Chapter 18
Torment
“You’ll give yourself an aneurism frowning like that,” Miz muttered, dropping beside me in the soft bed of grass just off the road where we’d set up a hasty overnight camp.
Even death gods needed rest. It was utterly silent, not a single rustle of wind or chitter of an insect, and normally that wouldn’t bother me but it heightened every sound Cat made.
“She’s whimpering in her sleep,” I said quietly, the frown digging deeper into my brow.
“Her memories are breaking through.” Miz stretched out beside me, the press of his forehead to my shoulder familiar and soothing. “I want her to remember us, but everything else… Is it bad if I want her memories to never return?”
“You want to protect her. It’d be bad if you didn’t.”
I wove my arm around him, tugging him closer, and cast an eye over the quiet camp.
Pain, Madde, and Death were asleep, or at least Death looked asleep, but I wasn’t convinced he was fully resting.
He’d been quiet, a little distant, and worry plucked at my chest, but today had been pure hell and I hadn’t had a moment to drag him aside to talk.
It was only hours ago that Cat bled out in his arms, only hours ago that I looked into her eyes and saw nothing, no spark of life, nothing resembling my wife at all.
I was still wide awake because every time I let my eyelids close, her slack face was all I saw and I had to fling my eyes open again to check she still slept across from me.
“Tor,” Miz said against my ear, laying a kiss on the sensitive skin of my throat. “Did you hear what I said?”
“Fuck.” I scrubbed a hand over my face, itching my scratchy eyes. “No, sorry. My asshole brain keeps going back to that chess match and Cat bleeding out.”
“I asked if you were okay, but I guess that’s my answer.” He slid a hand under my jacket, splaying warm fingers across my ribs. “She came back to us. We didn’t lose her. We’re going to be fine. That’s the delusional shit I’ve been telling myself anyway.”
“You are exceptionally talented at delusional shit,” I said, laughing softly when he pinched me. “Did you see anything—when you made a move on that board?”
“No.” He drew back to look at me, golden eyes dark in the gloom. “But you did. What did it show you?”
“The usual Cruelty headfuck shit,” I dismissed. “It barely left a mark.”
“Tor.”
When I stayed silent, staring across at our wife, he pinched me again and said, “Torment.”
“Jesus. My full name, Miz, really?” I angled my face to meet his glare, the sight of it bringing a smile to my face. “I saw the past. A real memory, but twisted to cause maximum damage. I know it’s total bullshit.”
“But,” he prompted, stroking a path up my body to grasp my cheek, turning my face towards him.
“But it was my mother,” I sighed. “She looked at me like I was the scum of the earth, like I’d disappointed her so much she couldn’t even stand to breathe the same air as me.
And some of it was real. She really did look at me like that.
But in this memory, she looked me in the eye and said I’d disappointed her. That I wasn’t enough.”
My motherfucking voice broke.
“She didn’t say that; Cruelty did,” Miz insisted softly. “She was fucking with your head, Tor. It wasn’t real.”
“But it was,” I laughed bitterly. “Mama might not have said those words, but she meant them. I died knowing that. I should have saved him. I tried.”
“And you died trying to save him.” Miz scratched his nails across my scalp, pressing deep enough that it hurt. “What more could you have done?”
“I know,” I sighed. It was a conversation we’d had so many times in the past, I’d lost count. But I could never escape the ghosts of my brother’s death and mama’s disappointment.
“It’s not just about your brother, is it?” Miz asked astutely. “Tor.”
I swallowed, but the lump in my throat refused to be banished until Miz turned my face and kissed me, slow and sweet and tender.
“We would have done anything,” he hissed, “to protect Cat. Her death happened too quickly for any of us to stop it. I was right there, right behind Violence, and I didn’t see it coming.”
When his voice choked, I dragged him so close not a single scrap of space existed between us.
“You couldn’t have done anything to stop her death, either,” he said.
“We share the blame for her death. But she’s here, right there.
There’s no way to make her alive again.” His voice strangled so cruelly, my own eyes stung.
“But we can keep her safe now. We can help her become the deadliest god in damn existence, and watch her rip apart Violence.”
“I don’t want her anywhere near him,” I rasped.
Miz’s eyes lit with a wry gleam. “Like she’ll let you stop her.”
I closed my eyes with a sigh. “Why must all my loves be as stubborn as fucking mules?”
Miz was quiet for a moment. “Did you just call me an ass?”
“No.” I opened my eyes, smiled weakly at the affronted look on his face. “A mule’s a donkey-horse. An ass is a pure donkey.”
His expression flattened. “You’re calling me a half donkey.”
“Donkeys are cute,” I said, teasing. “Adorable little shits, actually.”
His eyes narrowed further. “Now you’re calling me a little shit.”
“You are a little shit,” I challenged, catching his bottom lip in my teeth as I grabbed two fistfuls of his ass and hauled him on top of me.
“But this is the only ass I’m interested in right now.
In case you’ve forgotten, you still need to earn my forgiveness for the bratty attitude you gave me earlier. ”
“My bratty attitude?” Miz scoffed, pure light in his eyes. “What do you call interfering with me and Cat?”
“Husbandry.”
He tilted his head. “That doesn’t mean what you think it does.”
“Means I’m a damn good husband,” I argued as I kissed him.
“It means you have a farm,” he argued, shoving his hand between us to work my jeans open. “Animals and crops and shit.”
“Shut up,” I groaned and kissed him harder, because there was no way that word meant that.1
His fingers gripped my cock, shooting white-hot need into my veins at the exact moment a tingle down my arms alerted me to eyes fixed our way.
I set my lips to his ear and breathed, “She’s watching.”
“Better make it a good show then,” he replied, dragging his teeth down my jaw to bite my throat in the way that made my groan uncontrollably loud. “Let me fuck you.”
“Ha!” I grabbed a fistful of his hair, forcing his neck into a pretty arch. “Like hell you get to top. I thought I pushed and pushed until things snap, Misery?”
“I didn’t mean that,” he said, breathing faster, his hand tightening around my cock. “I was stressed and scared.”
“No, you were right.” I flipped us so he was crushed against the grass under me. “And now I’m going to push and push until that clever brain of yours snaps. And our wife is going to watch every damn second.”