Page 34

Cat

I lost track of how much time passed. At some point during the endless hours, I decided it wasn’t Cruelty in here with us.

She wouldn’t have gone so long without laughing, without a snide comment, without an explosion of anger.

This was something else. Something primal and dark and old, something whose power slunk through the room and made the few shadows I’d managed to call up scatter like smoke against a fist.

I might have had a few drops of death magic, but this thing had unlimited power.

And it used that power to rake up every traumatising event I’d tried to suppress over the last few years.

Worse, it used it to torment Pain. He’d been silent for hours now, and I couldn’t stand it.

Where was the cheeky, smiling flirt who’d coaxed an answering smile from me?

I’d tried talking to him six times, all failed attempts, and I was reaching the end of my tether.

I needed to hear his voice, just once, because the deep, penetrating silence in between bouts of torture were so quiet he could have been dead.

I could have been alone with an ancient monster.

But it was more than that. The idea of his death filled me with the same flinching horror as the thought that I’d get back to Death’s domain to find everyone I loved gone.

“Pain,” I breathed into the silence. The quiet wouldn’t last; whatever tortured us, whatever prowled and swirled like smoke through the room, would resume its screaming. “Talk to me.” When there was only silence, I begged, “Please.”

Fuck. The memories that thing had dragged him through, all the trauma it had forced him to revisit, had ripped the life, the spirit, out of him. I needed to hear him—a sigh, a groan, anything. My hands shook as I pressed them against my cheeks, my skin cold against my heated face.

I didn’t know where it came from. It was like a bolt from above, the most random and unexplainable melody rolling through my mind. I blamed Madde entirely. He’d been singing it incessantly.

“We’re no strangers to love…” I sang, raspy and raw.

It didn’t matter. This was all I had, and I wasn’t about to stop now.

I didn’t care if I angered the ancient thing or earned Cruelty’s wrath.

I couldn’t stand the silence. Couldn’t stand the chance Pain might have died in here. “You know the rules, and so do I.”

Only stillness answered me, but I forged on through the next few lines, making up the words when I didn’t know the exact lyrics. My voice began to thicken, and tears gathered the longer silence hung dense in the air, but I choked the words out.

“Never gonna give … you up.” I pushed back a sob. “Never gonna let you down.”

“Oh god,” a groan came from across the room, and one sob collided with two until I couldn’t sing, couldn’t even breathe for crying. Broken, wrenching sobs cut my breathing into painful shards, and I gasped, over and over, my hands trembling against the cool iron around me.

I wasn’t alone. He was still alive.

“Cat,” he rasped. “Cactus. Take a breath, darling woe.”

“I thought—I thought—”

“Shit,” he whispered. “No, I just—went somewhere else for a while. I’m back now. Why were you singing that god-awful song?”

“Hey,” I protested with a shattered cry.

His voice was ragged and strained, but humour flowed as he said, “Apologies, mademoiselle. Why were you singing that true masterpiece of a song?”

“I can’t stand the silence,” I admitted in a rasp. “I thought I was alone.”

“Never,” he promised fiercely. And then when I only sobbed, he launched into the rest of the chorus. “Never gonna run around and desert you.”

I laughed so hard it hurt, and I was crying too, but it felt good. It felt vital to hear his voice, to know he was here with me. “Pain.”

“Yes, darling?”

“You’re a god-awful singer,” I said, hiccupping on a sob.

“Well, yeah, but it’s rude to point it out. You’re supposed to feed the delusion and tell me I have the most beautiful voice you’ve ever heard and I should go on Pop Idol.”

“Uh. What’s Pop Idol?”

“You’re joking…” He paused. “Right?”

“Never heard of it,” I croaked, wiping my face and relieved when my hands stopped shaking.

“I am deeply, mortally offended that you never—”

The deep groaning cry of the door cut through his words and we both fell deathly silent. I froze, only my breaths moving within the iron maiden until I heard her voice, and then my hands began to shake violently.

“That should be enough to make you amenable to talking and knock some sense into you. Sorry, Pain,” Cruelty simpered with faux sympathy. “I know that was a poor choice of words.”

They were straight from the gravelly, abusive voice that had haunted us for hours, or days, or however long we’d been trapped in here. I couldn’t see him across the room, couldn’t hear him, but I could have sworn I felt him flinch.

“Shut your fucking mouth,” I snarled at the bitch who locked us up here, my jaguar rattling the bars of her cage.

I couldn’t shift in such a cramped, claustrophobic space, but that didn’t stop my fingernails pricking with sharp pain as claws grew, my gums burning as my canines lengthened.

That was new. “Say one more word to him and I’ll shred you to pieces. ”

“Ooh, we are feeling protective, aren’t we?

” Clipped footsteps brought her forward, and then her flawless face was all I could see, not a pore or blemish on her.

But, oh those eyes were full of ugliness, and her sneer was repulsive.

Just like Nightmare, Cruelty covered a malignant soul with beauty. “I wonder, is that feeling mutual?”

“What—” I began, but the tremble in my hands moved into my body, and I went lightheaded as a closer, louder scrape of metal on metal came. And then the door to my coffin swung open.

I was weak and terrified of what she’d do with all that power I sensed throbbing under the surface, the dark magic she’d attacked me with, that I could still feel bruising my back.

Weak and terrified but ready. The moment the door to the iron maiden swung wide enough, I shoved my shoulder into it, ramming the heavy iron into Cruelty.

It rebounded off her head, but I was already lifting my hands to catch it, pushing it far enough for me to slip free.

Fuck. My feet slid on the floor, my legs wobbly and nowhere near strong enough to hold me for a fight. I backed up, keeping her in my line of sight, and ignoring Pain’s horrified gasp.

Cruelty wiped blood from her split lip with her thumb, a brutal smile hooking one side of her mouth higher than the other. With that wild look in her eye and blood on her face, she looked the embodiment of cruelty in its entirety.

This was a woman who would peel the skin from my bones and make sure I was alive for every second of torture. She’d find every weakness and exploit it without question. Right now my weakness was Pain, but she was focused on me and I had to keep it that way.

Like he’d decided the same, only in reverse, Pain blurted, “Amenable to talking about what?”

Cruelty’s smile deepened until she flashed me a sharp canine, assessing me as I assessed her.

I had a split second to shift, and I knew I’d lose valuable moments changing forms, but I needed claws and teeth and killer instincts right now.

I dropped to my knees and submerged myself in the deep pool of shifting magic, and wondered how I’d ever been so afraid of my jaguar when it was strength and power and ruthlessness. When it would keep me alive.

I hated Poppy for hurting Virgil, and resented her for what she’d done, but … I didn’t resent this form. Not any longer.

I shook out the aches in my body, flexing my paws to unsheathe my claws, and I struck—too late.

Dark, pulsing power arced through the dim room and drove into my shoulder with enough force to slam me into the wall. An animal cry of hurt ripped from me and made Pain gasp. Wait … would my pain give him power? Would he feel it as magic every time she hurt me? Could we use that?

“Poor dear,” Cruelty cooed, dripping with faux sympathy as she aimed a look at the horrific iron maiden that contained Pain.

God, those things were straight from a nightmare.

Like a sarcophagus made of dark, cold metal.

Far colder than any normal iron ought to be.

Unease trickled down the back of my neck, making my fur stand on end.

Had these been built to contain death gods? How long had she been planning this?

Were they meant for us, or for Death?

“And here I’d been thinking your time together might put you in a better mood. I promised you an hour together, didn’t I? I always keep my promises.”

I hauled myself back to my feet, choking back another whimpering cry when bright, shattering pain came from my shoulder, deep in the joint. Fuck, it was going to hurt to fight her. But like hell would I lay down and let her win. And I could endure it if it gave Pain strength.

“I bet it’s torture for you, isn’t it?” she crooned, her blue eyes wide with sadness that was every bit as fabricated as any of Nightmare’s emotions.

Cruelty was Nightmare—in all the ways that counted.

Her schemes, her personality, her hunger to see people suffer and scream.

“Being unable to defend your bonded one.” Cruelty scraped her fingernails down Pain’s iron maiden, not quite able to hide how much she was enjoying it.

I rushed to my feet and threw myself across the room in the same motion, letting the sleek power of my jaguar override the pain, at least until I collided with Cruelty on my bruised side.

Motherfucker, that was a miscalculation.

I had to clench my jaws to trap the sound of pain, but it was worth it when I drove Cruelty into the wall beside the hanging corpses.

She gave them a disdainful glance and then looked at me, a sharp laugh brightening her expression. I backed up a step.

“Ah yes, I see you’ve noticed all my other failed best friends. You’ll join them eventually. All my disappointments together.”

“Like hell she will,” Pain snarled in a cold, rattling hiss that made me shudder and back up another few steps. There was nothing human in that sound. I flinched when fists drove against the inside of his iron cage, over and over and over.

Cruelty didn’t appear rattled; she simply smirked, rising and brushing her hands down her dress like she could get off whatever grossness the corpses had left on her.

I didn’t miss the way she shifted on her feet, putting herself between me and the door.

My heart pounded, but a sliver of hope broke through my fear.

She wouldn’t block the door unless she thought I had a chance of escaping.

“By all means, Pain, stop me,” she taunted.

Fuck her, and fuck that too-smooth tone.

I tucked my shoulder 1 and drove myself into her, colliding with her stomach hard enough to send her flying into my iron maiden.

It was too much to hope that she’d land inside it and I could simply slam the door shut on her, but she did hit her head hard enough to rattle her.

“You little cretin,” she spat, unnatural darkness covering her eyes, throbbing around her like a heartbeat. Like the power that day Nightmare rose and killed four people, killed Orwell. My heart quickened, warning like a shiver in my soul. “Where’s your father?”

My—what?

“Tell me,” she demanded so viciously that spittle flew through the air, not a trace of smugness or smooth amusement left in her.

No, this was cruelty, pure and simple, “Tell me, and I will spare Pain. Refuse to talk, and I will shred him into so many pieces and scatter them in so many realms that you’ll never find him again.

And if you somehow manage to piece him back together, I will hunt you down, and make him watch as I slaughter you. ”

Cold bled through me at the visual, at the threat. But what the fuck was she asking about my dad for? I shook my head, trying to make sense of it.

“Fine,” she hissed, gathering dark, pulsating power in both hands. “Maybe my brother will be able to prise the truth from you.”

“No!” Pain yelled, guttural and deep. “Cruelty, don’t you fucking—”

The power around her discharged like a bomb before I could leap out of the way, and dark magic crashed into my head, carved through my skull, and hit my brain. I was unconscious before I heard the end of Pain’s sentence.