emma may have done this to me on purpose. I should probably have been mad about that, but if it had been Lisbeth, I would have done the same thing. I would have kept the foe I was uncertain about weak to lessen the threat.

I groaned. “Staying this drained in the games is a death sentence.” I rested my cheek against the wall, soaking up the cool touch of it. “I need the shades out now, but I can’t evict them. Not on my own. I’ve nothing to fight them with in here . . . I hate to even ask you this, but I don’t know what else to do.” I tried to shrug, but my shoulders were too tired to lift.

Consciousness and spirit were two sides to the same coin, and there wasn’t anywhere this reaper couldn’t go in the Otherworld. He was my only option.

“If you let me in, all the way in,” he said, shifting closer to my bed, “I can handle them. I’ll ferry them to the gates of Hel where they belong. Far away from you.”

I didn’t like owing him, but I hated being weak even more. “There are things you’ll see and hear in there . . .”

“I don’t plan to linger, Trouble. I’m not doing this to pry.”

“It’s not that. There are things I haven’t been forthcoming about.” I rubbed fingers down my forehead where an ache was forming. “Things you’ve asked me directly and I . . . Crone save me, I’m too tired to have this conversation. Just, give me a chance to explain before you tell anyone else what you learn in there. Please?”

“Maven,” he said reproachfully, “I’m not going to tell anyoneanything. Whatever I see in your consciousness, it’s yours. Not mine to share. Do you trust me?”

“All right,” I sighed, because what choice did I have?

The line of his jaw hardened. “That wasn’t really an answer.”

He wore the night like a cloak, and his dark eyes, glossy in the shadows, captured my gaze and held it. My breaths escaped my dry lips in ragged puffs, and each one left me more winded than the last.

“I trust that we want the same things for now,” I said with a grunt. Talking was an effort.

I’d broken the habit of relying on others while I was raising Lisbeth. I couldn’t take chances. But being forced into these games had changed everything. Every trial, I either had to trust others with my life or chance it on my own and bring about my death all the quicker. I certainly hadn’t thought highly of Asher when we’d met, but somewhere along the way, he’d upended my doubts. I didn’t know what to think of him anymore.

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