Page 35

Cat

T he sharp, sickening scent of lemon and mint dominated my senses until I retched, coming awake all at once. It smelled like someone had poured a gallon of sink cleaner into the room, and I choked on it with every gasping inhale, tasted it on my tongue with every jagged exhale.

I tried to growl a warning and found my voice too soft, too quiet. Too human. Shit. Whatever Cruelty had done, it had knocked me out of my jaguar form. It took three attempts to open my eyes, they were so sore and gritty, and when I finally did, I wished I’d kept them shut.

I was in a much smaller room than my last prison, although I wasn’t locked in an iron maiden.

But the dark walls of the room felt too close, crowding around me and the man who loomed in front of me, watching me like I was a bug crawling across the floor.

His face was pale and expressionless, but still somehow disdainful.

It was the sheer emptiness in his dark grey eyes that made me struggle, dropping into the core of magic where my shifting magic lived—

I slammed into it so hard my whole body flinched. Pain made every muscle in my body tense. I bit my tongue so hard it bled.

I waited for the man—Violence, it had to be—to laugh, but he just stood there, physically intimidating, unblinking, staring at me.

I tried to grasp my jaguar again, more tentatively this time, but it was like I was cut off from that side of myself. Like—oh. This must be what Tor felt when the Stalker cut him, when his magic was drained anc he was so weak he couldn’t grasp a single shadow. Had Orwell cut me?

I took mental inventory of my body, my brain racing almost as fast as my breathing as Violence stood there and watched me.

My back and shoulder throbbed, my hip felt badly bruised, and something was off with my leg.

When I shifted as much as I could, a twinge went through my knee.

Worse—oh, so much worse—was how aware I became of the ropes binding my arms behind my back, securing my ankles to …

yep, that was the cold wooden leg of a chair.

Fuck.

“Now that we’ve got that pointless attempt to flee out of the way,” Violence said, taking a step forward, his broad body full of power and control.

Not a single muscle seemed to move without his permission, and that only quickened my heart, spreading ice water through my body where there should be warm blood.

“My sister would like to know where to find your father.”

This again? What the fuck? I didn’t try to keep my confusion off my face. “I thought this was about Death, and taking over the domain.”

He tilted his head a fraction, drawing my attention to that uncaring expression again.

Black hair was cropped close to his skull, his face made of rough angles and smooth, shaven skin in the same fair complexion as Cruelty’s.

There was something about his precise appearance, something about the way he moved, that reminded me of gangsters in old black and white films. It brought to mind deadly threats and turf wars and bodies left strewn across cobbled streets.

Torture and pleas unanswered and ambition. I swallowed hard.

“Where,” he repeated, coming closer and flexing the fingers of his right hand. A shadow fitted itself to his knuckle, robbing me of all breath when I saw he’d fashioned himself a knuckle duster.

“I don’t know! I haven’t seen him since I first got to Ford. But he’s got nothing to do with this, he’s human, and completely ordinary, not, not—cursed. Please. Leave him out of this.”

I jumped, struggling to breathe when Violence came closer, looming over me like a giant.

A seven-foot tall mirror hung on the wall behind him, eerily reflecting his movement until my paranoia told me there were two Violences coming towards me.

It distracted me for a flash of a second, and then pain tore across my stomach, ripping a cry from my lips.

Tears rushed to my eyes, and I curved forward, instinctively trying to protect my stomach. My bound arms made that impossible. Sharp spikes of pain accompanied the gasping breath I took, and it hurt to speak but still I blurted, “Please.”

“Where is your father?”

“I don’t know—London? America? He could be anywhere.

My parents like to travel.” And even though agony blasted through my stomach again, his fist driving into my gut, I couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t tell him where to find my dad.

This was Violence. And his sister was Cruelty. I couldn’t unleash them on my family.

But withholding the truth could kill me.

Really, truly kill me. Not that I spoke a lie—I didn’t know where they were.

We’d kept in touch for the first few months at Ford, but everything fell apart after the serum, the change, and my jaguar appeared.

I hadn’t heard from them, and they probably thought I was busy with schoolwork.

Not being tortured by a living emotion shaped into a death god.

“Just—just tell me why,” I sobbed after another punch, something cracking with enough force to turn my whole vision white. The golden skeleton down the back of the dress bit into my back, drawing blood. “Why does my dad matter?”

“You don’t need that information,” Violence replied in a quiet, flat voice. Controlled, like the rest of him. Shivers of warning shot from the back of my neck down my spine. I braced myself, sucking in a painful breath, a tear spilling down my cheek. “You just need to tell me where he is.”

“Maybe—maybe the Bahamas. We have a villa there,” I gasped, choking down breaths, the pain alive in my body. Like I’d been possessed by it. Like it was everything I’d become, and all I’d ever be.

Violence didn’t sigh, didn’t tut, didn’t give any reaction, but he didn’t believe me.

The crash of his shadow-wrapped fist into my ribs told me that.

I slumped, gasping, choking for air. I’d never known pain like this.

I thought I’d become well acquainted with suffering these past months, thought I was used to it, that I could endure anything.

But this was sharper and darker and unlike anything I’d endured.

Violence wasn’t winded, wasn’t affected at all.

He could keep hitting me for hours. Keep torturing me for days on end.

His shadow moved in the mirror behind him, the only warning he gave. I didn’t have the strength left to brace for this punch, couldn’t even clench my teeth. Violence’s fist snapped my rib, carved a scream from deep within my chest, and everything went black.

But I knew it wouldn’t end. I knew when I regained consciousness, there would be more of it. Endless, eternal violence.