Page 29

Cat

I t wasn’t real—the grave stone with Tor’s name on it, the ancient Roman temple, the city bathed in sunlight behind me. It wasn’t real, but it was a threat.

I ground my teeth, reaching for my jaguar and hovering there, right on the edge of shifting.

Cruelty had fucked with my head, playing endless games for her own amusement, but one good thing to come from it was my control over my beast. I no longer felt mindless or out of control.

I could master my jaguar, could fight back the urge to sink my teeth and claws into defenceless victims. Or I could sink them into her.

“She’s threatening my husband,” I hissed out loud, and hoped she heard me wherever she was watching.

Inside the library in Darkmore? Was that where I was?

Did I still hover in the doorway, vacant-eyed, as I gazed at the Roman landscape around me?

Was Cruelty smirking and laughing in delight at how she’d caught me in her web of fantasy and lies?

It’s not real. Choose with your instincts.

Those were Alfie’s words from the masquerade, but they were true here, too. I had to follow my gut, to trust my instincts to get me out of this place. No doubt Cruelty had some other vision she wanted to torture me with, but I was done. I was getting Alfie and getting the hell out of Darkmore.

I never found out what she wanted with the domain, or why she needed Death weak, but I’d had enough. She would never tell me, wouldn’t even slip up and give me a clue. Just this threat.

I HOPE YOU DON’T MISS HIM TOO TERRIBLY, BECAUSE I’M KEEPING HIM.

“Like fuck you are,” I spat, and plummeted into the core of my subject form with a ferocity that had my bones snapping and reforming, a threatening roar shaking dust from the ground the moment I’d shifted.

Follow your instincts, I reminded myself, and reared back, driving my claws into the ground.

It was solid stone and it shouldn’t have worked, but my paws ripped a hole.

Violent excitement hit my blood until it fizzed, and I repeated the assault on the ground, tearing it apart until a crater opened.

Until I was covered in dust and dirt, until my paws bled, until a hole opened in the ground. No, in the library ceiling.

Cruelty was below me, lounged on a green leather chair like a queen, one leg crossed over the other.

The white lace bridal gown she wore was the same one I’d first seen her in, beads dripping from the bodice like diamonds.

The hood was pulled over her hair, pinned perfectly, and her face was immaculate. A flawless mask over an ugly soul.

I raked my claws across the bottom of the chasm—and fell through the ceiling of the library, my legs pinwheeling.

Wind tore at me. I curled my body into a ball, my arms over my head, and tucked my knees to my chest, but instead of slamming into the floor, I jolted back into my body.

Like my soul had been floating, astral-projection-style, and now rushed back into its usual place within the protective cage of bones and sinew, muscle and skin.

A gasp was the first sound from me when I blinked my eyes to focus them.

Then a growl revved my chest when I saw past the dark bookcases, the mezzanine level framing the room above us, and the detailed ceiling that really ought to have a hole in it where I’d crashed back into the room.

I stared past leather furniture and a messy coffee table and a desk covered in paperwork and books left open, until my fury landed on Cruelty, arranged decadently on the green chair, already smiling at me.

I launched myself across the room without another thought, flexing my hand—around the spear. A dark thrill surged through me. I wasn’t just furious and backed up by the jaguar. Thanks to Orwell, I was armed.

I could have sworn shadows flickered in the edges of my vision as I vaulted the coffee table and climbed over the sofa, only the desk standing between me and the death goddess now.

Cruelty’s smile slipped, as if she saw the darkness too, as if she realised I would always carry a part of my men with me.

I’d spent days on end in the domain, surrounded by their dark power.

Maybe some of it had found its way into me.

I readjusted the spear in my hand and sprinted around the desk, my heart skipping in the blip of time I had to reconsider before driving the spear into Cruelty’s chest. I didn’t stop.

Resistance met the spear’s tip, but I threw all my weight into it, and with a horrible, wet sound and a crack of bones, it buried deep in her chest.

I waited for a scream, a snarl, a sound of pure fury. Instead Cruelty sighed.

“Enough,” I hissed, my fury faltering. “No more masquerades, no more games. Enough. I’m going home, and I’m taking Alfie and Orwell with me.”

She snorted, batting my hand away from the spear, taking me by surprise enough that I let go and stepped back.

My mouth parted when she tugged the spear from her chest with a grunt, red spilling down the white lace of her gown, and discarded it.

It hit the floor with a hollow thunk and rolled under the desk.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as I backed up a step.

Her fingernails were rich metallic gold and an inch long, filed to sharp points. I gave them a nervous look, imagining them gouging my heart out of my chest.

“Where is Alfie?” I demanded breathlessly as Cruelty rose slowly from the chair, tutting at the crimson stain on her dress. In a second, shadows bloomed from the wound, covering the stain, and when they receded it was as if she’d never been wounded, the dress once again pure white.

“Oh, he’s close,” she said with enough venom that hairs rose on the back of my neck. I backed up another two steps. My jaguar went wild inside me, hackles rising in response to the slow, predatory way Cruelty moved. “But a little hard to find,” she added with a smile as sharp as the spear tip.

“Where?” I shouted, scrambling around the desk as she advanced.

I hated retreating like prey, but my hindbrain was screaming at me to run for my life and I didn’t have Madde here to remind me how deadly I was.

All at once, I reverted to the anxious, unconfident girl I’d been when I first got to Ford.

I searched for another weapon with my peripheral vision, but refused to take my eyes off Cruelty as she advanced with slow, flowing steps that spoke of controlled violence.

It was her quietness and the cold, frozen fury in her eyes that made my heart quicken and the urge to run intensify. “Where have you hidden him?”

“I got us matching bracelets,” Cruelty hissed, ignoring my question as she fixed her unsettling blue stare on me.

“I learned your coffee order and your favourite film. I got us dresses and masks that perfectly coordinated each other. We did each other’s make up.

We are friends,” she screamed, the sudden snap of her voice making me jump. “You don’t get to leave, Kitty.”

“I thought I wasn’t your captive. Since we’re friends,” I said, grasping for something, anything to calm her. But the predatory light only brightened in her eyes as she prowled closer and I scrambled to keep distance between us. “You can’t keep me trapped here, Cruelty. I want to leave.”

Her answering smile was more of a baring of teeth, and darkness gathered around her hands as they curled into fists. My stomach knotted at the sight of her magic. I’d never seen it before today, but I’d felt it. That endless well of power that made my skin crawl with warning.

“What kind of friendship can we have when you’re keeping me here by threatening Alfie?” My voice shook. Shit. “When he’s gone, you’ll know it’s real. That I’m here because I want to be.”

“You said you want to leave,” she retorted in a voice richer, deeper than I’d heard. The darkness seemed to pulse around her hands, death magic gathering. “You’re lying to me, Kitty.”

“I want to leave to take Alfie back to the domain,” I rushed out, stumbling into the sofa back.

All the air left my lungs in a rush, instincts screaming at me to run.

I scrambled around the sofa and kept backing up.

“I’m not going to leave forever. I’ll come back.

I wouldn’t want to miss the—the next masque,” I added quickly, fumbling for something believable.

“I want to see the next theme. This one’s Roman heroes, right? ”

“Yes,” she hissed, staring at me so intently that my stomach squired. Was that—oh fuck, that was definitely black bleeding into her eyes, covering the watery blue irises and expanding to devour the whites. “And I thought you’d be a little more grateful, Kitty, since you love the Roman Empire.”

At my blank look, her lip curled back and she snarled, “You wrote a story about it in your year six English lesson.”

“Ah.” Jesus, what didn’t she know about me? My heart thundered as I retreated, bumping into the door. Thank fuck, I was nearly out. But where could I go? The one time I tried to escape, she had the fountain burn me. “That’s—so thoughtful.”

Her eyes flashed. “Lies, again. You’ve been lying the whole time, haven’t you? Deceitful little Kitty.”

“No!” I rushed out, fumbling for the door behind me and opening it, fleeing into the hallway.

“You knew I came here because you helped me save Misery. This was … me saying thank you,” I rushed out, panic making me jumpy.

I wished I still had the spear, wished I had any weapon.

I could shift, but there’d be a few seconds between forms where I’d be vulnerable, and I didn’t want to expose that weakness.

“And I am grateful, really, and of course we’ll be friends forever. ”

God, I felt spineless. I’d planned to confront her, to fight until she was dead but here I was trying to appease her again. Cruelty’s slow, cold laughter told me she knew the same.

The slow, melodic music from the string quartet was louder out here, grinding my nerves as bows sawed strings. It reminded me too closely of the masquerade last night, when she killed Death in front of me.

“Where will you run, Kitty?” she asked, pursuing me with a slow, deadly grace through the corridor. “You can’t escape the grounds; I’ll never let you leave.”

“Tell me where Aiden is, and I’ll stay. I promise.”

“Promises mean nothing from a liar.” Her upper lip curled, more power throbbing around her hands, sending a shudder down my spine.

“No, I—”

Her dark magic discharged so suddenly I didn’t see it happen, only felt the impact to my chest. It hit with the force of a cannonball, and I crashed into one of her precious statues, barely managing to catch myself on the wall as the statue tumbled to the ground.

And smashed.

I went utterly still, panic making me freeze. What would she do to me? How would she punish me for shattering her statue? Even my jaguar went still, waiting for a killing blow.

I opened my mouth to plead for forgiveness, but movement from below made me flinch into the wall, my frozen stupor broken by the sight of …

of a lanky, gold-complexioned Adonis getting unsteadily to his feet.

He wobbled like a newborn fawn, cerulean eyes wide and panicked as he stared at me and then Cruelty, his mouth opening and closing on wordless rasps.

Like he’d forgotten how to speak. Because he …

he was covered in plaster dust, and broken shards clung to his corduroys and white shirt, and he’d come from inside the shattered statue.