Page 73 of All Hallows Fate

The sheer number of spirits was proof of that. They massed between the trees, ringed the entire shape of the lake until there was no part of Rosalind Woods that didn’t glow silver.

My eyes locked with a tall, stiff-backed ghost woman with sleek hair and furious eyes. Kill those pricks. The words were reflected in Darya’s eyes, an echo of what she bade me to do in Cruelty’s fun house of endless doors.

But how could I kill Violence when nothing I did weakened him, and even Joanna’s advice had amounted to nothing? When he had more power than any of us? I couldn’t kill him.

All we could do now was survive his reign.

“You want us to swear fealty, to bow to you as king of the domain?” I breathed, shaking with wrath and panic, my creature thrashing within the bindings of my immortal flesh. “We’ll do it. I’ll kneel here and now.”

I saw it—the spark of dark glee. The hunger to see me do just that. He might have accepted my proposal if chaos didn’t erupt at that exact moment.

Creatures—twenty of them, all with huge, bearlike bodies but with racks of horns or tusks or talons. Predators, cultivated and twisted into the ultimate killer.

The scales grew red hot in my hands—I could reverse what was done to them like I did to Virgil’s friends—but as Violence’s spirits held my husbands in place, I saw what would happen. Death gods were weak when scratched or bitten by any creature, their venom enough to block death magic. They wouldn’t just be in pain at the spirits’ hands, but weak enough to kill. And Violence would kill them.

I froze when they ploughed through spirits, not caring that they walked through the dead, and my heart tripped back into beating. But I would fight. I pulled up a storm of death magic, hauling cloud after dark cloud until I shook with the effort of restraining it.

And then like a ship’s bowels engorged with a flood, I burst. Not only the magic that crashed into spirits and gods and creatures, but me. I burst apart at the seams.

For the first time since I died, I landed on four jaguar paws and roared my fury in the face of my enemies. But my paws were bones pecked clean by vultures. My body was light, only half draped with flesh, but it was rife with magic.

I was more powerful in this form. My true form.

I watched Violence notice it, too. Watched him realise that even if I didn’t have the strength to kill him, I could do serious damage.

My scales had fallen to the mud, but they still throbbed with rose gold light, and the dark storm that had burst from me hung in the air. Livid. A killing magic.

Hope—it was hope that choked off my air and cinched my chest. It was hope as sharp, birdlike screeches pierced the air and the winged, horned, taloned creatures appeared. It was hope as fire blasted on the other side of the lake, and there was Duncan, wielding a flamethrower that immolated spirits where they floated. It was hope as Joanna’s brusque voice cracked through the growls and shrieks behind us, and Violence’s expression tensed.

I should have realised fear wouldn’t make him sloppy, but sharp.

One moment he stood by the lake, the next he was beside me, kicking aside Pain where my net kept him pinned in the mud. Brutal hands fisted my hair. Magic so cold it burned knocked my elbow aside as I tried to drive it into his gut.

“You shouldn’t have invited the goddess,” Violence snapped, as if that word burned his tongue on the way out. “I would have killed you swiftly, Cat.”

I knew that for a lie. I was very intimately acquainted with his particular brand of pain, and I knew as a dark coil of magic began to corkscrew into my chest, this suffering would be worse.

We hadn’t just failed. We’d been crushed. And now my suffering would be eternal.

50

Cat

Ablur of events happened at once.

Joanna crashed through the treeline, swept her glowing verdant magic in an arc that froze creatures where they stood, rooted them to the ground as if they were trees and not animals.

Violence drove a swell of dark, hungry magic into my god form and ripped it away from me, forcing me back to two hands, two legs. Flesh and blood.

Our death god friends appeared around the lake, power already brimming around them. There were others I didn’t even know, rallied by Hunger and Passion and Wrath. From the corner of my eye, I could make out Neglect’s diminutive form beside my dad.

That was when my hands began to shake. Because he’d already watched me be murdered once; was it my turn to watch him be killed?

Joanna surged at us in a blur of emerald power, so bright I had to squint to make out the shape of my husbands—where were they?

Pain was trapped on the ground beneath my net. But everyone else… I didn’t see them.

“Where are they?” I demanded, shrill. I shook with fury, but terror crept alongside it now and made me cold all the way to my bones. “Where are my husbands?”