Page 18 of All Hallows Fate

There was no doubt I knew these men. No doubt that I loved them, too. I loved each of them like I loved the ruined village at the base of the hill his castle towered over. It wasn’t a comfortable emotion to feel when I couldn’t remember why I loved them and what made me fall so deep I married all of them.

“Are we going to The Wake?” Madde shouted over Death and his shadow shire, Mort.

“The what?” I asked, glancing at the gently sloping hill ahead of us. The only wake I could remember was the kind that happened after a funeral.

“The Wake is a cylindrical tower,” Pain explained from my right, a tentative flicker of shadow brushing Fuzzball’s side and grazing my leg. I only allowed it without attacking him because he was blind, and I’d gathered it was how he sensed where I was. “It’s one of Passion’s treasure troves.” At my frown, he explained, “He’s a collector. Well, hoarder’s probably a better term.”

“Who’s Passion?” I asked. “That doesn’t sound like a death god name.”

“You’d be surprised how many people are murdered because of passion,” Misery muttered, just loud enough for me to hear him. He rode beside Pain while Tor was right at the other end, next to Madde. Separated and arguing, because I needed to be the one to kill Violence. Guilt twinged through my chest. I was Judgement, and right now my own internal judge was telling me I’d started this argument so I needed to end it, to smooth the edges.

It wasn’t entirely my fault, and I wasn’t the only one who overreacted, but… that twinge came again. I fought a groan and added mentally another thing to the list: fix Tor and Miz’s relationship.

“What does he collect?” I asked Pain, turning to look at him, appreciating the casual way he rode Atari, effortlessly competent. Wind snatched a few curls from his forehead, caressing the tanned beauty of his face, the slope of his nose, the long lashes that framed green-hazel eyes. “Passion, I mean.”

“What doesn’t he collect? Books, mirrors, antiques, teapots, records, handkerchiefs. That’s where I got this sick cloth.”

He held up a blue handkerchief for me to see, with an orange character all over it.

“Cute,” I said, glancing up at the low cry of an animal not too far away. Fuzzball grumbled at the sound of it, slowing as if reluctant to go any further.

“It’s Crash Bandicoot,” Pain explained, and seemed to sense the blank expression on my face. “Right, you lost your memories.”

“That’s not why she doesn’t know your nerd shit,” Tor teased, a low rumble of warmth that almost, almost reminded me of days spent together.

“Excuse me, Crash Bandicoot is a cult legend,” Pain huffed. “Anyone with taste—”

“Do you hear that?” I cut in when that sound came again, the low groaning of an animal.

“Yes,” Death replied, any softness whisked off his face to expose a steely core. “Cat, stay behind me.”

Like fuck. “I’m not a meek, easily killed woman in need of protection,” I argued, nudging Fuzzball forward to meet his horse’s quickened steps.

“That’s not why,” he murmured, his stare trailing over me from head to toe before he fixed it ahead. “We just lost you, Cat. I refuse to let you be hurt again. Even a papercut is intolerable. So please, stay a few steps behind. Let me assess what waits for us on the other side of this hill.”

Part of me was ready to back down, that sympathetic part of me already throbbing with feeling for these men. I couldn’t imagine how it felt to lose the person you loved, then find them only hours later, whole and unharmed but a total stranger. Unfortunately, the rest of me was a wild animal driven by an unrelenting and all-consuming need for vengeance, and I would not back down.

“We’ll ride together,” I said, and before he could disagree, I added, “instead of riding ahead of you like I planned to.”

His stare softened, the grey storm in his eyes turning to quicksilver. “Alright, little bride,” he agreed, his voice the same liquid cashmere as his gaze.

The others fanned out behind us in a semicircle, close enough that I felt the cool snort of their horses’ breath, felt the thrum of magic each man held close. I was ready to roll my eyes at our overdramatic reaction, ready to laugh at the single cow or sheep that grazed in the prairie on the other side of the hill, harmless and unthreatening.

I was unprepared to find the Wake—the tower Pain described—completely and utterly surrounded by fawn-like creatures with towering horns and teeth so big they draped past their lips like tusks. The groaning I’d heard came from a creature near the tower. A warning or announcement to its kin it seemed, because in the next moment, its mouth yawned open and blue fire blast into the prairie, scorching the grass.

That would have been bad enough, because I was deadly certain now the intuition in my chest was tugging me down the hill, across the flower-strewn grasses, to the lone tower that thrust up to the darkening sky. But the Wake wasn’t enveloped by merely fire-breathing creatures. Fifty silvery spirits bobbed in place around the tower, transparent and insubstantial but thrumming with enough death that the hairs rose on my arms.

“I didn’t know spirits could be this powerful,” I whispered to Death.

“They’re not usually,” he replied quietly, something like anger darkening his expression. “These have been tampered with. Empowered.”

“So they’re not here by chance,” I guessed, noting the way they encircled the tower in three rings. We’d have to fight through three waves of spirits and a prairie full of horned creatures to get into the Wake.

“No,” Death agreed, brushing my elbow with a touch so gentle, so familiar, that it made my heart jolt and my brain bash around my skull, tender, trying so hard to remember. “They’re guards.”

I narrowed my eyes, the ever-present hunger for justice sinking its teeth into me. My temperature dropped, dark swirls of magic wrapping around my hands, my wrists, my forearms. “Someone knew I would come here. They’re trying to keep me from my kill.”

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