Chapter 7
Madness
“Well,” I said, my voice hoarse, rasping blood from my throat as I spoke. “I see where my lioness gets her fierceness from.”
Hugh had shredded Cruelty’s body until she looked like she’d started a feud with a vegetable chopper, and the veggie chopper had won.
I watched him tear the dagger free for a final time, kneeling beside the dead goddess, the emptiness in his eyes the same aching void that had landed like a meteor in my chest. Leaving a crater in my heart.
“She'll stay dead this time,” Neglect murmured, coming to stand beside me and watch Cat’s dad toss the bloodied knife aside. It skidded over the chess tiles and came to a stop against a dead Stalker’s leg.
“Why?” Pain asked flatly. I turned to stare at him, not used to that unfeeling tone from our soft-hearted pretty boy.
“They were right that a previous god could kill the current one, but it didn’t work when she forced it. Only when he chose to kill her. Magic is tricky like that. It values consent and—”
I couldn’t stand it. The conversation, pretending to be normal while the love of my life was lying cold on the floor, no life to her, not a single spark left. It was offensive. Corrosive. I couldn’t take it a moment longer.
A tsunami of smoke-dark magic erupted like the heart of a bomb, and ripped a scream from my chest along with it.
Madness exploded in all directions, infecting the students stumbling from the stand beside the chessboard, seeping through the cracks in Milton Hall, in the rounded tower, in the mausoleums. Coursing like a wave into the village below, cutting everyone with the sharp knife of insanity.
My legs were jelly, my heart the ruins of a collapse. I couldn’t control my magic. It travelled to the edges of the island and brushed the choppy waves of the ocean. It crept into the hearts of mortals and—and the dead.
“Should there be so many ghosts here?” I rasped, swallowing the lump in my throat. “There are hundreds.”
“Shit,” Misery hissed, striding forward with Cat in his arms, her hair stained with blood as it hung from her limp head.
Neglect stiffened. “If the domain’s instability is spreading, this place is a death trap. All those poor people Nightmare killed…”
And I’d just sent a pulse of madness into them. I cringed. Regular spirits were bad enough, let alone insane spirits.
“Time to go,” I said, unable to take my eyes off Cat’s lifeless body. My lioness, my wife, my deadly, perfect Cat. I kept waiting for her eyes to open.
“We can’t leave these people to the mercy of spirits," Neglect scolded me, shaking her head.
“Let them all die,” Misery said. “Let nothing live on this forsaken fucking island. Burn it all, for all I care.”
I reached up an unsteady hand to touch Cat’s face, hating how cold her skin was, how slack. “Cat would want us to save them.”
“Cat’s dead,” Miz snapped.
I flinched so hard, my head whipped on my neck and my teeth clacked together. Tears welled in my eyes, blurring the chess board, the thrones, the hedge, and the dead pieces. Blurring Death as he lunged towards us, grasping my hand.
“I can feel her,” he blurted, breathless with shock. “I can sense Cat. She’s in the domain.”
“Her spirit?” I asked, gripping his hand tight enough to change the arrangement of his bones. “You can feel her spirit?”
A knot formed between his eyes. “She feels… different. But still Cat.”
“What are we waiting for?” Hope grabbed my throat and strangled me. “Our lioness is waiting. Let’s go!”
I didn’t care that the domain was a mess, there were no ways in or out, or the whole thing was falling apart. Cat was there, and I would find a way to be with her.