Page 38

Cat

C onsciousness was sticky and resistant. Sleep clung to me, refusing to let go. Although maybe sleep was the wrong word. Oblivion, dark and deep, was more accurate. I hadn’t fallen into rest, or a dream, or even a nightmare. Unconsciousness was black, empty, and silent.

Waking up was silent too, although it was strangely bright. I squinted my eyes open a crack, relieved to find myself alone. My arms and ankles were still tied to the chair, the mirror across from me, and buzzing silence filled my head.

My body was the opposite—screaming and howling and roaring with pain. I didn’t know how many bones Violence broke before he gave up. Before he knocked me unconscious. He was gone now, but how long until he returned?

I tried to fill my lungs, to take a deep, bracing breath, and immediately regretted it.

I locked my lips together, clenching my teeth to keep the cry trapped, lest Violence hear it and return to make me sob and plead again.

To make me scream. I clung to that fact, that single victory.

I hadn’t screamed. Nor had I told him where to find my dad.

But what the fuck was that about? Why were the psycho siblings obsessed with my dad?

My eyes burned, a lump swelling in my throat.

I wished Dad was here. He’d have a joke ready to make me smile, or a sassy remark at the go.

He’d tell me to be strong, that Wallisons could never be broken unless we chose to be.

“I refuse to be broken,” I whispered, a tear rolling off my chin, landing cool on my too-hot chest. I didn’t dare look down, didn’t want to know if I bore only bruises or if Violence had drawn blood. My insides felt mangled. “I refuse to be broken.”

“So did the last girl,” a raspy voice broke the silence, making me jump so hard my whole body erupted in agony.

I barely— barely —choked back the scream of pain.

My jaw throbbed as I locked it, but even my muffled cry was too loud.

Fear made me tremble, driving the pain from my ribs into every part of me, and tears came so hot and fast that I couldn’t see.

“There’s no time for any of that,” the raspy voice said. Female, older, and no-nonsense.

I blinked fast, nostrils flaring as the pain flared and grew, flared and grew. It was never-ending. “Where?” I gasped, my voice as hoarse as hers.

“I’m in the mirror. Now, listen closely. We don’t have much time until he comes back.”

I had to fight a flinch at that reminder.

I managed to keep my body still by locking all my bones, but the pain never faded, carving itself through all my hollow spaces, burrowing into my bone marrow, making a home in my blood, my muscle, the vulnerable cracks in my ribs.

I breathed in tiny, desperate gasps as I looked at the mirror, a haze of tears washing out the image of the ornate silver frame, the misty spots on its surface and the face that pressed against the glass.

I jumped. I couldn’t help it. The sight of a woman within the mirror was so shocking that my whole body reacted, and then my world flashed white and hot, and by the time sound rushed back into my ears and I could feel anything other than suffering, she’d been talking for seconds or minutes or hours.

“—rewarded with a second life. Well. A third life, if you want to get technical.”

“What?” I choked out, my head spinning as I tried to breathe through the pain. Tears rolled down my face and soaked into my dress.

The woman in the mirror sighed, leaning closer to the glass. She was in her fifties with a halo of grey-blonde hair and transparent skin stretched over prominent bones. Large brown eyes. A pouty mouth turned down in a frown. Freckles scattered across her forehead and nose.

“Who are you?” I rasped.

“Kami Chamberlain. I lived in this house before its current mistress ousted me. And by ousted I mean trapped me inside this mirror.”

My brain was too scrambled, pierced with a thousand volts of pain. It took me slow, sticky moments to make sense of her words. “You mean you’re … not a ghost?”

“Fully alive, like you,” Kami replied with no shortage of annoyance. “Now that you’re paying attention, listen. You can’t tell either of those psycho twins where to find your father.”

I blinked, breathing through the agony in my middle. “You know why they want him.”

“They don’t even know why the other wants your father. But I’m trapped here, and I hear everything. You’re not the first person they’ve tortured in this room. You wouldn’t be the first they’ve killed.”

“All those people hanging on the wall,” I croaked, gasping for air, my head suddenly light.

“Oh, there’s more than those. All the topiaries in the garden. All those people she’s made into ice sculptures. And let’s not forget her supposed friends, rendered in plaster and stone.”

Cold spread through my blood. “She’s insane.”

“Glad we’re in agreement about that.” Kami pressed closer to the glass, as if she could escape the mirror. Could she? “Do you know what happens when a death god is killed?”

“True, final death,” I answered. A fresh wave of tears raced down my cheeks. My husbands—had any of them survived? Were they waiting for me on the other side of the ruined gates, or was every last trace of them wiped out? Had new gods taken their place? I hiccupped on a cry.

“No,” Kami argued with something eager and urgent in her voice.

It killed my sobs, at least for a moment.

“They’re returned to life as a reward for helping manage the balance between life and death.

Their memories are wiped of all that happened during their reign as a death god, and they don’t recall that they lived a previous life.

Two previous lives. But they don’t die. They are reborn. ”

That shut me up. My sobs petered out, shock setting in. “What?”

If Miz had died, he wouldn’t have stopped existing. He’d have been replaced by a new person whose duty it was to sow misery among mortals and … he’d have lived a new, ordinary life somewhere without me? My throat swelled, a new, sharper pain cutting through my chest.

“If they die, they’ll forget me,” I rasped, a tremor in my bottom lip. “Forget everything?”

“Look, I can tell you’re visibly upset, but we don’t have time for this. I feel bad for you, girl, but get your shit together and pay attention. Cruelty wants your father because he was Cruelty.”

Silence. So heavy and complete I could hear blood drip to the floor. The gold spine had cut into my back after all, or maybe Violence had opened wounds on my ribs. It certainly felt like he had.

“No,” I laughed brokenly when I regained the power of speech. “No, he’s a finance officer. My dad’s not a god.”

“Not now,” she agreed, meeting my stare with sharp intensity. “But he was.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Think about it,” Kami urged, her eyes wide and urgent.

“When gods are killed, they forget everything. You’d never know if your father was a god, because he doesn’t know.

But Violence and Cruelty have unlimited power.

Corrupt, far-reaching power. They uncovered the names of everyone who was a god before them.

What Cruelty wants above everything else is for all this to end. ”

“What she wants is power,” I hissed, nostrils flaring with a higher crash of pain through my ribs.

“I’ve watched her torture people in this room. Watched her demands, heard all her screeched interrogations. She hates being a goddess. She hates being Cruelty.”

I scoffed.

“Think what you will, but that’s the truth.”

“Sure,” I rasped. The siblings had put this mirror here to mess with me. I couldn’t believe a single word Kami said. For all I knew, Cruelty had given her a script.

“If they find your father, she believes she can force him to take back his mantle as Cruelty and she’ll be freed. At peace.”

I didn’t bother replying. My dad wasn’t cruel. He was the furthest thing from cruelty as possible.

Like she could read the thoughts on my face, Kami sighed.

“You don’t have to be cruel yourself to sow it among mortals.

It’s a job, and without that cruelty, there would be fewer deaths and the mortal realm would be overrun.

Like it is now, lacking misery, madness, and torment.

That’s who you meant when you said they’d forget you, isn’t it?

I’ve heard those two ranting about them. ”

I swallowed and said nothing.

“Do they embody the traits they inflict on mortals? Are they tormentors? Do they give you misery so intense you can’t bear it? Do they drive you mad?”

My lips twitched at that last one, but my next inhale had pain blazing across my body like a shooting star.

“If you tell them where to find your father, they’ll force him back into the role, and my guess is it’ll kill him.

It’s never been done before, so they don’t know for certain what’ll happen.

The problem is, that’s only what Cruelty wants.

Her brother is a puppet master, twisting and moulding the people around him.

Including Cruelty. She believes he wants that peace for her, but—”

The door jerked in its frame behind me, and cold erupted through my whole body. It took effort not to shudder as clipped, precise footsteps carried someone inside. I didn’t need to hear his voice to know it was Violence. He’d come back to torture me again.

I looked at the mirror and found Kami had retreated several paces and curled into a ball, her arms around her knees, her face hidden in her dress.

I wished more than anything I could curl up and hide, too, but I was tied to a chair in the middle of the room, and as the door closed firmly behind me and Violence strode around the chair, meeting my eyes with an utter lack of feeling, I knew there would be no running from this torture. No hiding.

No surviving.