Chapter 12
Misery
Iclenched my jaw tight, fighting a wave of emotion strong enough to drown me.
I still had Cat’s blood under my fingernails.
Her death was branded into my memory: the cold temperature of her skin.
The loose sprawl of her limbs. The emptiness of her face.
The glassy hollow in her eyes. My hands shook as I held up a blanket of darkness while she changed, but it was impossible to see the carpet of flowers across the valley, impossible to see this new, vibrant, entirely alive Cat when I hadn’t begun to process the desolation of her death.
Looking at her now, even if I ought to be looking away because she was getting dressed and I was a total stranger to her, I didn’t see this Cat.
I saw my wife who had died, throat slit, with so much death magic forced into her wound that she died instantly.
I saw my wife who died fighting to rescue Peach.
I saw the woman I loved, and lost so brutally that it had ripped something essential from my chest.
I was still bleeding, inside where no one could see.
And all I could think about were the times I was awful to her.
All those cruel words I said when we first met, when I was jealous and afraid she’d steal Tor and Death from me.
Those moments should have been soft, should have been handled with so much care because they were precious and finite.
“Thanks,” Cat in the valley said, making my heart lurch and my whole body flinch. “Are you… okay?”
“Fine,” I bit out, dropping the cloak of shadow and turning away. I couldn’t look at her without watching her throat split. Couldn’t meet her eyes without seeing them as lifeless as glass. “I’m fine,” I repeated, with an effort to soften my voice. “Do the clothes fit?”
My clothes. A fact I didn’t miss even as grief ravaged the hole in my chest.
“If you ignore the fact I’m a good head shorter,” she replied, amusement in her voice. “I just rolled the pants up.”
She hesitated, hovering like she wanted to say more.
The scald of her eyes on the side of my face made me go still, that wave of emotions building, high enough to rip me into the depths of the ocean and never let me go.
To shove my head under until my lungs filled with water, to bury me in a watery grave so no one would ever find me.
I’d be alive the whole time, torn apart by grief.
Being a death god made me hard to kill, but if anything could do it, it was the spike of pain twisting through my chest.
“Do you need anything else?” I asked, hating how ragged my voice was, how fucking impossible it was to hide. Like Cat being here, looking at me, breathing, was impossible.
I watched her bite her lip from the corner of my eye and my knees turned weak. It was such a familiar gesture, such a Cat thing to do that it hit me right in the gut. Knocked all the air from me.
“What happened?” I demanded, fucking the silent agreement we’d made to dance around her rebirth, her new god status. “After you died, after that piece of shit murdered you—what happened, Cat? How did you get here?”
Her eyes took on a hazy look, so close to the way they emptied as blood surged from her split throat that I went cold all over.
My hands were on her shoulders before I could catch myself, my grip tight, desperate. “Little bride.” My shaking hand found her face, moulded to her cheek, lifted her face up to mine just as her eyes focused.
“I keep trying to remember,” she said, a knot between her brows. Annoyed—she was nettled, enough that I watched the soft lines of her face harden. “There’s a black hole in my memory, and I keep trying to remember where I was before, but I can’t. There was a man—”
A rattling growl tore from my throat. “Violence.”
“No, I—” Her frown deepened. “I think he helped me. Taught me how to be… this. He didn’t attack me. I’m not scared when I try to remember him. But Violence.” Her voice stripped of all feeling. “I don’t even know who he is, but I’m terrified of him.”
“I am going to slaughter him,” I promised, sweeping my thumb over her cheek. “I vow it, Cat. I will obliterate every last part of him until there’s no record that he ever lived.”
“No.”
The tightness in my chest stabbed deeper as she pushed my hand from her cheek.
“That’s why I’m here. I came to kill him.
That’s why I need to find everything on this list.” There was a small leaf of paper clenched in her fist, crumpled.
“This is how I can kill him, and get justice for myself. So no, you will not be killing him. I will.”
Her words were like a kick to the stomach. “Cat, killing someone… it leaves a stain. Follows you forever.” I opened my mouth to tell her that those she’d killed while she was alive had haunted her, but she was already speaking.
“Good. I never want to forget how it feels to exact his final judgement. He deserves death. I won’t rest until those who killed me got what they deserve.”
“Let us do it,” I tried to argue, but her brows slammed down over her eyes and a flutter of power went through the air.
This wasn’t just my wife; this was a goddess, and the magic crackling between us was a punch to the gut.
I didn’t care that she had power, didn’t even care if she was more powerful than me.
I cared that she bled out in the space of seconds, her life ripped away, and now she was a woman driven purely by cold-blooded revenge.
I cared that she didn’t know us, didn’t know how loved she was.
But right now, she wasn’t terrorised by Nightmare’s curse and Cruelty’s mind games. She didn’t remember it, wasn’t crushed under the weight of everything that had happened, and I’d be damned if I let killing Violence bring that weight back.
“You’re trying to steal my kill,” she accused, her eyes as sharp as daggers, voice as honed as razorblades. “You want it for yourself, you don’t want me to be the one to end him.”
“No, because—”
“So you admit it,” she laughed, harsh, shaking her head. “Wow. I thought you all wanted to help me, that you wouldn’t let me do this alone out of some protective honour because we were married—”
“We are married—”
“But you won’t let me kill him, full stop.”
Her eyes combusted like fire, violent grey lit from within. I staggered back like I’d taken an arrow to the chest. She was so beautiful, so dangerously beautiful, so alive despite being dead. A lump pressed against the thin skin of my throat, trapping all my words.
Cat’s mouth twisted in a bitter smile. “I know you’re struggling, and I’m sorry I can’t remember you, but you don’t get to dictate my actions.”
I blinked. “Is that why you asked to borrow my clothes?” I asked in a gravelly voice. “Because I’m struggling.”
She took a beat to answer, and I heard my answer loud and clear. Here I’d been thinking some part of her remembered me, knew I’d give her the entire fucking mortal realm on a silver platter if she only asked.
I spun on my heel, trailing dark power like cracks in the valley until I tightened my grip on my magic and choked it off.
Everyone else felt miserable enough; they didn’t need me making it worse.
That didn’t stop me storming across the valley, past the cluster of horses that lazily ripped up flowers, to where Tor stood, kicking at a mound of grass.
Pretending he hadn’t been watching. Pretending he hadn’t sent Cat over to talk to me. The only fucking reason she did.
“I don’t need you interfering,” I barked the moment I was close enough for him to hear.
“It’s called giving a shit, Miz,” he replied calmly. His eyes met mine and held, as if he could cool the raging wave crashing hurt into me over and over. “You’re not the only one who’s in pain.”
“I know,” I snarled, the wave crashing out of my bones, my skin, until I shook.
“Why do you think I’m keeping this shit to myself?
Do you think I don’t know you’re all back there with me, on that chessboard, with our dead wife?
I know. Just leave it, Tor. Stop pushing.
That’s what you do. You push and push until something snaps, and I don’t want to snap. So leave it.”
I walked away before I could say something else, something worse.