Chapter 17
CAT
When the lecture let out, my legs were still a little jellified, so I had to lean on Miz as we descended the old stone steps to exit Milton Hall.
Thankfully, by the time we’d eaten and retreated to our new room—and scoured it for cameras and listening devices, both ordinary and magical—I’d regained use of my legs.
The room was surreal in that it was perfectly ordinary.
There was the bed where I’d left it—far too small to fit me and five husbands—and there was my wardrobe still full of my clothes and the chest of drawers of my things.
I clutched the duck plushie Miz gave me to my chest, sitting on the bed with my back to the wall as we discussed our plan for tonight.
I was sad to leave it behind when we slipped from the room, all wrapped in cloaking magic.
I’d changed out of the pale silk dress into dark jeans and a black hoodie covered in tiny, cutesy knives.
It fit my mood—stabby and protective. If anything got between me and my Torment, I’d rip through them with my claws.
Or if those failed, I was armed with four shadow knives, made of magic from each of my bonded ones and sharper than any metal.
“Look, see,” Madde had said when I asked how sharp they were. Then he ignored our horrified cries and attempts to stop him as he carved my name on his chest. Right over his heart. “You can cut bone with these bad boys. Ooh, idea!”
“No!” we’d all shouted at once and managed to talk him down before he wrote my name on his bones.
Now the five of us kept close together under the blanket of shadow, moving down the too quiet hallway in Lawrence Hall as rainy wind moaned outside and rattled the old windows we passed. We encountered no one, and there was no hint that Cruelty and Violence knew we’d left our rooms.
“We need to go right,” I whispered, when we pushed our way through a back door, my hoodie immediately drenched as rain lashed through the magic and into my skin.
I shivered. Shouldn’t one benefit of a magical shield be to keep out the elements?
“Into—” I sighed. “Milton Hall. Of course Tor’s in there. ”
I hadn’t sensed him at all at the Bridestones House, but the moment we stepped foot on Ford campus, I felt him.
Distant, and just out of reach, but there.
It wasn’t clear enough to get a good sense of what our bond would be, what his soul felt like, but there was an undeniable tug in my chest. Sluggish and light, but enough for me to guide us around the back of Lawrence Hall and down the side of Milton Hall, to where the mausoleums watched over the back entrances.
I reached out to Miz as we passed his tomb, lacing my fingers with his.
“I’m serious,” Madde whisper-hissed. “There’s something suspish about that hedge. It’s hiding something.”
“We don’t have time to investigate it now,” Pain replied quietly. “And once we’ve got Tor, we’ll have no reason to stay, so the hedge can be as suspicious as it likes.”
Death put his arm around my shoulder, pulling me closer to shield me from the downpour, the sweet scent of him wrapping around me and calming the frazzled edge of my stress for a moment.
I didn’t ask what would happen if we didn’t find Tor or couldn’t get to him.
I didn’t want the universe to hear me and take it as a challenge.
“We’d better get inside,” Madde urged, scanning the stretch of wind-blown grass, the stalwart figures of the mausoleums, and that damn hedge. “Before Cruelty’s gooners find us.”
A laugh exploded from me, loud enough that I clapped a hand over my mouth.
“Goons,” Miz stressed, a hand over his face. “Goons, Madness.”
Madde shrugged, joining Pain at the door, a dark veil of magic concentrated over the handle. “What’s the difference?”
“Got it,” Pain breathed, his fingers splayed in front of him. When he flicked his wrist, the lock clicked, and he quietly eased the door open. “Cat, remember—”
“To stay in the middle of you all, I know,” I whispered. I could shift into my jaguar and use my fangs and claws, but it was sheer luck that I’d survived against Cruelty. I couldn’t hold my own in a fight against her and Violence.
And after what happened in the manor, I wasn’t sure I could do this without them all around me.
I’d try. I’d walk over hot coals to save Tor, but could I physically do it when every step into Milton Hall had me struggling to breathe, every slash and bruise and cut on my body roaring into sharp relief?
“Upstairs,” I whispered, my hand on my chest as I pushed through the haunting memories to focus on that tug to my husband, hoping it would grow stronger and disappointed when it remained a ghostly echo of sensation.
What if this was all a trick? What if we reached the end of the tether and it wasn’t Tor there, but Violence?
The walls closed in on me as Miz took the lead, using his knowledge of the building from when he stalked me to guide us from hallway to hallway.
Every blind spot, every right-angle turn could hide the god of violence, ready to drive his fist into my ribs again.
He would smile when they shattered. Again.
I could hear my own screams echoing in my ears, so when Death whispered, asking if I was alright, I jumped.
“Cat,” he murmured, taking my hand and holding tight.
“I’m fine,” I lied, scanning the old corridor ahead of us, trying to hide my fear that Violence lay in wait in the recessed doorways.
Or maybe one of the paintings that lined the bare stone walls to either side of us had a secret viewing hole where he could watch us.
“Turn right here,” I prompted, trying so hard to ground myself in the present and not slip into the numbness.
But the numbness was absent the pain and fear that followed every step I took through the Ford building.
The numbness promised relief, and it was tempting even if it wasn’t real.
A gunshot cracked through the silence, and I jumped hard, whipping around with thin tendrils of shadow bursting from each of my fingers.
“It’s just the wind,” Pain breathed with aching kindness. I felt his soul squeeze, as if my panic hurt him, too. “It’s just branches on the windows.”
My shoulders slumped and I exhaled a ragged sigh. He was right. My fear was exaggerating every sound, every feeling of danger. “Sorry,” I whispered.
“Shush.” Madde spun to tap the tip of my nose. “No sorrys allowed. Got it?”
I tried to smile. “Got it.”
He tucked a lock of damp hair behind my ear and said, “I like your shadows, Lioness. Maybe we could play with them one time. I’d look so pretty tied to a bed—”
“Madde,” Death cut in, his voice pitched low. Because we’d stopped in the middle of Milton Hall, right in the open where anyone could come across us. My breathing went shallow, raw. “Maybe save your ideas for later?”
“Roger that.” Madde saluted. “Is that dusty old staircase the one we’re looking for?” he added, peering over Misery’s shoulder at the steps worn in the middle, so many they disappeared into darkness above our heads, the window’s light not enough to illuminate them.
I nodded, and swallowed, forcing my panic down with it.
I didn’t do a good job of it; anxiety had taken hold and refused to be denied.
It cut the air supply to my lungs to a thin stream and knotted my stomach until I felt sick.
But I lifted my jellied leg and took a step.
A declaration, a decree to my fear that it couldn’t beat me, a message to Violence that he would never keep me from my men.
Not the real Violence and not the memory of him that was so acute I felt him breathing down my neck.
He’s not here, I hissed at myself, and jolted when Madde’s voice coursed through my mind, followed by the sensation of my soul being bound up in a fiery hug.
If he so much as looks at you, I will rip his head off and shove it up his asshole.
A flicker of a smile crossed my face, even as Miz jerked his chin for us to follow him up the stairs and my nerves sharpened.
Our steps were mere whispers, but my breathing was so loud I was certain the sibling gods would hear it and snatch us away before we could reach the top stair.
It’s a lovely place for an accident, this staircase, Madde said, right behind me as I scaled the stairs, the scent of dust, history, and malice filling my lungs as I choked down breath after breath. It would be so easy to break someone’s neck here.
Madde, I chided, even though I needed his voice in my head, needed to cling to his darkness so I could take one step after another.
I think he sensed that too, because he shrugged, an incorrigible grin on his face when a bend in the staircase gave me a view of him.
What? I’m just saying. This is a very desirable murder spot.
Prime neck breaking location. Anyone would be lucky to die in a place so cold, creepy, and haunted like this.
The thought of hauntings made me think of Darya, whose ghost helped Miz kill Byron, but I didn’t want to think about that. I wanted to remember him living, so bright with life and love and sarcasm. I wanted—
I gasped, a hand flying to my chest, and I faltered on the next step as the ghostly tug in my chest burst into sudden clarity.
“Did you feel that?” Pain asked nervously. “That was a ward. We just tripped a perimeter.”
“That means we’re going in the right direction,” Miz breathed, hope bathing our bond in warmth.
“And we need to hurry,” Death added. “They’ll know we’re rescuing him.”
“I can feel him,” I said as we quickened our steps, our feet no longer whispering on the old stone, but there was no point in stealth now we’d alerted Cruelty and Violence.
And for the first time since the manor, I wasn’t suffocated by fear at the thought of them.
All my focus was on the sensation growing within me.
Heat and reassurance. The low growl of a threat, the way Tor always threatened anyone who hurt me. “I can feel him!”
I raced up the staircase faster, throwing everything I had at that feeling of Tor, holding onto it and petrified it would unravel from my grasp.
“Right,” I panted when we reached the top. We were at the very top of the spire, I realised with a glance out the narrow window. We must have been just under the roof. Higher than I’d ever been before, because no one came up here. A perfect prison to hide someone you didn’t want to be found.
A short corridor met us at the top, and Miz wasted no time racing right as I directed. There was a single door at the end, the wood painted a dark grey, secured by an ordinary looking lock.
“I can break it,” Pain panted, brushing his hand over my lower back.
“I’ll do it,” Death said with a shake of his head, pausing to kiss my cheek as he moved to the front of the group. “We might need your magic when—”
He didn’t need to finish. The thought was abhorrent. We might need his pain management when we got Tor out of this room, because he might be that badly injured.
My stomach twisted, coiled. I saw my hurt and fear reflected in Death’s stiff back as he strode down the hallway, in Miz’s golden eyes as he ground his jaw, in the twitch of his hands before they curled into fists at his sides.
“No matter what, he’ll be okay,” I whispered, reaching forward to stroke my thumb over his coiled fist. “We’ll make sure of it.”
Miz jerked his head in a nod, and I would have thought it was rage that kept his mouth shut if I couldn’t feel the searing pain of him fighting back tears through our bond.
Shadows pooled around Death, as we crossed the short hallway, the back of my neck tingling as I waited to be caught. How long would we have to get Tor out before the gods responded to that trip wire?
Quicker, I began to urge my men, but what emerged instead was a cry so sharp and high it echoed off the stone ceiling.
Death stumbled, and a ripple of pearlescent shadow moved across the hallway. A shield—another shield. And it had hurt my husband.
“Death,” I breathed, launching forward to catch him when his knees buckled. “Where are you hurt? Tell me where, and we’ll fix it.”
Pain was already kneeling beside us when we hit the ground, his hands hovering over Death’s chest, shadows entwined with his long, artist’s fingers.
I pulled at the loose black shirt wrapping Death’s chest, searching for blood, for wounds, for claws that had ripped deep into his flesh and torn through the muscle beneath.
I could feel it raking through my skin, feel the punch of pain, and the thought of Death experiencing something even remotely similar made me want to scream.
“There’s no blood,” I blurted, finding it harder to breathe as his soul erupted with suffering. “But I can feel how badly it hurts. The magic—”
“Cat,” Death breathed, his eyes fluttering.
“No, don’t close your eyes!” I pleaded. “Death.” I clutched his hand and squeezed. “Daddy, please—”
We all heard it. The absence of sound. A cluster of heartbeats, then—silence.
His heart had stopped.