“I know you and Natalie have been ordered to watch her, so whatever you’re doing should be because you actually like her and not because Elite Cain told you to do it.”

“Lily—”

“It’s not right, Shy,” she says, her voice rising. She pauses, frustrated. “I’m tired of the control the Order has over our lives. Sometimes…I wonder if Thane was right.”

“That’s dangerous thinking, Lils.”

“Is it?”

“We can’t bring people back to life,” I say evenly.

“Do we know that for certain? Or do we believe that because the Order told us?”

She’s being ridiculous. We know that because we’ve seen it. Souls that are resurrected are torn from Spirit and forced into a body that fractures the soul. That fracture always manifests itself in the form of anger and beastly behaviors.

“Thane’s mother was beyond our reach, Lily. Even if we were to retrieve her soul, it would have been up to her body to heal. She was too damaged.”

“But people are resurrected all the time.”

“And they’re not the same. You know this. Why question it?” I narrow my eyes. “You’re talking to him, aren’t you?”

“Just because you aren’t friends with Thane anymore doesn’t mean I can’t be.”

Thane is one of the few death-speakers who actually know about the Valryn. Growing up in the same town with him, it was probably inevitable that he’d learn about us eventually, but he caught Lily in her hybrid form, and after swearing him to secrecy, we told him about us and the Order. Of course, that was before his mom died, before he asked us to help bring her back.

“I’ve never told you not to be his friend, but you shouldn’t encourage his thinking. Don’t give him hope where there is none.”

“You’re one to talk.”

“What do you mean?”

“Anora.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“You keep giving her attention, and she’s going to fall for you hard, and what kind of person are you going to be? The shadow knight who breaks her heart or the one that breaks the rules?”

With that, she shifts and flies away, a splash of black against a graying sky.

Chapter Nineteen

Shy and the Offer

The day starts off wrong.

I wake to my phone going off like a tornado siren sounding in the dead of night, tearing me from sleep. I sit up straight in bed, heart racing, and check my phone: Pick me up at Temple, 5, it says.

Roth.

There are no other details—a why or where we’re going.

I glance at the clock at the top of my screen—4:00 a.m.—and scrub my face with the palm of my hand, unable to discern if the feeling in my stomach is alarm from being woken so suddenly or dread.