I cradled her face and turned it up to face mine, a small, broken sound leaving me when my senses opened, the death magic clinging to her so monumental that no mortal would survive it. I choked on it, on that rotten scent that shoved up my nose and down my throat, coating my tongue with the unmistakable flavour of death.
A necklace of blood had poured down her throat, soaking her shirt until the fabric was saturated, staining her pale skin in splashes that made no sense. I saw hersecondsago. Whole and unmarred in Violence’s grasp. He must have—must have slit her throat and thrown her at me. But not before he pumped so much death magic into her that she didn’t fade away naturally, rather was ripped from the word in an instant death. Her life hacked off, a bridge shattered down the middle, severing her from existence.
“Cat,” I whimpered, my knees buckling without warning. The impact never even registered. I slammed my hands over the gash sliced in her throat, as if the sickening scent of decay wasn’t embedded in her skin and—
I couldn’t feel her.
“Lioness?” Madde cried, dropping beside us, his hands joining mine, trying to put the blood back inside her.
“Tell me she’s alive,” Tor barked gutturally. “Death. Tell me she’s alive.”
My hands shook as I searched for a seed, a scrap, even a shadow of life in her, but Violence had pumped her wound full of so much magic, there was nothing left. I lifted my face, tears cold on my cheeks, and Tor shook his head at what he read there, digging his hands into his skull, shaking his head over and over.
“We can bring her back,” Pain slurred, crawling closer, struggling to hold himself up as Violence’s magic wreaked itself through his system. “We can bring her back. Death—”
“There’s nothing to grasp. No thread of life to hold onto,” I rasped.
“Cat,” Miz croaked, slumping to the floor, brushing the cool skin of her face. “Cat, open your eyes, my universe.” His hair was dipped in blood as he leaned over her, a kiss feathered against her temple. “Open your eyes.”
But there was no life left in her to respond.
CHAPTER 47
CAT
My eyes flew wide, and I wrenched off the icy cold ground with a gasp, completely and utterly blind.
“Don’t panic,” a male voice said, kind instead of cruel, but roughened like sandpaper. Not the smooth ice of Violence’s voice. Not any of my bonded ones’ voices, either. “You’re completely dead, but it won’t kill you.”
I panted, gulping down air, my hands flying to my throat where I felt the bite of metal. What happened…? Someone cut me. I remembered it through a gauze of confusion. Who cut me? Why? And how the fuck was I still alive?
“You’re not alive. You said that out loud, by the way.” A hand grasped my arm and wrenched me to my knees, then my feet. “You’ll be a little disoriented for a while, and you might have blank voids in your memory. But up you get. We’ve got so much work to do, and very little time to do it.”
My head blurred and I wavered on my feet. My bare feet. Had my feet been bare a minute ago?
“You can clothe yourself,” the man said, as if noticing my attention. I turned to glare at him, but I was alone. There was… nothing. No people, no rooms, no buildings, no streets. An empty white space as far as I could see. “Focus on clothes, and they’ll form.”
“What…?”
“Probably a bit advanced,” he mused. “Given you just died.”
“I didn’t die,” I laughed, even if I could feel the cold slice of a blade through my neck. I felt along my throat, but my skin was intact. “I’m not dead.”
Someone patted my shoulder, and I spun around, but there was no one there. There was nothing but stark whiteness in all directions. “That’s what they all say.”
“Who are you?”
“A friend of a friend, I guess you could say. I’ve taken it upon myself to give you a head start in all this.” By all this, I could only assume he meant the nothingness all around me.
“Are you… God?” I whispered.
His laugh was a sharp sound. “Yeah, sure, think of me as God if that’ll get your ass moving. First things first, can you take a step?”
I lifted my foot and put it down, repeating the motion, not entirely sure why I’d been given a vision from God. I’d never been particularly religious. Maybe this was what all dead people received.
“Great. Now squint into the space where my voice emanates. Focus on trying to see me.”
Trying to see God…? I shrugged, my confusion deepening and the memory of that blade cutting me getting further and further away. It took eternity, but my eyes finally focused on a man. Tall, stocky, with a sleek flop of dark hair, heavy stubble, and narrowed eyes. Not how I’d pictured god, but okay.
