Chapter 36
Cat
Ikept sneaking glances across the stately necks of our horses at where the woman—Joanna Ford, somehow immortal and very much alive—walked beside Verbena, talking to Miz in a quiet, straightforward sort of way.
If she upset him, I’d find the edge of a cliff to throw her off, and I wouldn’t feel bad about it.
She might once have been an innocent girl, but now she was a sharp-tongued immortal woman who was too mysterious and secretive for my liking.
She offered to teach us how to kill Violence without explaining how she knew how to end him.
She also said she’d show us when the time was right.
Which was complete bullshit. But I was trying to hide my suspicions, because when Miz’s shock wore off it was clear he was happy to see her.
Happy to have this unexpected link to his family, and I knew how badly he was tortured by what happened to the Fords.
So I bit my tongue all the way up the hill to Death’s castle.
My chest squeezed tight at the sight of its ruined spots, and the newly destroyed spire the decay had eaten through.
It was in a worse state then when we’d left, and it hurt even more now my memories had trickled back.
The window where Miz fucked me was gone.
The dining hall where Death had once held me, where they’d done filthy things to me, had fallen through a pit in the floor.
I turned my back to the desolation, a lump in my throat, and faced the stretch of opaque fog where I knew the gates had been. How I knew, how I remembered that, I wasn’t sure, but the pen had been warm in my pocket all morning and every time a memory had recovered, it had heated.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I admitted, dismounting Fuzzball in a movement that was becoming more and more familiar. Not just because of my memories, but the hours we’d spent together since I’d become a death god. “The list doesn’t come with instructions.”
“Any ideas?” Miz asked Joanna as she stopped beside me, arms crossed over her cardiganed chest as she contemplated the stretch of fog.
“Not a clue,” she replied. “This is death magic. Presumably, Death’s the one to ask.”
I looked at my husband, hating how quiet he’d been, and tried to feel for his emotions the way they all seemed to sense mine. I didn’t know if I was doing it right, but I got the faint impression of utter stillness, as if he was frozen inside.
“I’ve done something similar before,” Pain said when Death had no answer. “Not with the gates, but I repaired a shield that was anchored to Fear’s garden fence and the mechanics are more or less the same.”
“More or less,” Miz echoed dubiously.
“Well, obviously the entirety of life and death wasn’t in the balance then,” Pain replied, sending out feelers of magic to the fog. Madde’s ghost dachshunds chased it as if the tendrils were bright yellow tennis balls. “But I’m sure this’ll be fine.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “You sound really sure of that.”
Pain flicked a wisp of magic at me; it tickled my arm. “I solved a Rubick’s Cube once; this is a piece of cake.”
I wanted to squeeze Death’s shoulder, wanted to hug him, but he was in his full death god form and drifting closer to the castle, his soul still frozen. So I thought of the broken look in his eye when we realised he was fading away, and I straightened my back, held my head up. Used it as fuel.
“Pain, talk me through it.”
He stepped up to my side as I walked into the fog, its cold substance lapping at my ankles but not painful.
“That’s the failsafe?” Miz asked, following us with his attention on the sturdy posts that must have once held the gates between life and death. “Which one?”
I trudged through the fog, the ground steady under my feet but the mist too dense to tell if it was stone or grass. My stomach swooped. It was a little like walking on a cloud, unable to see your feet, afraid to fall through.
The left post was cold and rough under my hand. I walked around it, running my hand over the stone, feeling for magic. It was rife with magic, that was the problem. Both were; the right pillar, too. But this one was marked by a cross etched in the stone.
“This one,” I said, shuddering when the magic I brushed over its surface shuddered in response.
“It’s intact?” Pain asked, his magic joining mine. “So we can use it to call the spirits back to the domain, and fuck up all Violence’s plans?”
“Sounds too good to be true,” Tor muttered. “But fuck it, let’s try it.”
I reached into shadow and brought out the coil of iron, the metal heavy and cold in my hands. “How do I…”
“You have a bucket-load of magic,” was Pain’s helpful response.
“Pain,” I said, shaking my head.
“Yes, darling woe?”
“Please tell me there are more instructions than use the bucket of magic.”
“Oh, yeah sure.” He came closer, his hand finding the small of my back, easing the nerves that began to ripple through me. “First, you have to kiss your husband. That’s, like, step number one. Step number two is the bucket.”
I turned my face, grazing my lips over his. “You’re ridiculous.” Pink stained his cheeks. “I love it.” He turned tomato-red.
“Okay,” I whispered to myself, looking at the coil, then the space between the two stone pillars. “Bucket of magic.”
I searched within, finding that deep well of power and taking a steadying breath. I cupped a fistful of power in my hand, unspooling more and more until it didn’t just fill my hand; it spilled onto the ground. Dark magic met white fog and streamed like ink through water, turning the mist black.
“Unspool the iron,” Tor instructed, his shoulder brushing mine. When I struggled to unwind the thick metal, he reached across to help me, something intimate about us working together. “Pain, what next?”
“It’ll need all of us, I think,” Pain replied, shifting his weight. “And Death, we’ll need you. It’s your realm after all.”
I hated the low, rustling laugh that came from Death, but he joined us, the hem of his black robe drifting through the fog as he hovered in place.
“I’m not sure how much I can contribute,” he said, bitter and low, nothing like the honeyed warmth I remembered.
My soul ached, and I reached out on impulse, throwing my aching soul across the distance to his, wrapping around him as if I could protect him from a process that was almost complete.
“Just being here is enough,” I said, clearing my throat when my voice scraped my throat, rough and abraded.
I held onto his soul as I reached for more magic, dark smoke overflowing both hands as I gripped the iron. “Can I just… place the iron with my hands?”
“I don’t see why not,” Pain replied. “Whatever feels right, do it. It’s your list.”
But it wasn’t my domain, as much as it was my home. And I didn’t want to let Death down.
I had to force my head not to drop as I stepped between the pillars, Tor on one side, Pain on the other. I stretched out the iron with their help and the aid of my power, hammering it into place with a sharp nail of death magic.
I inhaled sharply when magic pulsed from the iron. Pressure filled my skull, straining my eyes, my breathing, making it harder to keep my arms lifted.
“Oh no,” Madde breathed. “Not good.”
He ducked under the iron we wove from post to post, his tongue sticking out as he splayed his fingers, not quite touching the metal but close.
“Stop it,” he muttered. “Not you, lioness, you carry on. I’ll fix this stubborn tangle right here.”
My heart quickened, the pressure in my head driving against the backs of my eyes, but I focused on my breathing and strung the iron from the posts, crouching to secure the last length in place.
A stifling growl of magic rumbled over mine, made my power shake and gasp within me.
My head pounded. I peered up in shock as darkness blasted around Madde like a storm cloud.
“Try fighting this, you bitch,” he hissed, seemingly to the iron, and when his power drowned the coil, the hammering against my skull ripped away all at once. I groaned, clutching my head, my brain tender, my eyes aching as I knelt in the fog.
“Death,” Pain blurted. “You have to shape it. Form it with your intent—to keep the balance, to keep the realm safe.”
Warmth brushed my shoulder as Death floated closer, his magic a thin barrier, too transparent. But enough, apparently, because the messy rows of iron began to transform, some twisting, others curving, knotting together in intricate patterns until it looked… the same.
The same as it always had.
Tears lined my eyes and flowed down my cheeks. It looked exactly as the gates had before, a tiny part of our home restored the way it should have always been.
The pen in my pocket flashed suddenly hotter, and I reached for it in shock, hissing when the metal scorched my palm—and immediately ripped me into a vision.
No, hundreds of visions. Thousands of memories. I fell through each one like Alice tumbling into Wonderland, scenes flashing past me, voices filling the air, emotions detonating through my chest with destructive force.
When I fell through the last memory back to the fog and the gates, all my husbands were around me, Tor brushing hair from my face and Madde sitting behind me, his legs framing mine, arms wrapped around my middle.
“Cat?” Miz asked, breathless with fear as he scanned my face over and over.
“The magic took too much from you,” Death said in a rattling hiss. “The cost was far too high.”
“No,” I rasped, surprised at how sore my throat was, how dry my mouth.
“It tried to take you from us again,” Madde said in a voice hollowed of every bit of feeling and colour. “We nearly lost you again.”
“No,” I said again, wetting my bottom lip.
I glanced around for the pen, startling when I found Joanna kneeling to retrieve it where I must have dropped it into the fog, holding out the gold fountain pen with a knowing gleam in her eyes. I’d forgotten she was here, forgotten her entirely.
“I believe you,” she said, passing the pen into my numb hand. “I felt her here.”
“Who?” Miz breathed, as if he knew the answer. His face was bleached white, his eyes wild as he clutched my hand to his chest.
“Rosalind,” I rasped, a sad smile pulling at the edges of my lips. “She showed me everything I forgot. All my memories.”
“Does that mean—” Pain began, but was too afraid to finish.
“I remember,” I confirmed with a nod, more tears rolling down my cheeks. “I remember you. I remember everything.”