Page 81 of All Hallows Fate

“Embrace your king, Kitty,” he commanded, victory shining in flat eyes. I knew this was for Cruelty, knew he wouldn’t be content until he snuffed out every last glimmer of hope, until he broke me for good.

But for Pain, I slid closer in the mud, and I hoped I did throw up; I hoped I puked all over Violence’s designer suit, so he wore both muck and vomit.

“I should have broken you months ago, instead of letting Cruelty play with you,” he mused. He didn’t lift his arms to hug me, didn’t touch me at all. It wasn’t about that; this was a power play. Forcing me to be his supplicant, as he’d taunted.

Pain must have his heart by now. Maybe with all but one task complete, it would be enough to stabilise the domain, to keep Violence from stealing any more power.

More shadows, right on the edge of my vision, but I didn’t dare look. Not as Violence’s vile mouth curved into a faint smirk. “Now kiss your king, Kitty.”

I knew. Of course I knew where this was leading, that he would demand a kiss next. He was determined to break every last part of me, and stealing this would shatter the parts of me that remained. He’d send me to my death with every last thing poisoned. A non-consensual kiss to taint all the memories of my treasured kisses. Hideous touches to taint the memories of my husbands touching me, me touching them. Control and coercion to smother love and softness and care.

He didn’t just want me dead. He wanted me ruined. Broken in the way a horse could be broken but still useful. Or broken but even more useful.

“Kiss your king, Cat,” he repeated, steely, cold.

And it shook something loose.

Snapped something back into place.

Changed everything.

“If I kiss you,” I whispered, my mouth dry, “you’ll let me live?”

“I’ll let you live,” he lied.

Fortunately, I wouldn’t extend the same courtesy.

I could see I’d surprised him when his eyes flared, satisfaction basking his features in a sick light. I kept my hands loose around his back so he couldn’t feel the prick of my claws. I kept my canines covered with my lips as I pressed my mouth to the offensive line of his and forced them open.

He laughed—he actually laughed when I spat in his mouth, as if he thought I’d gotten carried away kissing him, as if this was a kink I’d chosen to indulge with the worst monster on the planet, the most despicable excuse for a living being. He laughed, and grinned, and then he choked.

When I stumbled back, my legs gave way, and I returned to the ground. Foul mud had soaked through my clothes into my skin. But I was alive. Agonised and bruise-headed and with a scream building inside my chest. But I was alive.

And Violence was dying.

He ripped at the collar of his shirt, his face turning blue. His head whipped from side to side as if that would get more air into his lungs, as if it would stop his organs shutting down.

“Venom,” I managed to rasp with the last of my rapidly fleeting energy. “Creature venom.”

I may have been dead, and a goddess, but I was still the creature he, Cruelty, and Poppy had made me. And I’d just used it to get vengeance for all of us. No god was immune to a creature’s venom. No god except me.

Violence choked once more, and then crashed to the ground.

And did not move again.

55

Death

“Cat,” I gasped, rushing past the dense trees of Rosalind Woods just as Violence forced a kiss on my wife. Although… from this angle, it looked like she kissed him voluntarily. But Cat would never. Violence had controlled her, manipulated her, and rage seethed in my chest at the thought.

I moved faster than ever, as if rage gave me the strength I’d been missing for months, and I reached Cat just as Violence choked and dropped to the ground. And a pulse went through the world. A ripple, like impact across a still lake.

I froze within touching distance of Cat, stunned into stillness. He was dead. She’d killed him… with a kiss. How?

Tor blurted that exact question, grabbing Cat’s shoulders and hauling her against him, the two of them now coated in mud. “How?”

“My venom,” she rasped in a daze.