Three days passed in eerie quiet. Lira fought harder than Kael had.
She didn't scream or thrash. She simply refused. When the drowning sensation crept in—when her thoughts began to blur at the edges—she flared Ren like breathing. Aura surged around her in sharp, defensive bursts. The maggot recoiled each time, retreating deeper into her chest cavity, waiting for her guard to drop.
Erynn monitored the connection from the warehouse. He could feel her resistance like static on a wire. Annoying. Impressive.
On the third night he decided enough was enough.
He borrowed Kael's body again—slipped into it like putting on a favorite coat—and walked to the cottage under cover of dusk. The preserve was silent except for the rustle of leaves and distant bird calls that weren't quite birds.
Lira opened the door before he knocked. Her eyes were bloodshot. Skin pale. But the defiance still burned there.
"You again," she said. Voice hoarse.
Erynn tilted Kael's head. "Me."
She tried to close the door.
Strings snapped out from Kael's fingertips—thin, shimmering, faster than thought. They caught her wrist, her ankle, looped around her throat without tightening. Just present.
She froze.
Erynn stepped inside. The door clicked shut behind him.
Lira sank to her knees. Breath coming in shallow gasps.
"What are you?" she managed.
"Insurance," Erynn said simply. "A way to keep going when one body fails. And you're next in line."
He crouched in front of her. Reached out and brushed a strand of hair from her face with Kael's hand.
"You fought well. Most don't last three days. But it's over now."
Inside her chest the maggot bloomed fully—warm, possessive, right.
Lira's eyes fluttered. Her Ren flickered once, twice, then guttered out.
Erynn stood.
He left her there on the floor, half-strung, half-herself. The takeover would finish while she slept. When she woke, she would be his. Quiet. Obedient. Useful.
As he walked away down the garden path, wearing Kael's body like a second skin, something strange happened.
A memory that wasn't his drifted up through the connection.
A little girl with auburn braids kneeling beside a small grave in a backyard. A dog—golden retriever—had died. She'd buried him under an apple tree. She'd cried until her throat hurt.
Erynn stopped walking.
The memory wasn't his. It was Lira's, and the feedback was already bleeding through.
He pressed a hand to his temple. The headache was faint but growing. "Interesting," he murmured to the empty night air.
Behind him, in the cottage, Lira's breathing evened out into the slow rhythm of someone who no longer dreamed alone.