Page 30 of When Death Whispers

I don’t answer. Because I don’t know how.

“It’s like the air’s crowded,” he continues. “Like there’s something else here, fighting for space. I know you feel it too.”

The lights flicker. And I feel it this time, that familiar shiver down my spine. Then something moves behind him. I see it. A flash of shadow, jagged and reaching. Too fast. Too close.

My body moves before my brain catches up.

“Hudson, duck!” I shout, lunging toward him.

He stumbles to the side just as a metal dough scraper flies past, the sharp edge whistling through the space his head occupied a second ago. It slams into the wall, embedding in the wood with a sharpthunkthat echoes louder than it should.

Hudson whirls to face it, chest heaving. “Jesus Christ.”

I don’t say anything. Not right away. But there’s no point in pretending anymore. No point in lying or trying to spare him. He was almost just killed by my monster. Again.

“That wasn’t an accident,” he says, voice low, steady. Too calm for what just happened. “Something threw that.”

I nod once. “Correct.”

His eyes snap to mine.

“I felt him,” I whisper. “The same as last night. Just before he…” I trail off, swallowing thickly with fear.

Hudson exhales sharply, like the confirmation makes it worse somehow. “What does he want though? Why is he doing this?”

I look at the dough scraper, still trembling slightly where it’s lodged into the wall. “Right now? You.”

Hudson goes still. “Me?”

I nod again, slower this time. “I told you, anyone who gets close to me is in danger. You touched me. You stayed. Youmatter.That makes you a threat.”

There’s a beat of silence between us, thick with everything unsaid. Then, finally, Hudson speaks again. “I matter…” He repeats on a whisper, like he’s testing the words to see how they fit on his tongue, like they are new and foreign to him. Has he never felt like he mattered before? To anyone? My heart squeezes at the thought that it took my fucked up baggage for him to hear those words.

“So… what do we do?”

I meet his gaze. “We survive. We stay in the light. We don’t give him shadows to hide in.”

Hudson nods, but it’s not relief that passes over his face—it’s resolve. That same stubborn grit he always hides under jokes and charm, making the ocean blue of his eyes turn turbulent and stormy. “Then we don’t give him a single damn inch.”

12

The human realmgrates upon me, its air coarse and... soiled. It presses against the edges of my being, unnatural in its brightness, relentless in its vitality. I despise it. But for her, I endure.

Snow Pea. My sweet Snow Pea.

Her death has sung to me since the moment of her first breath, a song only I can hear, only I am meant to end. For over two decades, I have waited, savored each brush of her fleeting mortality as if it were a banquet laid before me. And yet, I am denied again and again. Denied by chance, by her stubborn will to survive, and now… byhim.

The beast.

And thehuman.

I hover in the shadows, where the light cannot reach me, my form coiling and writhing as fury courses through me. The scent of her fear lingers in my essence, sweeter than any I have tasted, and it fuels my longing. My hunger. Her death ismine.

The beast dares to lay claim on her. Rädslakorcu—a creature of lesser purpose, born of fleeting terrors, with no reverence for the sanctity of death’s design. He toys with her as if she’s some fleeting amusement, feeding on her fear like a carrion bird pecking at a feast not its own.

I willnotallow it.

The bakery is a sanctuary I cannot breach fully with all these accursed lights. I long for the days before such things as fluorescents were invented. Back when everything was a free-for-all as even firelight casts some shadows.

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