Chapter 15
Iloved wearing a helmet. No one knew when you were grinning your head off, an uncontrollable smile curving your cheeks until they literally hurt. She was so fucking cute. The bride. Our bride. Cute and sexy and afraid and a little dangerous. An aura of death clung to her, a whisper of violence, and it made me hard in a damn instant. Swathed in the dark cloak of death, no one could see my hard-on.
I was rarely jealous, but I wanted to be the one holding her, feeling her body against mine. Would she be soft? Curvy? Warm? God, I could almost feel her in my arms and the imagined sensation had me biting back a groan. I hadn’t been with a woman in… fuck, over seven hundred years. When I’d been alive, before I became Torment.
It wasn’t that no woman had ever caught my eye, but they never held my interest the way Death and Miz did. No one else truly understood what it meant to be a god linked to death, to be in torment every second of every day. Well, maybe the other gods, but they were conceited dicks. Plus, women tended to lose interest in me when they realised with a single touch, I could give them the most unbearable pain, drag them through every unspeakable memory and fear they’d ever had, and intensify those emotions until there were only two results—madness and death.
That was a pretty rapid mood killer.
But this woman, this brave, beguiling mortal, was my bride. She could run, but I would always find her. And I’d prove she had nothing to fear with me. I’d sooner burn down the world than inflict that acute kind of torture on an innocent person.1
I couldn’t take my eyes off the bride as we rode into the shadow of the castle, close enough that its familiar scent washed over me, soothing the torment that made me want to scream, cry, and rip my heart out for a split second before it all roared back. I was always surprised there was space for it inside me, that so much pain actually fit in one living body. Well. Not living, I supposed. I’d been dead seven hundred years.
I needed to know her name. The bride. I watched her go still, watched her knuckles whiten where she gripped Mort’s reins, watched her eyes widen—a pale grey like the silver veil of souls, like ominous mist, like spectres and hauntings. I needed her name. Needed everything. Her favourite colour. Her favourite food. What brought her joy, what made her sad, what drove her to pure rage. I wanted a list of her enemies numbered in the order of who’d harmed her the worst, with itemised bullet points of exactly what they’d done, so I could decide how I might kill them.
She was mine. My bride.
I hadn’t had anyone as mine since I joined Death and Misery, hadn’t entertained the thought that someone else might be mine to keep, mine to love, mine to—
She tore herself away from Death with an abrupt wrench, so sudden that he couldn’t anticipate the move. Before any of us could stop her, she rolled off Mort’s back and dropped to the ground, landing with a rough cry.
The sound of the impact went through me like the clang of a bell and I leapt off Lanai’s dark back, releasing my grip on her spectral mane as I swung to the ground. I landed beside the bride, reaching for her before I could stop myself. And why should I stop? She was our bride, my girl.
“Are you insane?” I demanded, scanning her body with frantic eyes. I caught her face, my hand moulded to her pale cheek. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” she snapped, recoiling from me. “Leave me alone.”
“You’re obviously not fine. Fine people don’t hurl themselves from the back of a shadow shire.”
A furrow knitted her brow, and for a single moment I had all her attention. It was heady. I couldn’t look away. “Shadow shire?”
“The horse,” I clarified, reaching for her again, sliding my fingers along her cheek and marvelling at the softness, the heat. “Tell me if this hurts,” I said and forced my hand away from her face to grasp her leg, rotating her foot. When she didn’t hiss in pain, I repeated the motion on her other foot.
“It’s fine,” she said quietly, still frowning. “Why do you care if I’m hurt?”
Because I know torment, my bride, and I don’t want you well acquainted with it, too.
“We’ll explain inside.” I wrapped my hand around hers, guiding her to her feet and glancing at Miz and Death who’d climbed off their steeds and hovered, watching through the slits in their helmets. Speaking of… When the bride was steady on her feet, and I was sure she wasn’t going to run, I reached up and pulled off my helmet, dropping it into a pool of shadow until I needed it next.
“Oh, you’re…” she said, her grey eyes wide on my face.
My chest swelled. I lifted my head, a smile pulling at my mouth. “Striking? Devastatingly handsome?”
“Normal,” she corrected, swiftly popping the inflated balloon of my ego.
“Were you expecting a monster?” I drawled, wrapping my hand around her elbow, unable to resist touching her. My thumb caressed the fragile skin above her forearm through her shirt. She really ought to be wearing a coat; a chill like this could make mortals seriously ill.
She swallowed, biting the inside of her lip. My cock throbbed viciously at the sight. “Well, you were wearing the helmet and cloak, riding a huge shadow horse…”
I smiled, and barely swallowed a remark about her riding my huge shadow horse instead.
“Tor,” Death warned, as if sensing the words on the tip of my tongue.
The bride glanced over my shoulder and froze. I glared. The beautiful bastard had removed his helm—and so had Miz. Pretty fuckers, both of them, Miz icy and elegant, Death rendered in warm browns and rich golds, his features not as delicate as Misery’s but no less arresting.
“Who are you?” she breathed, her pulse thrumming in her throat. It called to me like a siren song, whispering promises of comfort and affection. I shook the feeling away.
“We’ll tell you inside the castle,” Death replied, ever-calm. “But until we’re inside, Nightmare can still find us.”
“Us,” she echoed, a knot in her brow. “She’s hunting you, too?”
Misery flinched. The bride didn’t notice.
“Unfortunately,” Death agreed, sweeping his arm at the castle towering above us, onyx and glossy and threatening. “Will you join us inside?”
She laughed softly, the sound full of fear. “Yeah, sure, I’ll join you in your ominous Transylvanian castle.”
I smirked, trailing my eyes over her in a different way to when I assessed her for injuries. The royal blue shirt she wore was scuffed with dirt from the fall, but no less alluring; the way it hugged her chest and waist made me want to fall at her feet and beg her to keep me for all eternity. Even her denim cargo pants enticed me; what did she keep in her pockets, what secrets did she have tucked away? And god, herface. Sweet and round, her skin pink and flushed darker at her cheeks, her eyebrows strong. There was an innocence in her beauty, but one look in her steely eyes and I saw suffering, a delicate language I was fluent in.
My fingers brushed her jaw before I’d given them permission to move, and her breath caught, her eyes flaring with fear, hands trembling.
“There’s an illusion here,” I murmured, tracing the edge of where it sewed to her face then flowed down her neck to her chest. “What are you hiding, little bride?”
Fear changed to terror and she stumbled away from me, lifting a hand to ward me away.
“I’m not a threat to you,” I promised her. “I’d rather my ribcage be cut apart and my heart ripped out than cause you harm.”
She froze in surprise but the fear remained. “If you’re not a threat, why did you fuck with my car and kidnap me? And don’t give me lies about protecting me.”
“We’ll explain in the castle,” Misery said, edging closer, wind catching long strands of his pale hair. “We need to go inside. She’s almost here.”
The bride held her hand between us, her only weapon, her only shield. My heart ached. I would give her a dozen weapons, cover her beautiful body with them until she rattled with steel and iron.
“I’m not hiding anything,” she said breathlessly, her attention returning to me. “I don’t know what the illusion is, but I can guess who put it there. There’s—there’s makeup on my face I can’t wash away. The makeup I wore on Halloween, when she did… whatever she did.” Her throat bobbed. “Nightmare.”
Miz flinched and this time she caught it, confusion muddying her grey eyes. “She’s listening,” he said. “Mind your words.”
“Inside,” Death ordered, iron entering his words. “Now.”
He started towards our bride. Idiot. I was ready to lunge after her, unsurprised when she ran.
It was worrying easy to catch her, my arms wrapping around her waist, pulling her back into me. “Sorry about this, little bride, but if we stay out here, not only will Nightmare get her hands on you, she’ll also gain access to the domain of death, and I can’t allow that.”
I threw her over my shoulder, my hands secure against the backs of her thighs, and hurried to the gate with Death and Misery flanking us. Fuck, the heat of her, the softness of her chest and stomach.
“Put me down!” she raged, breathless with fright.
“Terror,” a sultry feminine voice called on the wind. “My terror, come to me.”
I tightened my grip on our bride, rage making my entire body bristle.
“She’s not your anything,” Death argued, his voice low and ominous in a way I so rarely heard.
“Oh god,” the bride choked out, trembling harder against my shoulder, her teeth knocking together. “Oh, god, oh god.”
I sprinted, faster than I’d had any cause to run in years, and skidded into the expansive courtyard before the castle that was the domain of death. An entire realm contained in a single building.
“Miz, gates,” I hissed, spinning around to stare at the winding Ford’s End road, the moor entirely covered in fog now. I realised why our bride had taken up her panicked chant at once; Nightmare had taken form, and floated down the road towards us, her red hair like a flag of blood behind her, her poisoned, beautiful face smiling, hand stretched out in entreaty.
I only breathed again when Misery slammed the iron gates shut and Death stood behind them, a dark force gathering around him. His power was a cloud of darkness and silver, souls pressing their faces from the inside of it, horrific and gruesome. They spread out across the gates in a shield Nightmare could never cross.
She yowled in fury, like a pissed off cat, and I exhaled a long sigh, letting down the bride from my shoulder. I settled her with hands curled around her slim biceps, not quite able to stop touching her. My heart stuttered when I saw her teary grey eyes.
“I hope you weren’t attached to your car. I’m afraid it might be the victim of Nightmare’s little tantrum.”
I tried to coax her down from her fear with a smile, but it had no effect. Shit. Death and Miz hovered, their eyes on her.
I tucked a pink lock of hair behind her ear, my touch lingering, and gentled my voice. “Let’s go inside, shall we?”