Chapter 21 · Seventeen Dead Seraphs

The key didn't break anything. It broke open.

Seraph hit the ground and the ground wasn't ground, it was smoke that held her weight anyway, and the first thing she heard was her own voice screaming from somewhere that wasn't her mouth.

"Kael!"

He was three feet away and already wrong. His blade was out. His eyes had that flat, counted-out look she'd seen eleven times before, right before he put a sword through her ribs.

"Don't move," he said. Not to her. Through her. Like she was standing where someone else used to stand.

"Kael, look at me. Look at my face."

"You lied about the seal," he said, and his voice cracked in the middle like it was two voices arguing over the same sentence. "You lied about the ring. You lied about everything and I still—"

He swung.

She threw herself sideways and the blade caught her forearm instead of her throat, and the pain was real, bright, hers, and that was the only thing that told her this wasn't a dream she could wait out.

"That's death four," she snapped, clutching the cut. "You said that exact line in death four.