Page 37

Torment

A fter days of failures, endless hours of feeling useless when every shadow and attempt to track Pain and Cat led to dead ends, it felt surreal to finally have a concrete lead.

The thought of Cat alone with Cruelty, suffering but so brave, in pain but so defiant, fucking killed me.

That was my girl, my beautiful wife. I was supposed to be protecting her, standing between her and anyone who so much as glared at her.

But she’d endured it alone, endured fuck knows what kind of pain and mind games and torment.

I knew the way Cruelty worked. She played games with people like they were pawns on a board, and would sacrifice any of them to protect the king and queen—herself and her heartless brother.

I curled my hands into fists, barely holding onto my temper.

When I blinked, visions of Cat crawling filled my vision.

Broken bones prevented her from walking, so she had to drag herself along the floor, a trail of blood behind her and all that gorgeous hair tainted and dark with vital blood.

In my vision, she lifted her hand to plead for mercy, but it was ignored as a fist swung from the darkness and smashed into her cheek.

Her nose broke, blood gushing from her mouth, teeth broken, lips bleeding, sobs making her body jerk as tears carved tracks through the blood on her cheeks and—

“Tor,” Death said with a gentleness that made me want to lash out, made my chest ache.

I inhaled raggedly, trying to push away those visions. Yet another thing I failed at. If anything, that nightmare of Cat crawling, bloody, begging to be spared, sharpened. Grew teeth and sank them into me.

“You have to stay positive, Tor,” Death said in a voice rough with emotion.

“I know,” I muttered, sending the shadow tracking Pain further.

I’d reached the edge of the realm now, where the gates used to be, and the dark tendril had punched through the veil.

Not something I knew I was capable without the gates, but I was too stressed to be excited about discovering a new ability.

“We’ll find her,” Death said, almost to himself. “She’ll be fine; she’s strong, and Cruelty won’t hurt her physically. That’s not her style.”

“I know.” That was Violence’s wheelhouse.

“Cat survived all of Nightmare’s machinations. She survived an attack from the goddess herself—”

“I know, Death,” I snapped loudly, more images pelting my head.

Cat’s eyes flaring with pure panic in the garden when she heard Nightmare’s taunt.

Her voice, increasingly frightened, calling for me through the darkness, forever out of reach as I grew so pathetically weak from a single scratch.

The look on her face when she saw Miz so close to death.

“Fuck off and bother someone else,” I growled, ripping my focus back to that single tendril of shadow stretching into the mortal realm, probing, searching, desperate. “I need to concentrate.”

Death physically recoiled, and that flinch hit me like a fist to the solar plexus. Shit. I wasn’t the only one terrified for our wife, and lashing out wasn’t hurting anyone.

“Death,” I began, turning to him.

“It’s fine.” He nodded to the shell in my hand. “You focus. Find Pain. I’ll make sure the others are ready.”

A lump formed in my throat the size of a golf ball, and I got the sudden and irrepressible urge to punch myself in the face.

But I’d have to let go of the shell and the shadow to do that, and there was the barest damn chance finding Pain would lead me to my wife; I wasn’t about to sacrifice that.

Even if I felt like utter shit for snapping at Death.

I expelled a rough breath, straightening my shoulders as I focused inward, holding the shadow with all my attention.

I recalled the moments I’d met Pain throughout the years, remembering a handful of awkward, cheesy jokes, references to TV I’d never seen, music I’d never heard, and whatever the fuck a Sega Megadrive was.

1 He was a good guy. An oversharer, and a total fucking dork, but he had a good heart.

A big heart. He was loyal, and always willing to help when we needed it.

Even if his help had got Miz’s power blocked and started a process of deterioration that led to Cat making a deal with Cruelty to save him.

I couldn’t blame Pain though. That was all Cat, protective and sweet and fiercely defensive of us.

Fuck, it hurt to breathe when I thought of her. I tried to guide my mind back to Pain, but it was difficult. Almost fucking impossible. She was the world we revolved around. Our true north, and without her we had no direction.

I missed her so much it was like a corkscrew gouging a spiral through the delicate muscle of my heart. Hundreds of years later, and I was still a soft fucker, my heart still willing to love with every last pump of blood, every last beat, no matter how weak it grew.

I swallowed hard, the lump even bigger in my throat. A feather-light brush on the side of my neck jerked me out of the agony, though it never really left.

“I felt your misery all the way in the armoury, Tor.”

I pretended not to see the way my hand shook around the thin strand of shadow pressing further and further through the mortal realm. Fuck, how far had Cruelty taken Cat? My shadow was still in the UK but fucking barely. It was right off the coast of Wales, and veering further inland.

“I’m not good company right now,” I told Miz. God, my voice was a mess. Strangled and low and full of gravel. “I’ve already hurt Death. I don’t want to snap at you, too.”

“He already forgives you,” Miz murmured. “You know how he is, he won’t hold a grudge.”

But the hurt would linger, and I fucking hated that I’d caused it. “I just—” I sucked in a sudden breath when my magic stopped abruptly, somewhere in the dense shadows of Sherwood Forest. It throbbed in my head, like the ringing of radar, and I gasped. “I know where Pain is.”

And now that I was this close, if Cat was in the area, I should be able to find her, too. There was no force in this domain or the mortal realm that could keep me from her. I bared my teeth, thinking of all the ways I’d torment Cruelty when I got my hands on her.

“I’ll get the others,” Miz said, his arms squeezing my middle before he let go. “We could have her back by nightfall. She can come ho—”

Agony drove through my chest like a hot poker, and my knees fell out from under me. My hands clenched automatically, gripping the shadow and the shell, but I couldn’t feel them anymore. Couldn’t feel anything except screaming, scalding fire carving across my middle.

“What—” Miz croaked.

Above us, from the armoury, a strangled scream was followed by a roar. Madde and Death. They both felt it. We all felt it. And with my magic, with torment being my power, I knew exactly what was happening right now.

“Cat is being tortured. Someone is torturing our wife. We need to leave. Now.”