Chapter 28
CAT
It took an entire hour to convince my men that going to Cruelty’s detention was the best thing to do.
Sure, there was a small chance she’d murder me, but she needed me as a friend, craved it desperately.
What Tor had seen in the mirror convinced me of that.
Kitty, she called me. The same affectionate name she’d given to that cat she’d been chasing, promising a happily ever after to.
What happened to the cat? Had they left it behind in Death’s domain?
It wouldn’t surprise me if Violence killed the poor creature.
As long as I don't provoke Cruelty’s temper, I’ll be fine. That's what I told my bonded ones. Even after she almost killed me in Darkmore, I wasn’t afraid around her. Nervous enough to tangle my stomach into knots but not petrified. Not like the terror I felt around her brother.
“Ah, punctuality!” she said as she breezed into the small box room on the second floor of the library building to find me sitting by the window.
I knew she chose this building for the reminder of the night I lost Honey, but I kept my back straight and bulldozed through the memories.
Fuck her. I wouldn’t let her win. “I love a student who arrives on time. And even better—you’re early. ”
I managed a tight smile, tapping the filigree gold fountain pen on the notebook Tor gifted me, along with a deep kiss that made my toes curl.
I pretended not to see him and Madness exchange a thumbs up, even if I wondered which stationery and gift shop was missing a navy blue notebook covered with watercolour Silver Appleyard ducks.
“I knew you’d be disappointed with me,” I said, flattening my tone into something neutral instead of sharp with rage. At least she wore her own face today, pretty and unassuming. No hint of the monster I knew lived within. “I thought I’d better come early to earn my forgiveness.”
“Well, you’re off to a great start,” she said brightly, lace trailing across the polished wooden boards as she crossed the room. Closing the door behind herself, I noticed, to keep us enclosed together.
That was good, I told myself. Pain, Tor, and Madde were searching Everard Tower for Peach, and we needed her distracted. And Death and Miz were close by; all I had to do was shout and they’d rescue me.
“Although,” Cruelty said, sitting atop the desk in front of mine, facing me with her legs crossed daintily, her lace gown arranged so it fell artfully.
“I am very disappointed in you, Kitty. After I let you and your bonded ones go without telling my brother, you still disobeyed me and broke him out. That is very bad behaviour.”
“I won’t apologise,” I said, extremely carefully. “He’s my family. I know you’d do the same if Violence was in trouble.”
She sighed and gazed out the window. My heart jolted into my ribs when I saw the god himself standing on the road outside, the imposing figure of him making every muscle seize in my body.
My breath strangled in my throat, and I felt his coiled fist drive into my stomach.
I felt the threat of his magic, the violence so thick in the air I could taste it.
My reaction was so severe that for a moment I saw only Violence, dressed in black suit trousers with the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up his forearms, speckled with blood. Threat was written in every muscle, every daunting line of his body as he leaned closer to—Duncan.
My heart sank, that reaction just as visceral as my fear of Violence. I didn’t want to believe it, but there were Duncan and Violence, thick as thieves as they spoke, Duncan glancing around as if to check they were alone.
So Phil was right. There was someone I couldn’t trust, someone betraying me.
I rubbed my head where an ache gathered.
The psycho siblings got to him somehow, found leverage to force him to do their dirty work.
He wouldn’t do it otherwise. He wouldn’t.
I dragged my stare from the window, relieved Cruelty hadn’t noticed my despair.
I added Duncan to the mental list of people to help, right beside Peach, and knew it made me a hypocrite about Phil.
“I suppose,” Cruelty said, “I can maybe understand why you did what you did. But I can’t forgive you killing my students.”
“Ah.” I winced. “That was my husband.” I refused to give her a name, to let Miz become a target. “Those people threatened me,” I added quickly, even though she’d see straight through my story. “We were talking to them, and they just attacked me.”
Cruelty laughed, and I was so sure she knew I was bullshitting. Ice slipped down my spine. “That’ll be Violence’s effect.” She beamed, her cheeks rosy and round. “He tries to keep it under control, but he’s just so powerful, he can’t help inspiring violence in others.”
I exhaled my next breath slowly, relief making my legs so weak I was glad I was sitting down. Some fucking how, I’d gotten away with that lie.
“You mentioned something about writing lines,” I prompted, wanting this detention over and done with.
It was just another part of her perfect university charade.
We didn’t do detention or lines, just strikes and sanctions until we were expelled, though Cruelty didn’t seem to know that.
She did die decades ago, after all. “What should I write?”
“Oh. Yes!” She jumped off the desk and glided to the whiteboard on the wall. As far as I knew, this room was used for small study groups, but the screen was still the latest model, and I watched Cruelty realise that. “Where’s the chalk?”
“There should be a pen,” I replied, swallowing a smile. She killed my friends, trapped Tor, threatened my husbands, imprisoned Pain in plaster, and tormented me for weeks. Even if it was just a little thing, I loved seeing her off balance.
She located the pen after a few false starts, and it was satisfying as hell to watch her startle back with a screech when the first word she wrote brought the screen to life.
It took her several tries to write the line on the screen, and I had to physically wipe the smirk off my face by the time she turned back to face me.
If nothing else could kill her, maybe technology would do the job.
I picked up my own pen and set it to the first page in my new notebook, where I could tidily rip it out later, and began to copy the words from the screen.
I will not break the rules or disappoint my best friend ever again.
I could easily write it because my best friends were dead. And soon, Cruelty would be, too.
I wrote I will not break but before I could finish the line, the classroom tore away from me and a gasp cut my throat as a dark forest rose up around me.
I was running, chasing dark moths through the moonlight that filtered past the tree canopy, the light luminous and hazy.
The air smelled of incense, earthen, smoky, bringing to mind spiritual shops and calming temples.
But there was nothing calming about the way my boots slammed into the forest floor or the desperation that urged me to catch one of those moths.
I knew, deep down, none of this was real, but the details were so clear.
The chitter of birds in the very tops of the trees.
The rustle of leaves around me. The whisper of the grass as my feet slashed a path through.
The firmness of the ground under me. The cold pricking at my arms, the white dress I wore leaving too much of me exposed.
Cruelty wasn’t the only one who’d worn a wedding dress. The costume I wore to the Halloween party pulled at my body as I ran, and I remembered a specific issue with this dress as my boobs nearly escaped.1
I didn’t know why I needed to catch those moths, but I knew everything depended on it, so I kept running. Even as I grew breathless, even as my legs jellified, I kept running, until a brighter glimmer of light shone in the distance.
In the strange passage of dreams, I blinked, and I was right in front of it. I’d expected a glowing door, or maybe even a window to climb through. I should have known it would be a mirror. A solid pane of glass, smooth and unblemished unlike the mirror they imprisoned Tor in. And Kami before him.
But when I peered into this mirror, it was my own face staring back at me.
Pale skin, no skull makeup, with bright eyes instead of heavy and tormented.
I looked older than I had at the start of term, but my reflection didn’t have the weight of suffering, fear, and grief on her face. Rather, she was smiling, carefree.
I hoped I was looking at my future and not an alternative timeline that was lost the moment Nightmare cursed us all.
“Hello?” I whispered, staring at the trees around me, startling at the way they curved inward, turning their trunks toward the mirror.
“Hello,” the mirror repeated, sending my heart into an uneven clatter.
“Do you… know why I’m here?” I asked, barely above a breath. I didn’t have the nerve to speak any louder. Part of me thought I was crazy for speaking to a glowing mirror in a vision, but I saw too much magic everyday to doubt it.
“Yes,” the Cat in the mirror replied, watching me as I watched her. She wore a high-necked dress of blood red velvet, a stark contrast to my Bride of Death costume.
“Can you tell me?” I pressed.
“Ford,” she replied, her smile knowing. “Ford is a power in its own right and it hates the gods who call themselves its masters.”
There was a big chance I was a) delusional, b) dreaming, or c) just desperate enough to be talking to myself. But I said, “You’re telling me Ford has magic, and Ford brought me here. The school.”
“No.” My frown deepened, but then she added, “The island.”
Well. I blinked. “The island brought me here. Why?”
“To tell you how to destroy Cruelty and Violence.”
I leaned closer. “You know how to kill her.”
“She’s desperate for it. She craves the oblivion. She won’t fight you when you kill her. She’ll welcome it.”
I made a hurry up motion. If I really wasn’t deluding myself, I was having a vision about how to kill Cruelty while in the room with her.
“She already knows how she must die, and she’s set a plan in motion. A former god can kill a current god. They simply have to remember they have the magic in them. It never really leaves, you see.”
“So, find the last woman who was Cruelty.”
That knowing smile again. “The last man. You already know who it is, you’re just in denial.”
“Sure.” I had no fucking clue who she meant, but my husbands might be able to find him. “What about Violence? Can he be killed by a former Violence?”
“No.” Anger flitted through the eyes of the Cat in the mirror. “He hunted them all, every last living Violence and murdered them. He doesn’t seek oblivion like Cruelty. He wants to rule.”
“Great.” That wasn’t surprising. “So how do we stop him, if he can’t be killed?
“I never said he couldn’t be killed. You can do it.” Her smile became wicked. “But not yet.”
Something fluttered around my head, and I startled back, batting at the moth that tried to land on my shoulder. “What do you mean—”
I sighed. The mirror was just a mirror, not even my reflection flickering across its silver surface.
“Cat!”
I wrenched back in the chair, ripped into the present, dragged away from the forest so violently that I felt the impact everywhere. Had Cruelty seen the vision, too? Did she know I’d been told how to kill her?
“You drifted into a daydream, silly,” Cruelty chided, tapping my notebook. I still gripped the filigree pen, my sentence incomplete at I will not break.
She didn’t know. There’d be no concealing the rage in her face if she knew what I’d just seen. Unless it was another trick, and she’d given me the vision.
I shook my head and resumed writing.