Chapter Fifteen
Kitty
Turning to my right, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The Grim Reaper stood before me. There were no visible signs of him fading, no dark circles, or weakness.
“You’re not real,” I whispered. Even so, my eyes watered to see him so perfectly whole and healthy.
“I’m sorry I scared you, but everything’s all right now,” he said, taking a step forward.
I shook my head. “Nothing’s all right.”
“Why is that?” he asked, cocking his head, as if he genuinely didn’t know.
I stared at him—really stared.
Everything was too perfect. His cloak didn’t waver. His eyes were too clear. And his voice… It was just a little too smooth. Like a memory, not a man.
“You’re not my father,” I said, straightening despite the ache tearing through my core.
He smiled softly. His smile. “Kitten, I’m right here. You’ve been through something terrible. It’s natural to see the worst. But you’re safe now.”
“No.” I gripped my sword tighter. “I’m inside something’s mouth. I stabbed the damn wall, and it bled. You think I forgot that already?”
The illusion faltered.
I blinked. Once. Twice.
And then his smile flickered.
Not in a way that made sense. Not in a human way. One second it was curved, warm—Dad’s. The next, it jerked slightly higher on one side, like a marionette pulled by the wrong string.
My stomach clenched, but this time, it wasn’t from the curse.
“Because you’re the Devil and his monsters playing tricks on me,” I said slowly, tasting each word like poison.
Dad frowned. “What monster?”
“The—” I looked down at my empty palm.
What…?
My sword?
I could have sworn it was there. Blood everywhere. My boots were slippery.
What boots?
I stared down at a pristine pair of white shoes. Spotless. Too clean for Hell.
The ballroom lighting brightened around me—like someone turned up the saturation in a dream. My head throbbed so hard I winced and clutched my forehead.
“Are you okay?” Dad asked.
His voice was still too smooth. Too kind. It didn’t match the flicker I saw behind his eyes.
“Just…there’s something important I’m forgetting,” I said, teeth clenched.
“More important than doing our re-watch of the Tremors movies?”
I looked up.
We were in the ballroom. No blood. No Hell. Dad was smiling, motioning behind him with his head.
“Really?” I laughed, startled. “What gives? I thought you said I couldn’t force those awful movies on you anymore.”
“You made everyone in the castle watch those movies every other day for a year when you were nine.”
“Because they’re good,” I said, voice faltering. “Giant monsters in the ground and mortals are doing their best to win against them. Top tier stuff.”
“At least the humans have improved drastically in filming since,” Dad muttered.
A sharp stab pierced my temple. My knees buckled slightly. Something was wrong. Thinking about humans felt like trying to breathe underwater.
“I feel strange,” I whispered.
“Strange?” Dad’s voice sharpened, enough to make me stiffen. “Like you, perhaps.”
I cocked my head slightly. Dad’s lips were twisted into a grimace, almost like disgust. I didn’t have time to ponder his expression.
His expression twisted again—anger? Disappointment?
A new pang hit me, sharp enough to make me stumble. I grabbed the edge of a table that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
“Dad,” I gasped, glancing past him.
The kitchen. That was the kitchen. I needed food. No—wait, that wasn’t it. Or was it?
The longer I stared, the more the ballroom blurred. Like I was trying to remember a dream before it slipped away.
“What were we doing?” I asked, panic bleeding into my tone.
“You don’t remember?” he asked, tilting his head. His smile didn’t return.
I shook my head slowly.
He lifted his chin. “Do you think I’d forgive you just because you can’t remember?”
A sharper pain zapped through my gut, and I dropped to the floor with a choked cry. My vision swam. The chandelier above me twisted into jagged bone. The walls breathed.
“Did I…do something?” My voice came out smaller than I wanted. “What did I do?”
His shadow stretched across the floor toward me. It warped as it grew, horns rising from its head, a tail unfurling behind it.
“You existed,” he said. But it wasn’t Dad’s voice anymore.
It never had been.
The illusion shattered like cracked glass.
The surrounding room warped. The golden glow of chandeliers turned green, then red. Shadows pulled in around the walls like curtains being drawn shut. My body flared with heat and cold, like my mind couldn’t decide which realm I was in.
A wave of nausea hit me. I staggered, gripping the edge of a shifting table. One moment it was a table from our castle, the next, a slab of stone crusted with blood.
I blinked rapidly.
And then the rage came.
A voice boomed—too loud, too deep, too much.
“He’s the enemy, Kara!”
My dad’s voice.
It shook the walls. My bones rattled like they wanted to escape my body.
My eyes widened as a flicker of the Devil walking toward me flashed through my thoughts, slicing through the fog. The pain in my stomach eased—no, changed. A sick warmth replaced it. I knew that sensation.
Hell.
I was in Hell.
Dad…he faded away. He couldn’t be here. Not really.
But my limbs felt so heavy, my mind turned to sludge. Everything was slow. Wrong.
“A daughter of mine lusting after the Dark One?” Dad’s voice roared again, furious now—spitting hate as he stomped toward me.
Veins bulged across his forehead. His form blurred at the edges like smoke struggling to stay solid.
I scrambled back, falling to the ground. My palms slapped against cold stone.
“I—” I wanted to say I didn’t. That I couldn’t. But the words dried in my throat.
Why couldn’t I say anything?
My cheeks burned.
I didn’t want the Devil.
…Right?
The illusion grabbed me by the front of my shirt, yanking me up like I weighed nothing. Dad’s eyes were flames now.
“Don’t deny it!” he bellowed. “You’re already changing!”
I looked down at my arm and screamed.
Infected, blistered, warped. My skin was bubbling with sickly yellow boils that burst and oozed. I pulled away, clawing at my arms like I could erase the sickness.
“You’re no daughter of mine,” the illusion snarled. “I didn’t raise you to be a whore!”
The words hit like a backhand across the soul.
That…that wasn’t him.
My father never—never—spoke to me like that.
He never raised his voice. Never used cruelty. Not even when I broke the Reaper code to help someone.
My heart thundered as a memory broke through the fog.
Two hellhounds. Running. Guiding me.
The room.
The cursed room I’d entered…The door that locked behind me. The green light. The dread. The whispers.
“The room,” I gasped, heart racing. “Or what’s in it.”
I extended my arm and summoned my sword. It appeared instantly, solid and familiar, and I gripped it like a lifeline.
The sadness came hard and fast.
Of course he would use Dad. Of all the things to shatter me, the monster chose the one figure I couldn’t bear to question.
My sword trembled in my hands.
I should feel hatred. Instead…there was grief.
Still, I let the grief burn into something sharper. Rage seared through me, cleansing, purifying.
I wouldn’t beg for truth.
I’d carve it from the walls if I had to.
“How dare you defile my father’s image,” I spat.
Dad’s—no, the creature’s—eyes flashed a sick yellow. Its head jerked to the side, sensing something I couldn’t.
That confirmed it.
It wasn’t him.
Never had been.
“I’ll tear you to pieces for this.”
Dad’s eyes flashed, and then his head snapped to the left.
I braced myself, ready to lunge, to strike, to scream—
Only I never got a chance to charge.
The ballroom shattered like glass under pressure, disappearing with a single blink.
Warm light turned cold. The floors beneath me twisted, folding into cracked black stone.
The world reverted to the green-tinged chamber from before—the room that breathed dread into my bones.
The illusion evaporated as if it had never been real at all.
Dad was gone.
In his place stood the Devil.
He was gripping something in his clawed hand—a squirming, snarling creature no taller than my thigh. It had the gnarled face of a gremlin, but with sleeker limbs and short, matted brown fur. The thing writhed, kicking its legs as it chittered in panic.
The Devil’s massive hand clenched tighter.
“Please stop! Stop!” the creature screeched. “It wasn’t my fault!”
Bones cracked like dry twigs. My stomach turned.
“I didn’t give you permission to touch her,” the Devil’s voice thundered, low and vibrating with rage so raw it nearly shook the walls.
“She came to me.”
“I don’t care.”
The creature gasped, squirming. “I—I thought you sent her! The mutts brought her here—”
There was a final, gruesome pop—followed by a wet squelch.
The thing went limp in his grasp, and he tossed the body aside with a dull thud, like it was garbage.
Then he turned toward me.
I stiffened, lifting my blade between us as instinct kicked in. Still trembling, still raw, still recovering from what I’d just endured.
“I told you not to attempt anything,” he said coolly, tail flicking once across the floor like a whip itching to strike. “Come here.”
I gritted my teeth. “I don’t care what you might do next. I’ll tear you limb from limb.”
A lie, maybe. But I needed to believe it.
My body still felt hollow. My heart still pounded with betrayal. Seeing my father’s face twisted with hate, hearing those words—it hadn’t just hurt. It had gutted me.
“What did you see?”
I didn’t like the inspection in his glowing red eyes. It felt invasive, like he already knew.
“I liked that one,” he muttered, motioning to the crumpled corpse. “Useful little bastard. He could unravel souls if he caught them weak enough. Made my people remember what they hated most about themselves.”
He looked me up and down. “And now it’s dead because of you.”
I scoffed. “I didn’t ask you to kill him.”
Even if I wanted to. That part was true.