Chapter 17
Cat
Like we saw from the outside, the top of the Wake was made entirely of glass panels, giving a three-sixty view of the prairie and the hills that wrapped around it.
It was beautiful and like nothing I’d seen—that I could remember anyway—but as I took a step across the polished, cherry wood floor I couldn’t help but feel I’d fall off the edge of the tower.
“I hate heights,” Madness breathed, edging closer to me.
“Ditto,” Pain said, pale as he looked around the room.
“Just so you know,” Madde added. “I might need a hug as a reward for being very brave.”
He was infectious; I couldn’t help but smile even if I sensed his fear was more discomfort while Pain’s was absolute terror.
I tried very hard not to think about grinding myself all over Madde outside, about how quickly I’d come and the fact it was the first climax I could remember.
My body remembered others, but to me that was a first. Madde was my first kiss too, pressed up against the wall in Death’s castle.
But it was Misery I couldn’t look in the eye as my husbands fanned out around me, keeping to this side of the room as if fearful of traps between us and the silver plinth in the middle of the room.
The walls were covered in shelves and cabinets full of curios and an entire curved wall held a bookcase full of romance books, but that plinth drew my attention and didn’t let go.
A set of rose gold scales sat on a velvet cushion, nothing on either plate but the left sunk so deep it touched the purple cushion.
You need to fix the balance of life and death, a memory whispered through my mind, one of my many lessons.
Until those scales were even, the domain would be under fog, and it would keep falling apart.
Worse things would happen in the mortal world, I knew, even if I couldn’t quite grasp the details of that warning.
Death, destruction, and the end of the world seemed a sure guess.
“Careful,” Death warned as I took a step across the lacquered floor, though he didn’t reach out to stop me.
The floorboard creaked as I put one foot in front of the other, refusing to get distracted by the bowing shelves full of shining, ornate things all around me, my attention glued to the scales.
They tugged, urged me closer, until my hands itched.
I had the sense of the others following close behind, Pain’s magic scouting every step before I even placed my foot on the floor, but my husbands didn’t get in my way.
No warning bells blared, and even my feral beast was calm as I reached for the scales, setting my hands upon the cool gold.
The fulcrum was sturdy and cold under my fingers, sending a rush of tingling shivers up my arms and down my back, not entirely because of the cold.
A rightness fluttered over my skin, brushing the seething hunger for justice within me until it settled, almost purring.
I wrapped my hand around the cool rose gold and lifted the scales, my breath trapped in my throat as I waited for those unbalanced plates to dance, to waver.
But they didn’t budge, as if they obeyed laws far more important than gravity and motion.
Nothing sat upon them but I could sense the magic pooled on each curved gold dish, reading the energy all around us, the ebb and flow of life and death being read by the clever magic that imbued this artifact. This instrument. My instrument.
“Do you have one, too?” I breathed, not looking away from the scales as I lifted them from the silver plinth, a strange burst of emotion in my chest sitting alongside that rightness.
Melancholy that I was here, ripped from my life.
Anger that I’d never be alive again. Relief that I could still breathe and think and walk and speak. “Do you have an instrument?”
“All death gods do,” Tor replied, at my shoulder. “But we only use them at the worst of times. Most are weapons. A sword or dagger, sometimes a scythe, sometimes a powerful book, other times a metal box full of all the world’s screams.”
I whipped an alarmed look over my shoulder and a smile flickered at the edges of his mouth.
“I’ll let you guess whose that is,” he said, his attention moving from me to the scales. “They look heavy.”
“Yeah,” I muttered, using both hands to lift the scales higher. The second my other hand connected with the cool metal, light blazed into every corner of the room. It burned through my eyes into my brain, and touched my soul.
I gasped as death magic roared into me, then exploded out of me, the scales not reacting, not even wobbling in my grip. But the pen I’d slipped into my pocket warmed, as if all the magic in the air had awakened it.
I had enough time for that thought to pitch my stomach into a plummet before the sight of the Wake’s glass room was whisked away and replaced by the sight of a face only newly familiar.
Death’s brows tugged together, his storm-grey eyes heavy with empathy and sadness as he pulled me into an embrace so overwhelming and secure that my bottom lip wobbled.
A violent lump cut off all air moving through my throat.
His skin slid against mine, bare and tantalising but comforting in a primitive way that made sobs choke me, growing in force until broken, gasping sounds fought their way free.
I’m here. It’s okay, little one, it’s okay.
Another sob crashed free, but the feeling of warm arms and safety tore away, blurring, twisting, tilting me until I fell into another vision.
I landed on a soft cloud, a mattress under me and Tor rapturous, awed as he stared up at me from between my legs. My heart threw itself into my ribs, the emotional whiplash making me dizzy. This felt real. Not a dream, not a fantasy, not my imagination at work. It was too detailed, too grounded.
“You are… beyond beautiful,” Tor breathed, hands skimming up my thighs. “My Cat. My wife.”
Words poured from my mouth, shy and possessive and beyond my control, like I was acting out a play where the lines had been written for centuries. “Does that make you mine, then?”
“Oh fuck yeah,” Tor groaned instantly. “I am entirely and completely yours.”
I reached for him, wanting to feel the warmth of his face against my palm, to test if this really was real, but the bed tipped beneath me and I slid, disoriented, through the swirling dark into another vision. Another memory.
A stranger pushed me against the wall of an alcove as people lingered in a classroom above us, so close they could find us. So close they could save me. My heart thrummed, anxiety a noose around my chest as the stranger’s eyes flashed. Blue—so blue they were like sparks of electricity.
“I’m warning you,” I said, my lips moving on their own. Something dangerous rose in me—violence. An animal craving for blood to spill. But before I could draw red, gushing fluid from a vital fluid, the glaring stranger laughed and kissed me hard.
And as his mouth asserted its dominance over mine, as he plundered and conquered, I knew this was no stranger.
This was Misery, hiding in plain sight, already obsessed with me.
Infatuation disguised as hatred. I melted into his rough kiss, gripping his shoulders to keep him close.
But the memory tore from my grasp, carrying him far away from me.
I fell through the dark, too breathless from Miz’s rough kisses to scream.
When I landed, it was on a stool at a glossy dark bar.
A decadent party whirled around me, its revellers masked and draped in opulent gowns, but my attention went right to the bartender and stayed there.
Pain, I knew, as my heart kicked even faster. Even masked I knew him.
He was dressed smartly, champagne gold silk hugging his trim body in a way that made me jealous, made me want to reach across the bar, grab the lapel of his jacket, and haul his mouth to mine.
But my ass stayed on the stool, and my body refused to do anything but reach for a glass, tipping back the liquid within.
The sweetness of cherries burst across my tongue, and my pleased sound brought a smile to Pain’s face.
“Why are you so interested in me?” I asked, my mouth shaping the words even if I wanted to ask if this was real, if this had happened. It felt real.
“Ah.” Pain rubbed his neck, ruffling his curls. “You have a nice voice. Low and sweet, with a little smokiness.
Warmth bloomed in my belly, an answering heat in my chest. It was a compliment that hit me like no other before. Or no other since, I suspected, even if I couldn’t remember them.
“It’s customary to return a compliment.” Pain fluttered his long lashes at me. “Aren’t you going to tell me I’m pretty?”
But the scene collapsed before I could say anything, before I could get an answer to the question that burned in my chest. Was this real? Had I been in all these places, with these men?
It should have felt like a victory, to remember anything at all, but all it did was make me ache for all the other moments I’d lost. All those days I’d lived, all those days I’d loved them, all the pieces of my personality now lost to me. I wanted them back.
The swirling, disorienting dark dropped me on a road this time. Moorland spread around me, the road winding, curving, and a smile touched my lips as I saw what had brought me here.
A madman in a wedding veil raced towards me, waving with delirious happiness. Madde. My darkness, the voice that lived in my head for years, that made me brave and kept my demons at bay.
Lioness, his voice brushed like cashmere across the innermost part of my mind, and all the stress melted from my bones. This time when I fell, I landed on my knees and it hurt. The floor was cold, glossy wood and it sent reverberations through my knees, hard enough to bruise.
But I was dead. Could I bruise?
You have to let us in, lioness, Madde’s voice stroked my mind, and the sensation of a bright, burning sun swelled inside me, heat bathing my soul until I could almost remember what it felt like to be alive.
“Let you in…” I mumbled, blinking until the glass room atop the Wake came into view.
I jumped hard when I saw the army of ghost dachshunds surrounding me, bathed in rose-gold light from the scales I held.
I’d knelt on the floor, the impact of the fall still going through my knees, and power pooled around me in a dark cloud that hissed into steam when it met the scales’ illumination.
The ghosts, unaffected, chased each other’s tails, wrestled on the floorboards, or curled up beside my knees and dozed, snoring in their little ghost sleep.
“The scales are part of you.” I tipped my head back, searching the bright glow for Death, remembering the feel of his arms bound around me, his lips pressed to my temple. So comforting it hurt. “They’ll respond if you ask them to draw their magic back inside.”
“Oh.” I frowned, but splayed both hands around the scales’ sturdy stem, balancing their weight as I reached out a wisp of magic the way I’d been taught.
Calm, I projected through that glimmer of magic. There’s no threat, we’re safe here.
Almost instantly, the light was sucked back into the scales, gleaming from a morganite stone near its tip.
I exhaled in relief, murmuring a tentative thanks because it felt like the right thing to do.
The scales weren’t inanimate; they were a power in their own right, and far older and more powerful than I was.
“You’re cute as fuck, but you need to move,” Miz snarled, and I lifted my head, a tingle in my cheeks until I realised he was talking to Madde’s dachshund army, who scattered out of his way.
I ducked my head as Misery knelt beside me, but warm hands caught my face and tipped it up.
“You’re cute too, my universe,” he said with aching tenderness. His lips grazed my cheek, then the edge of my mouth, and a flash of shivers went down my body, raising goosebumps, making my boobs ache. “Did the scales hurt you? You went down hard.”
“I’m fine,” I assured him, and because my head was still muddled, those visions so close to the surface I blurted, “I think I remembered something.”
He tilted his head, encouraging me to go on, pale hair spilling over his shoulder and making my fingers itch to run through it.
“Did you—” I lost my nerve, all the ferocity of my thirst for judgement and my inner creature fleeing in the face of his vibrant gold eyes and the endless well of love I found within them. He loved me. And I knew I loved him too, even if that love had been stolen from me.
“Did I what?” he prompted, so gentle that it was hard to reconcile him with the glaring, snarling man from my memory.
“Did you always have this hair, and those pretty gold eyes?”
A devastating smile transformed his face. “You think my eyes are pretty?”
I glanced away. “Shut up. Did you ever have blue eyes?”
“Ah.” His fingers trailed down my jaw and through my hair, and we shared a laugh when they met a tangle from the hours of riding. “When we first met, I went mildly insane. I wore a disguise when I stalked you. Shit, I shouldn’t have told you about the stalking.”
I couldn’t explain why I smiled. “It doesn’t surprise me. You were pretty intense in my memory. And earlier,” I added, my smile fading. “When you and Tor argued.”
He sighed. Kissed my cheek and muttered, “Busybody.”
I pretended to scowl. “Rude.”
“We’ll be fine. Don’t worry about us. It’s not the first time I’ve snapped at Tor, or vice versa. We’ll make up.” He dropped his voice, leaning forward to brush my cheek with his mouth as he added, “And you can watch.”
My ears burned. Face scalded. Heat pooled much further south, and I was trying to figure out what to say to that,1 I was saved by the scratching sound that made us both jump. I scrambled to pull out the list, praying the paper hadn’t ripped, or been shredded to bits.
It was still intact; I exhaled a rough breath. The top line was struck through, as if a spectral pen had scratched out the task. But I knew the pen in my pocket hadn’t done this; it was his magic that clung to the paper. My friend’s. Whoever he was.
1. A set of scales for Judgement.
2. A coil of iron to fix the gates.
I glanced up with a frown, finding the others closer than I expected. “Does anyone know where I’d find some iron?”