Chapter 13
Cat
An atmosphere gnawed at the spaces between our horses as we rode across a plain entirely buried in mist. The churning white fog had steadily gathered around us the further we travelled from Death’s castle, and I kept expecting the ground to fall away but Pain’s magic scouted ahead in tendrils that wriggled like snakes, traversing the opaque carpet of fog. So far, the ground was solid.
We barely spoke, that tension in the air killing any attempt at conversation.
I wanted to know about the past I’d shared with these men, wanted to tease out details about the person I’d been and compare it to who I was now.
Instead, I kept my gaze forward as Fuzzball picked a confident path through the prairie, giving her a nudge when she contemplated stopping to gnaw on the wildflowers scattered around the golden grasses.
It was partly my fault, this atmosphere.
My mind had cleared enough to know I overreacted, that the revenge-hungry beast in me had snapped its teeth, possessive over its prey, when Miz had only been trying to spare me the trauma of murdering someone.
The problem was I knew I’d killed before.
I didn’t know who, didn’t remember why or how, but the knowledge was immutable. I was already a killer.
Even if I hadn’t been, I’d have broken that particular innocence to enforce final judgement on Violence.
The other was already dead, his sister I’d discovered by listening to the conversations of the men.
My men, even if that still felt entirely too strange to give much thought to.
But there was no denying they knew me. They seemed to sense my needs and desires before I even spoke them, sometimes directing their horses in the direction I was tugged before I’d had a chance to issue new instructions.
Trust your bonds. This was what that note at the bottom of my list meant.
These bonds, the connection linking me to each of these men.
These death gods. They were certainly devoted to me, possibly a little too devoted given their tendency to crowd me between them the second a threat veered into our path, be it a wild animal or the rare wandering spirit.
I had enough magic to defend myself, but maybe that hadn’t always been true.
Maybe I’d once been mortal and vulnerable. If only I could remember that.
Irritation eroded my temper bit by bit, until I needed to know my past. I needed the black hole in my mind to be packed full of memories and truths and identity.
I was so sick of these gods looking at me and seeing someone else.
Why should they get to know who I’d been when I didn’t know? It was unfair.
“Which way now, little bride?” Death asked, glancing across at me as he rode beside Fuzzball and I. Every time he called me that, it was like my mind ached to remember. Like I’d heard it so many times before, the memories were an avalanche waiting to hit.
“Straight forward,” I replied, hoping he hadn’t noticed my pause. I looked over, a leap and crash in my heart as our eyes locked. His were the dark, unfathomable grey of a storm, and the eye contact hit me with the force of a typhoon. “Over the hill,” I added, my voice a surprise rasp.
There was no doubt I knew these men. No doubt that I loved them, too.
I loved each of them like I loved the ruined village at the base of the hill his castle towered over.
It wasn’t a comfortable emotion to feel when I couldn’t remember why I loved them and what made me fall so deep I married all of them.
“Are we going to The Wake?” Madde shouted over Death and his shadow shire, Mort.
“The what?” I asked, glancing at the gently sloping hill ahead of us. The only wake I could remember was the kind that happened after a funeral.
“The Wake is a cylindrical tower,” Pain explained from my right, a tentative flicker of shadow brushing Fuzzball’s side and grazing my leg.
I only allowed it without attacking him because he was blind, and I’d gathered it was how he sensed where I was.
“It’s one of Passion’s treasure troves.” At my frown, he explained, “He’s a collector.
Well, hoarder’s probably a better term.”
“Who’s Passion?” I asked. “That doesn’t sound like a death god name.”
“You’d be surprised how many people are murdered because of passion,” Misery muttered, just loud enough for me to hear him.
He rode beside Pain while Tor was right at the other end, next to Madde.
Separated and arguing, because I needed to be the one to kill Violence.
Guilt twinged through my chest. I was Judgement, and right now my own internal judge was telling me I’d started this argument so I needed to end it, to smooth the edges.
It wasn’t entirely my fault, and I wasn’t the only one who overreacted, but… that twinge came again. I fought a groan and added mentally another thing to the list: fix Tor and Miz’s relationship.
“What does he collect?” I asked Pain, turning to look at him, appreciating the casual way he rode Atari, effortlessly competent.
Wind snatched a few curls from his forehead, caressing the tanned beauty of his face, the slope of his nose, the long lashes that framed green-hazel eyes. “Passion, I mean.”
“What doesn’t he collect? Books, mirrors, antiques, teapots, records, handkerchiefs. That’s where I got this sick cloth.”
He held up a blue handkerchief for me to see, with an orange character all over it.
“Cute,” I said, glancing up at the low cry of an animal not too far away. Fuzzball grumbled at the sound of it, slowing as if reluctant to go any further.
“It’s Crash Bandicoot,” Pain explained, and seemed to sense the blank expression on my face. “Right, you lost your memories.”
“That’s not why she doesn’t know your nerd shit,” Tor teased, a low rumble of warmth that almost, almost reminded me of days spent together.
“Excuse me, Crash Bandicoot is a cult legend,” Pain huffed. “Anyone with taste—”
“Do you hear that?” I cut in when that sound came again, the low groaning of an animal.
“Yes,” Death replied, any softness whisked off his face to expose a steely core. “Cat, stay behind me.”
Like fuck. “I’m not a meek, easily killed woman in need of protection,” I argued, nudging Fuzzball forward to meet his horse’s quickened steps.
“That’s not why,” he murmured, his stare trailing over me from head to toe before he fixed it ahead. “We just lost you, Cat. I refuse to let you be hurt again. Even a papercut is intolerable. So please, stay a few steps behind. Let me assess what waits for us on the other side of this hill.”
Part of me was ready to back down, that sympathetic part of me already throbbing with feeling for these men.
I couldn’t imagine how it felt to lose the person you loved, then find them only hours later, whole and unharmed but a total stranger.
Unfortunately, the rest of me was a wild animal driven by an unrelenting and all-consuming need for vengeance, and I would not back down.
“We’ll ride together,” I said, and before he could disagree, I added, “instead of riding ahead of you like I planned to.”
His stare softened, the grey storm in his eyes turning to quicksilver. “Alright, little bride,” he agreed, his voice the same liquid cashmere as his gaze.
The others fanned out behind us in a semicircle, close enough that I felt the cool snort of their horses’ breath, felt the thrum of magic each man held close.
I was ready to roll my eyes at our overdramatic reaction, ready to laugh at the single cow or sheep that grazed in the prairie on the other side of the hill, harmless and unthreatening.
I was unprepared to find the Wake—the tower Pain described—completely and utterly surrounded by fawn-like creatures with towering horns and teeth so big they draped past their lips like tusks.
The groaning I’d heard came from a creature near the tower.
A warning or announcement to its kin it seemed, because in the next moment, its mouth yawned open and blue fire blast into the prairie, scorching the grass.
That would have been bad enough, because I was deadly certain now the intuition in my chest was tugging me down the hill, across the flower-strewn grasses, to the lone tower that thrust up to the darkening sky.
But the Wake wasn’t enveloped by merely fire-breathing creatures.
Fifty silvery spirits bobbed in place around the tower, transparent and insubstantial but thrumming with enough death that the hairs rose on my arms.
“I didn’t know spirits could be this powerful,” I whispered to Death.
“They’re not usually,” he replied quietly, something like anger darkening his expression. “These have been tampered with. Empowered.”
“So they’re not here by chance,” I guessed, noting the way they encircled the tower in three rings. We’d have to fight through three waves of spirits and a prairie full of horned creatures to get into the Wake.
“No,” Death agreed, brushing my elbow with a touch so gentle, so familiar, that it made my heart jolt and my brain bash around my skull, tender, trying so hard to remember. “They’re guards.”
I narrowed my eyes, the ever-present hunger for justice sinking its teeth into me. My temperature dropped, dark swirls of magic wrapping around my hands, my wrists, my forearms. “Someone knew I would come here. They’re trying to keep me from my kill.”