Chapter 5
Torment
The stand that loomed over the chessboard was still full of students, empty eyes watching impassively as my beautiful wife, my beloved Cat, was murdered. Just players in Cruelty and Violence’s game, like we’d been forced to be, like my Cat was before Violence dragged a knife across her throat.
“Cowardly piece of shit,” I hissed under my breath, my voice shaking, hands shaking, whole body shaking with it—wrath so intense, it encompassed every part of me.
Body, soul, and every corner of my mind.
There was no part of me left that wasn’t drenched in rage, no part of me that didn’t crave their murder.
I would find Violence and puncture his body with so many holes that he resembled a fucking sieve.
I would snap every bone in his body, grind them into powder, and set it to burn on the hills above our castle, where everyone would see the blaze and know what befell those who harmed my loved ones.
But first, I would introduce Cruelty to true, unadulterated torment.
The game pieces were tied to Violence’s whim, but the spectators? Those were all Cruelty; I discovered it when I herded her back, stumbling, onto Hugh Wallison’s blade. It sank into her back, invoking a gasp from her poison mouth, and the motionless stand beside us erupted with movement.
Students came back to themselves at once, a dozen withheld screams tearing through the air. Others burst into a run, fleeing through the hole Neglect had blasted in the hedge. I returned my grim stare to Cruelty. She was weakening, Cat’s venom attacking her nervous system.
“My wife,” I hissed, my voice guttural and deep, the shroud of death wrapping around me, turning me into something so far from human, “is dead because of you.”
“I didn’t mean it to turn out this way,” Cruelty breathed, but not in fright—in anticipation. She was getting what she wanted: true death. A second life. Happily ever fucking after. “Cat was never supposed to die.”
“Twist the knife,” I told Hugo, floating closer, my hand skeletal when I wrapped it around Cruelty’s throat.
She was breathless, hopeful as she waited for death.
It was satisfying to watch that bleed into pain, into agony, into the finest edge of endless, ruthless torment.
My magic coursed through her veins, slashing everything it touched, burrowing into her bones, scything her organs, infesting her until she threw her head back and screamed.
“Is it possible to kill her?” Hugh asked, his voice a ragged scratch.
“Yes.” I flared my magic hotter, pushing it wider, ripping apart her insides to make more space for my magic, her screams endless. Her back bowed; I ripped the plates of her spine apart. She flailed on Hugh’s knife but he grabbed her in a rough hand, holding her up for the torture I inflicted.
It wouldn’t have worked even minutes ago, but with the blade buried in her, with all the bloodthirsty rage driving Hugh’s attack, I felt something in her buckle.
“Stop!” she screeched, twisting, writhing. The colour left her skin, chocolate hair bleaching to snow-white, and her eyes turned the colour of chalk, no pupil or iris left. “Stop. Please!”
“You haunted my Misery, made his life pure hell with Nightmare. You drove him to so much pain and trauma that he blocked off his own magic, and almost died. You forced my wife to kill, ripped apart her peace of mind, murdered her friends, and fucked with her head at every opportunity. So no. I will not stop.”
I turned up the dial on my magic until she screamed, and it seemed to knock something loose in Hugh. Or rather, knock something back into place that had been hidden under the surface for years.
Death magic swelled around him, and the keen edge of a breath cut through Cruelty’s screams for a split second. As if the vastness of power blossoming in him was so great that all other sounds paused in respect. Or fear.
“You were supposed to make it a swift, graceful death,” Cruelty whined, staring at Hugh through eyes streaming bloodied tears, leaving stains down her cheeks. “It wasn’t supposed to hurt.”
No, she wasn’t experienced with pain, was she? She preferred to give it to others instead of enduring it herself. My anger was a fuse winding closer and closer to gunpowder.
As if it was contagious, Hugh ripped the dagger out of Cruelty and drove it back in, then again, plunging into her stomach, her side, her chest, under her ribs. Until blood pooled on the white square beneath us, until Cruelty writhed and sobbed. Too weakened by Cat’s venom to truly fight.
“What’s the matter, Cruelty?” I asked, letting some of my own malice free. “I thought you wanted to die.”
“Not like this,” she blubbered. “Not like this.”
A veritable ocean of death magic crashed from me into her, slamming into her chest, a harpoon that buried itself in her heart and dragged her down.
She thrashed her head from side to side, babbling pleas, and I only wished my wife was alive to witness this.
I wished there was a god of sacrifice, so I might throw this corpse at her feet in return for Cat, whole and alive once more.
I floated back, landing hard on my feet, impact juddering up my legs, making my knees buckle. I would have hit the floor if a familiar arm hadn’t snaked around my waist, solid and reassuring and never faltering.
“She’s not coming back,” Death rasped.
I watched Hugh follow Cruelty to the ground, watched him stab her over and over and over, until no life remained, and croaked, “I know.”