Page 2

Misery

W hen the gates collapsed, Death lurched off the end of my sick-bed like he’d been shot, but it was her I felt.

My universe. My Cat. My reason for everything.

I’d always been highly attuned to her, and it was even truer now, so soon after a near-death experience.

Or post-death resurrection may have been more accurate.

I died, but she refused to give up on me, and somehow I came back.

So I felt it the moment she vanished. A thread stretching between my heart and hers, tangled but perfect, utterly unbreakable, until it snapped in half.

“Cat!” I shouted, lurching off the bed and pushing Tor aside when he told me to be careful. Sure, I’d been dead half an hour ago, but that wasn’t the fucking point. Cat was leaving us. Had left us.

This castle was full of gods, and not a single one stopped her leaving?

Rage tore through my chest but panic dogged its heels, quickening my heartbeat.

Why had she left? Cat loved us every bit as much as we loved her.

Nightmare was gone, unable to torment her, or me, ever again.

Death, Tor, and Madness told me as much in the last ten minutes since I woke.

It was supposed to be good news. But the domain was falling around us, decay creeping into a place that should have been immune to it.

I could feel the decay like ice, leeching the warmth from my skin.

But all of that paled in comparison to my girl being fucking gone.

“She can’t have got far,” Tor growled, right behind me as I rushed out of the bedroom and down the carpeted stairs. “She’s only been out of our sight for ten minutes. I knew we shouldn’t have let her leave alone.”

“She’s too stubborn,” Madde said, chewing his lip, his blue eyes bright with panic. “She wouldn’t have listened. We couldn’t have stopped her.”

Fuck that. She was my wife; I’d chain her to the damn bed if it kept her safe. She couldn’t be running off when the domain was in turmoil. And so soon after I died, she ought to have been here.

“This is Cruelty,” Tor snarled. “That bitch got to Cat.”

I ground to a halt on the ground floor, whipping around to grab Tor by the collar of his shirt. “Explain. Now. And fucking quickly.”

I ignored the hand he wrapped around my wrist, squeezing with the only bit of comfort he could spare while in a protective rage.

“We’ll explain as we track her,” Death suggested, rushing ahead of us with his hair loose around his shoulders in a mess of braids. His dark skin was smudged with exhaustion and stress under his eyes; I imagined I looked like shit, too. Tor certainly did. Even Madde was pale and red-eyed.

“What’s going on?” Wrath demanded, bursting into the foyer in an explosion of hot-pink hair, heavy eyeliner, studded boots, and attitude.

Neglect and Passion were right behind her, the height difference between the small, dark-haired woman and the giant man comical.

I might have laughed if my whole world wasn’t falling apart.

“My lioness ran away,” Madde said miserably when none of us bothered to speak, leaving the door hanging open as we burst into the courtyard. The melancholy in his voice made pain twist through my chest. He was right; Cat did run away. Why?

“I’ve got her,” Tor said suddenly, gravel spraying as he spun to face us. “I can track her. But why the fuck would she run?”

Cold sliced through me and my head started to spin.

“The decay’s getting worse. If the domain falls before we can find her—” Death started.

“Then what?” Madness demanded, whipping towards him, panic in the whites of his eyes. He dragged both hands through his red hair. “What happens? Tell me!”

“I don’t know.” Death sighed, his shoulders slumping even as we broke into a run, faster and faster, urgency building as we followed Tor’s tracking. He averted his eyes. “This has never happened before.”

“We’ll find her,” I said with a confidence I refused to let waver. Fuck this doubt. I just died and came back from a true, final death. If I could do that, I could do anything. And, oh, my wife was in trouble when I found her. I’d spank her so hard she couldn’t walk for a week.

Madness and Death gave me a quick run-down of everything that happened in our castle garden, and rage lit a match to the fuel of my soul.

Cruelty was dead. I didn’t give a shit if we needed her to maintain balance in the mortal realm, or if humans needed cruel traits so their better natures could shine in defiance of it.

Absolutely fuck that. She messed with my Cat, so I would inflict the most painful death in existence upon her.

Tor stopped abruptly and held his arms out. “Grab onto me. We need to move now, before the trace fades.”

I didn’t hesitate to lock my hand around his arm, but my attention was stolen by the slow creep of white fog on the edges of the town below. “Death—”

“I know. Nothing I can do about it.” His reply was short and biting, but I heard the stress under his anger.

Whatever was happening to the domain, it could only be fixed once we found Cat.

I didn’t let myself wonder what would happen if we didn’t find her.

Cruelty was one half of the most sadistic duo of gods to ever exist. Utterly psychotic, debatably more insane than even Madness, and with all the merciless, inhuman coldness of a serial killer.

No, serial killers had more heat than Cruelty and her brother.

She was as cold and ruthless as animal poachers or the bastards who trafficked prairie dogs.

Darkness rushed in around me, blotting out the unsettling view of mist consuming Madde’s castle.

In moments, Torment’s magic swept us up, a dark cloud that writhed with anxiety, panic and obsessive love for our wife.

It didn’t matter how far she ran, or how afraid she was, or how many gods tried to get between us, we would find her.

A hand latched onto my arm in the darkness, gripping for dear life, shaking so hard that my arm rattled. When the darkness bled out from beneath us, disappearing back into Tor, I was surprised to find it was Madde gripping me like a life buoy in a storm.

“I should have stopped her,” he said, staring into space, his eyes wide and bloodshot.

As much as laying into Madness would make me feel better… “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know she’d run away.”

“She told me to trust her. And I do.” He lifted his stare from the mist-shrouded ground to my face, his expression haunted and afraid. “I should have found a way to stop her.”

“This doesn’t make sense,” Death said, tense and sharply enough that both Madde and I turned to face him, though the shaking hand didn’t budge from my wrist. “Why would she come here?”

“Where—” I began, startled at the sight of Death’s castle, our home.

Only the tips of the towers were visible.

Thick, opaque fog rose, obscuring everything else.

If Cat and Tor hadn’t gone to get Peach, she’d be trapped inside there.

A strange mix of relief and panic tangled in my chest, but the panic won when I saw we were alone. “Is Cat inside?”

I lunged forward, willing to run into the mist that was rapidly devouring our home, even if it meant I vanished from existence. If Cat was inside there, I would be right beside her, trying to get her to safety. She’d do the same for me; I knew that without doubt.

“The trail ends here,” Tor disagreed, snatching the back of my shirt. “She didn’t go into the castle. She must have used—” He turned, and because I was so close I could see the blood drain from his face, turning him a sickly shade of gold. “The gates.”

“No,” Death breathed, surging forward in a rush, wild panic in every line of his body. “Where are they? Where are the gates?”

Madde’s shaking hand gripped me harder, and I was tempted to grip his right back. The gates that allowed us to travel between the domain of Death and the mortal plane were gone. All that remained was a thick wall of white, dense mist.

It didn’t make sense. For a long, sticky moment, I just stared.

The spell was broken when Tor hurtled himself at the place where the gates should be, throwing his hands out like he’d be sucked up and deposited at one of the gateways.

Would he be spat out on the road to Ford?

I held my breath for a second, already moving, already following, but nothing happened.

Tor slashed his hands through the swirling mist, turning on the spot, his brown eyes so wide he looked like a prey animal who scented a predator.

“I can’t get out,” he said, not the growl of anger I’d expected, not even a frustrated rumble. It was a whisper of panic, a breathy gasp. Shadow rushed in around him, hiding him for a moment, before they thinned. “I can’t use my magic to leave, either. We’re fucked.”

“There has to be a way,” Death said, attempting to sound calm.

He grasped Tor’s shoulder, offering comfort, but shit.

There was a void of hope in Death’s expression.

Nothing but bleakness and dread. He was lying; he knew there wasn’t a way out of the domain.

And the whole realm was falling apart around us.

“Cat left here.” I spoke the obvious, panic clawing its way through my chest, scraping up my throat. “She came here. She used the gates. She left.”

Madde let go of me to scrape a hand through his hair, tugging on the short strands, shaking his head over and over.

“How the fuck do we get her back?” Tor demanded, a growl finally entering his voice, giving me strength. Fuck dread and hopelessness; I needed to stay angry. Passion was strength, and anger was passion. I could use it.

“We’ll find a way out,” I said with absolute certainty. There was no other option, no other way to live.

Like fuck was I staying trapped here while my wife was in another realm.

“I don’t know what the hell she’s playing at, or what Cruelty’s done to lure her away from us, but we need to fix the domain first.” I glanced at Death.

“We can’t get out of here with the whole place falling down around us and—”

Mist poured in around my legs, an icy brush at my ankles, then my calves, then my thighs. It happened so fast I couldn’t run. Even if I could, there was nowhere to go. White mist consumed the realm as far as I could see.

I locked eyes with Death, then Tor, then Madde, the four of us sharing a single moment of panic. And then the fog rushed in and I lost them all.