Page 42 of All Hallows Fate

I glanced up, my heart crashing into my throat when Virgil sat beside me, still wearing Madde’s pink velour sweatpants, his chest uncovered except for so many scars and injection marks I couldn’t count them.

“What happened to you?” I breathed, horror sinking like a stone into my gut.

He looked at me for a long moment, and I searched for parts of myself in his face. I’d only had hazy reflections of myself, glimpsed from windows and a lake, but I thought we shared an eye shape, a nose. And when he found whatever he’d been searching my expression for, I discovered we shared a frown. “You really don’t remember anything,” he said with a sigh, sadness weighing his voice down.

“I’m starting to remember,” I said, offering it up as an apology. “Maybe I’ll get all my memories back. I—I remembered parts of what happened in that cottage.”

Virgil sucked a harsh breath through his teeth. “That seems unfair. The only good part of having amnesia would be forgetting that hell.”

I shrugged, looking across the garden, following the low, curved walls that plants hugged, climbed, and fought to escape. “If bad memories are the price I have to pay to get myself back, it’s worth it.”

It was a thought I hadn’t voiced to anyone else, but it rang with truth when the words left my mouth.

“Do you remember me?” he asked, his voice carefully even in a way that told me he hung on my answer.

“Some things,” I hedged.

He angled himself to face me, a furrow between heavy brows and his face… tired. Worn in a way that made my chest ache. “And Tannie? Do you remember him?”

“Tannie.” Knowledge struck like a spear to my brain and I blurted, “Zoltan! I have two brothers.” In a quiet, softer voice I repeated, “I have two brothers.”

“You do. And we’re both scared for you. I know Tannie booked flights to that cursed island around the time I did, but that magic wall went up before he could catch it.”

I had two brothers… who loved me. I rubbed a fist against my chest, the area suddenly painful. “I’m sorry I forgot you.”

Virgil laughed. It was low and raspy, but after what he’d been through, I had a feeling laughter was a victory. “God, Prickly. You’ve been tortured and controlled by goddesses and attacked by cursed creatures. And then you died. And you’re apologising? Hero complex, much?”

I scowled, shoving my shoulder into his before I could even contemplate the movement, let alone stop it. “Did you just call me, Prickly?”

“I absolutely did,” he confirmed, his voice brighter, more life in him. “You call me Poet, in case you were wondering.”

“Poet? How come you get a nice name, and I get Prickly?”

“It’s scathing, I assure you.”

“Oh.” I smiled. “So like, Poet.”

“Excellent execution. I feel suitably scathed.”

A laugh rasped up my throat, leaving a smile on my face for a moment. “Are you—okay?”

Virgil sighed, his face lifted to the sky where clouds rolled across the grey sky, blotting out some of the light over Pain’s garden and the curving forest path that led us here. My husbands had moved, expanding the boundary of the protective shield, and now stood on the edge of the garden. I watched them, giving Virgil time to talk, wondering if I was okay, too.

Every memory I got back brought pain with it—fear or torment or panic or plain, old fashioned physical pain. When I blinked, I saw the ropes restraining me to a chair in what I now knew was Cruelty’s Darkmore Manor, with Violence’s magic-wrapped fist slamming into my ribs until they fractured.

“I’m better now than when I was locked in that cell,” Virgil said finally, as if he couldn’t find anything more optimistic than that. “I think it’ll take me a long while to get back to myself, after… Well, you saw how I was. I nearly ate you.”

“I don’t think I’d be a sustaining meal,” I muttered. “How did you know I didn’t remember anything?”

“Madness told me,” Virgil replied, sliding a look at me. “How come I left you with four husbands and the next time I see you, you have five.”

“Don’t ask me,” I protested with a laugh. “Death God Cat knows nothing. Mortal Cat’s to blame. I think she’s a hoarder,” I added. “Like those people who have twenty cats, except with handsome men.”

Virgil snorted. “Maybe you should put them in collars with little bells.”

“Madde would wear that unironically,” I remarked, the visual making me smile. “Can you tell me about Tannie? All I remember is laughter and hugs and feathers.”

“Feathers?” He gave me a strange look.