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“I hear you breathing, Moon. Come to finish the job?” A hoarse chuckle. “Good. I suspect if I rip your pretty head off your shoulders, it will dispel this cursed magic.”

I suck in a breath, realizing too late that he’s trying to provoke a response so he can pinpoint my location. I stagger back, away from the direction his voice came from. I can’t see anything. He could be inches in front of me and I’d never know it.

Moving slowly and as quietly as I can, I reach back to unsheathe my sickles … only to find the spot they usually occupy empty. Right. I had them in my hands when I stepped into this space—or fell, more accurately. Did they make the trip with me? Gods, I hope they made the trip with me.

The Chariot’s footsteps move steadily closer, but I can’t run. If I do, I’ll never find myself back to this place to have even the smallest chance of recovering my weapons.

It goes against every instinct I have to sink slowly to my knees and start feeling around in the strange space that’s not quite ground, searching for the familiar feel of my hilts.

“Don’t be a coward now.” He hasn’t picked up his pace. That’s good news, at least. He’s moving enough that at least some of his magic has to be in place, but he won’t have the full effect without running. He’s smart enough to realize the same thing I did—there’s no guarantee the ground extends forever. There could be a cliff inches away from his next step.

The bad news is that he’s still heading directly for me. I can’t tell how far away he is, but it’s too close for comfort. I bite my bottom lip, but give up stealth in favor of speed. My new powers dampen the sound of my movements, but don’t erase it entirely. I didn’t realize that until now, in this strange space without anything but silence to compete with.

“I hear you, little girl.” He laughs, dark and mean. “If you weren’t a champion, I’d make you one of my concubines. You’d learn your place then.” Like Luce, the ill-fated sailor. Like Cato’s mother, who must suffer greatly for Cato’s hate to be so strong.

I grit my teeth and keep feeling around. With how the ground seems to want to suck up any motion, there’s no way the sickles went far.

“Nothing to say? Typical. Just like the last Moon.”

I freeze. He’s talking about my mother. His ally, though the more I find out about this monster, the less I understand how she could have thrown her lot in with him. As much as I crave whatever knowledge Death has of the woman who bore me, I suddenly don’t want to know what the Chariot thought of her. Saying as much will only make it easier for him to narrow down my exact location. He’s too close to risk it.

“She wasn’t a coward like you, though. When she came to me for an alliance, I figured I could just cut her throat if she tried to betray me. Instead, we won.” He’s getting comfortable. He thinks he has me right where he wants me. I really wish I believed he was wrong. Without a single weapon, there’s no way I can beat him. The Chariot continues, “She fought well. Killed nearly as many champions as I did. It was almost a pity she went crazy and Death had to put her down like a mad dog.”

“Shut up!” I slap a hand over my mouth. Damn it.

He chuckles. “Sounds like I’ve hit an old wound. I thought you looked familiar. Cousin? Daughter? Too young to be a sister. People don’t live long in the Dregs.”

Fuck. You.

Pain blossoms at the tips of my fingers and I bite down the sound that tries to slip free as a result. My sickles. Both of them, since I connected the handles to fight the Tower. I’m bleeding, but there’s no time to deal with it. I carefully feel down the flat of the blade to wrap my fingers around the handle. Now, I have a chance.

“Stop running, little rat. You’re wasting both our time.”

Running is the only thing I want to do. It was bad enough to think I killed the Chariot with my shadows. To have to do it with my sickles …

But there’s no other choice. I don’t know how to get out of this strange space, and I can’t concentrate on figuring it out with him actively hunting me in the dark. I have to fight to survive. I have to kill to survive.

It’s normal to wonder what happens after we die, but there’s no mysterious Death figure waiting to whisk us to some other world. We are welcomed back into the primordial earth from where we were formed eons ago.

—EXCERPT FROM THE MAJOR ARCANA: A TREATISE ON THE HISTORY OF THE OLD GODS

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

THE CHARIOT’S SLOW steps are a horrible counterpoint to my stampeding heart. I crouch on the too-soft ground and try to measure the distance between us. My palms are sweaty where I grip my sickles. As tempting as it is to keep them in a staff, I can’t trust that I’ll be accurate in my strikes if I’m not close … but if I get close, I’ll be within reach of his fearsome strength.

I don’t know what to do. I’m not trained in murder, not like this. Even if I had given in to Mouse’s pressure to learn to kill, he couldn’t have foreseen teaching me how to kill like this.

Maybe I could try to reason with the Chariot. There’s no telling if my dying will release him from this place in between or if he’ll be stuck here to suffer a slow death. If I … What? Offer to take him back? I don’t even know if I can get myself back, let alone transport another person. This isn’t like jumping from shadow to shadow. I don’t know where I am, not really. If he were smart, he wouldn’t eliminate what might be his only way out, but he’s clearly not thinking about anything but violence right now.

Which means I can’t afford to think of anything else, either.

I hold my breath and shift to the side. He’s still coming straight for where he heard me last. If I can get behind him, I might have a chance.

“You stole a kill from me, little rat.” He’s huffing now, as if it’s taking him significantly more effort to walk through this space than it does me. Good. I can use that.

Resolve solidifies within me. I passed the point of no return the moment I joined the Trials. This is just another piece of myself given away freely in exchange for survival. I know all about that, growing up the way I did. I relearned it tonight, when Mara—gods, Mara, I’m so sorry—was cut down because of her connection to me. All while I did nothing, because my end goal was more important than trying to save her. I can pretend it was Cato and Vesper who held me down, the Tower who blocked my way, but I barely fought. I just sat there and watched her die.

“Where are you?” he roars. Right in front of me.