Chapter 1
MISERY
“Little bride,” I croaked, stroking a pink strand of hair from her face with a numb finger. I couldn’t tell if the strand had been pink all along or if it was stained from the blood Violence drew from my wife. “My universe. Cat, can you blink if you hear me?”
“It’s not working,” Madde stressed, chewing the nail varnish off his fingernails. He was still speckled with mud and blood from battling the animated topiaries in Cruelty’s garden at Darkmore Manor. “She’s not going to wake up. We’ve lost her and we’ll never get her back and—”
“Yes, we will,” Death cut in with iron-willed confidence.
But one look in his eyes, and I knew he was as afraid as the rest of us.
Cat hadn’t spoken all night, not one word since we got her out of Cruelty’s twisted mansion and brought her here, to a safe house Death kept on Bridestones Moor in Yorkshire.
It was like a miniature version of his castle at home, but with a single tower instead of multiple spires, and the furniture inside was all wrong, the layout different, the styles similar but lacking the comfort.
I wanted to go home, but the realm was nothing but fog and decay.
It was a miracle we’d found our way out, but there was no way back, even for death gods.
Would Cat come back to us if we found a way back to the castle, with its familiar surroundings, the scents of us embedded in the furniture, in the air itself?
“We’ll get her back,” Death insisted, grasping Madde’s shoulder as he spiralled out of control, trembling, freckled fingers tearing at his red hair. “She’s right here in front of us; she just needs time. She’s been through…” Death’s voice strangled. “She just needs time.”
Silence hung like a scythe in the air. It was Pain who broke it.
“The shields are complete,” he said from the window, his voice flattened until it was perfectly even. The result was robotic.
“That’s something, at least,” Death sighed, kneeling in front of the red damask armchair we’d placed Cat in, the cushions swallowing her until she looked small. “Can you feel if—is she still in agony?”
“No,” Pain replied, shadows rippling into a long column from his hand as he made his way through the room, using them like a cane to avoid the coffee table and the chest of magic shit I hauled up from the cellar the moment we got here. None of it had helped so far.
Pain looked as tired as the rest of us, his curls in disarray, dark smudges under his green-hazel eyes, and deep furrows cut in his brow as he said, “I can feel her through the bond, but she’s… muted. Distant.”
“Shit,” I breathed, a lump cutting off anything else I’d have said.
I bowed my head, resting it against Cat’s knees, pressure building in my head.
“We agreed to give her time, but it’s been hours and she’s still catatonic.
And we’re no closer to finding Tor.” My voice cracked on his name.
Fuck. “Come on, Cat. Come back to us. Please.”
I held my breath, tipped my head up to watch her face, her empty eyes, waiting for a spark of life. But like all the other times I’d pleaded with her, there was no response.