Chapter 7
CAT
Aviolent charge went through my heart, startling it inside my chest, and my eyes flew open as I hauled gasps of air into my lungs. There was so much to see around me, so many faces, and an overwhelming assault of new surroundings, that my head pounded and I didn’t know where to look.
“Back up,” Pain said in a stern voice I remembered from Cruelty’s manor. “Give Cat space, we’re crowding her.”
I shot him a relieved glance as air flowed into the places they’d occupied, peering desperately into my face. Not that they went far; a few inches were all they allowed me.
“Where are we?” I asked, flattening my hand to my galloping heart and staring at the rustic, old-brick room, the roaring fire, the dark furniture. I didn’t recognise any of it.
“A safe house,” Death answered, clasping my other hand and running his thumb over my knuckles, soothing me in a way nothing else could.
I gulped down his scent, sugar and smoke wrapping around my senses, but bitter with worry.
“It’s shielded, and no one will get within a mile radius without us knowing about it. ”
I held onto his hand, my heartbeat settling, that strange magic still rippling around me. “What is that magic…?”
Miz frowned, glancing around the room. “I don’t feel anything.”
“I do,” Death said. “I think it’s the stones.”
“The what?” I pushed out of the chair, unable to sit still, Tor’s absence gnawing at me, cutting a hole through my heart.
“Those,” Madde gestured out the window, not taking his eyes off me, devouring the sight of me walking across the room. When my knees buckled, my legs weak, he flew in to catch me. “Look. They’re called the Bridestones, and they’re as old as balls.”
Pain snickered. “Interesting word choice.”
I glanced back at him and startled. “Why are you covered in mud?” It was smeared on his black trousers and darkened the slate grey of his Henley. His hands, too, were speckled with it, and there was a smudge on his jaw that made my fingers twitch to brush it off.
“Oh, you know.” He ran a hand through his curls, holding his other out to me, a bunch of wildflowers clutched in it. “Just getting flowers for my girl.”
“From a bog?” I guessed, accepting the flowers and bringing them to my chest, my heart aching. Tor should have been here. We should have all been safe.
“I may have slipped and fell while collecting them.”
“He slid all the way down the hill,” Death supplied with a ghost of amusement. His hand came to rest on the small of my back, his presence stalwart and comforting. “The Bridestones’ magic might help us track Tor. Miz already found an item to use from the chest.”
I hadn’t even noticed the ornate wooden chest propped open in the middle of the room. It was a wonder I hadn’t walked into it. “How do we do it? Shadows?”
“There’s something we need to do first,” Pain said before Death could respond, his hazel eyes drifting in my direction. “We couldn’t get the collar off while you were…”
“On holiday in your mind,” Madde supplied, peering out the window. I followed his example and looked through the warped glass. Grass stretched out in all directions from the front door in a messy sprawl, a desaturated grey-green instead of the vibrancy of Ford’s End.
I saw the stones instantly; they were pretty hard to miss.
Giant, hulking rock carved by what had to be weather and time, clustered around the cottage like it had been built within the shield of them.
The ripple of power I’d felt intensified, but like I’d sensed through the void, it felt nurturing and kind instead of sinister.
An old, natural magic, nothing at all like death magic, or whatever twisted thing Nightmare and Cruelty wielded.
My fingers drifted to the collar, wincing when I found it half embedded in my skin, fused with my collarbones. “Can we cut it out?”
“We might have to,” Miz replied, a twist of anger deepening his words until he sounded like the man I first met, not the Misery I’d come to know. “But there’s something we can try first. Pain’s going to guide us through it; he has the most experience with the bond.”
I glanced at Pain in surprise. “You do?”
He ducked his head, rubbing the back of his neck. “I, uh, sensed you the first time on Halloween night. I knew your soul was meant for mine instantly. It’s like… a bridge made of crystal and starlight, stretching from me to you.”
Madde waved his hand between me and Pain, searching the air.
“Mystically, obviously,” Pain huffed, darting a shadow at Madde’s hand. “I can feel you, darling woe. Right here.” He touched his breastbone, and I closed my eyes to concentrate, feeling for the connection.
“I can’t feel anything,” I admitted, my shoulders dropping.
“What about now?”
I frowned and wondered if Cruelty was just messing me when she called them my— “Holy shit!”
A rush of white, electric fire hit the centre of my chest and I stumbled back so suddenly Miz had to catch me. “That’s you…?”
It felt like starlight, exactly as he said, like a sun burned to life inside my rib cage. Powerful, but pure in a way no magic I’d sensed before had been. Precious, fragile, and yet as strong as platinum.
Tentatively, I reached for that place inside me where the starlight burned, and Pain honest to god giggled. That was his soul…?
I looked from Pain, smeared with mud, to my other men, my eyes wide. “Can I feel you, too?”
Pain smiled, boyish despite being… actually, I had no idea how old he was. I was only now realising how little I knew about him. “There are more threads connected to your soul. Maybe they’re bridges like ours, or… well, I can’t think of anything else. But other stuff instead of bridges.”
“Chairs?” Madde suggested honestly, his eyes wide and guileless.
I laughed. “Tell me how to find them.”
“Each thread will connect into the same place,” Pain explained, stepping closer to lay a hand over my heart. “You should be able to feel all of us. Reach for the place where our bridge meets your soul.”
I had no idea how to do that, but I closed my eyes and reached inward. It was impossible to concentrate with memories attacking me while I was conscious and no longer hiding from them. Not to mention my ribs and chest pulsed with deep, searing damage I didn’t remember feeling before.
Pain breathed a soft curse, and the hurt was swept away, snuffed out as easily as that. I frowned. Did he feel that which he took into himself? And how much pain had he taken from me, after Violence beat me?
“Focus on the thread,” he reminded me, his voice so calm and kind that it was impossible to tell if he was hurting.
My breath quivered when I inhaled, but I needed to do this. If I could find the bonds between me and my husbands, maybe I could use them to find Tor. It was a tiny hope, easily distinguished, but it was something. So I brushed an inner touch to the gleaming star that arched from me to Pain.
“That’s it, breathe evenly,” he coached, his hand warm on my breastbone. “Don’t think about anything else, just focus on the bonds.”
Of course, as soon as he said that, all I could think about was the temple Cruelty’s illusion threw me into, and the gravestone that bore Tor’s name.
She was going to kill him. She’d wait for the moment with the most impact, when it would crush us the most, then she’d kill him.
Would I ever see him again? Would she wait for me to witness his murder, or would she just send him back to us in a coffin?
I tried to hold onto the bright star of Pain’s soul, but my mind spun around the gravestone over and over, imagining all the horrific ways Cruelty and Violence could kill my husband.
I jumped so hard my heart knocked into my ribs when someone threw their arms around me, squeezing so hard that I yelped.
I was still so attuned to that bright star that I felt Madde.
Not just his arms crushing all the air from my lungs, but him.
Ephemeral and vibrant like a fire. If the first bond felt like starlight, this was a burning sun, hot, passionate, and more dangerous than I could have imagined.
Like I had with Pain, I reached out to touch the thread linking us together, and it vibrated like a violin string in my chest. Madde squeezed me tighter, until Miz had to intervene.
“Touch me,” I urged him without opening my eyes. “I think I can find the thread of our bond, but I need you to be touching me.”
Miz didn’t hesitate. He cupped my face with a warm hand, fingertips sliding into my hair, and when his lips brushed my temple, I felt him.
Unlike the others, this wasn’t a bright burst of sensation but a slow, measured unfolding, like a rose unfurling its petals.
Misery felt like warm rain after a drought, like standing by a waterfall as the sun blazed down.
A weight slid off my shoulders and I fell into him, arching against the feel of his soul like a touch-starved cat.
“There’s my girl,” he breathed, his lips moving over my temple. “You feel… like a miracle. Like I’ve been frozen cold and now I’m warm.”
My eyes stung. The temptation to open them, to look into his eyes, was so strong, but if I stopped now, I was afraid I’d lose all the bonds. None of us really knew what we were doing, but it was working.
“Death,” I breathed, holding my other hand out and surprised when he immediately clasped my hand.
Had I sensed where he was, even without a grip on the bond?
He brought my hand to his mouth, pressed his lips to my knuckles and held there, and I gasped as another sensation filled my chest, wistful and calm.
Images flashed through my mind this time.
His soul was a forest—ancient and reassuring, a place to leave all my worries behind and let nature wash my fears away.
Air filled my lungs, somehow clearer, crisper with my bonds flaring to life within me. I could feel them, and it was wondrous and a little bit terrifying. Just days ago, I’d been Cruelty’s captive, tortured by Violence, and now I was free and alive and full of awe. It gave me whiplash.
“Don’t think about that,” Death murmured. “You don’t need to go back there.”
I wasn’t sure I could ever stop going back there. But I made myself nod, and while I still had enough amazement and belief, while I felt powerful instead of powerless, I reached for the other tether I felt in the heart of my chest.
No sensations sprung to life, and I didn’t get a real sense of it right away, but I held onto the thread. There were probably better ways to do this but imagining I ziplined down the thread was the best I could think of right now.
“I think we can all agree I’ve been very good at staying quiet for the past few minutes,” Madde began.
“Shh,” Pain hissed. “Let her concentrate.”
“Fine, I’ll be good for another minute,” Madde sulked.
I reached further, stretching a hand out blindly, waiting for fingers to grip mine as if I could pull Tor from a dark ocean before he drowned. But all that happened was I reached, and reached…
My shoulders dropped.
“It took Tor a whole day to find you,” Death said, startling my eyes open. “Don’t give up on your first try.”
“Tor was the one who found me at Darkmore?” I asked, pain gripping my throat, making my voice small.
“He was,” Death confirmed, giving me a steady, settling stare. I felt that calm in his soul, the forest that would bend under a violent wind but never break, ageless, stronger than anything. I filled my lungs with another deep breath and nodded.
“Okay. I’ll try again.”
But three more attempts got me the same result. I reached into the endless space between Tor and I and found nothing. And by the time I finally gave up, I was exhausted both physically and mentally. My brow was sweaty, my heartbeat laboured, lungs raspy like I’d been sprinting.
“Sit down,” Miz ordered bossily, “before you fall down.”
He still sounded like the asshole I’d first met, but when he’d bustled me into a well-stuffed armchair, he brushed a lock of white hair off my face and tucked it behind my ear, as loving as ever. I caught his hand when it dropped and squeezed tightly.
“I’ll find him,” I promised, holding his heavy golden stare. When was the last time he slept? He looked more exhausted than me. They all did.
“We will find him,” he corrected. “Together. Don’t even think about going off on your own to save one of us. Not again. I forbid it.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Oh, you forbid it? Who put you in charge of me?”
“I put myself in charge,” he replied, sharp with defiance as he leaned closer, his breath caressing my lips. “And if you so much as think about running away from me again, I’ll cane your ass until you can’t sit, stand, walk, or even breathe without feeling my displeasure. Understand?”
I gulped, even as heat bloomed between my legs. I nodded.
“Good girl.” He kissed my cheek and moved back. “Now that we’re bonded, Pain thinks our magic combined should be able to get the collar off you.”
“And if it can’t…?”
“Not to worry, my lioness,” Madde said brightly. “I brought tools.”
When he held up a dagger and a pair of pliers, I felt the blood drain from my face.