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I glanced away, my cheeks hot at his constant attention, nervousness tightening my chest. “Cactus,” I begrudgingly admitted.
Miz snorted, sinking onto a sofa opposite us and watching as Death approached a drinks trolley shaped like St. Paul’s Cathedral, opening the dome to draw out a bottle of gold liquid the same colour as Miz’s eyes. At least in the painting. I daren’t look at the actual man long enough to see if they were the same in real life.
“My cute little succulent,” Tor breathed with something like fascination. I stared at him in surprise and a little like he was insane.3
“Here, Cat,” Death murmured, catching my hand to place a glass in it, handing another to Miz when he sat beside the pale, stiff-backed man. I watched him thaw, surprised to see it at all, when Death rested his broad hand on his knee. “So,” he said, watching me, “you know I’m Death. But you might not know what that means.”
“Probably that you can kill me,” I muttered, then took a quick drink when it came out a little louder than planned.
“I can kill anyone with a single touch and a flicker of magic,” Death agreed with a smile that struck me as sad. “I don’t kill everyone, obviously, or there’d be no one left in the world. Most die naturally, and arrive in my domain of their own will. But it’s my job to kill those who stubbornly cling to life when their time is up. To maintain the balance of life and death in the world. A balance,” he added, “that Nightmare has thrown into chaos.”
I swallowed, then drank more of the burning golden liquid. It wasn’t pleasant, but I needed the warmth when this conversation made me so cold inside. “Did you kill the people at the party?”
“No,” Death replied with clear irritation. “And neither did their souls arrive here. She consumed them.”
“Consumed,” I echoed, the cold spreading further inside me. “I think I—felt it. Like a sick heartbeat. They died and then it was all I could hear, feel…”
Tor slid closer to me. I jumped when his arm came around me, holding tight to my body, my new feathered cloak trapped between us.
“How do you tie into this?” I asked, looking at each of them. “I’m not an idiot; Nightmare turns up, kills people, and suddenly you’re here racing to my rescue.”
Tor held me tighter, like he was trying to hold off the inevitable and stop me pulling away from him.
“We’re here because of what Nightmare did,” Death said gently, his grey eyes heavy, sad. “Nightmare is consumed with a thirst for power, and she’ll stop at nothing to get it. This isn’t the first time she’s gathered a cult, enacted a ritual, and killed people. I’m so sorry you were caught up in it.”
“She said it could have been anyone,” I murmured, turning the glass in my hand. “It just happened to be me because I picked the bride of death costume.”
“It’s all a twisted game to her,” Miz said with a low laugh, throwing back the contents of his glass and pushing off the sofa to get more. “She likes playing with people, pushing them to the edge of their limits and seeing what happens when they break.”
“Miz…” Tor murmured, watching him.
“She cursed you,” Miz said harshly, pinning me with a look that made my heart quicken, my whole body prickling with warning. “Everyone who was there that night is cursed. That’s why you’re wearing an illusion—you look normal on the surface, but deep down you are hers and your face shows the truth.”
“Misery,” Death said, soft and steely at once. “This is not the way to tell her.”
Miz—Misery—laughed high and sharp. “She’ll find out either way. It’s better that she knows the truth instead of you dancing around it.” He looked me in the eye. “Nightmare caught you up in her ritual, bound you to be the bride of Death—which means you are the bride of all three of us—and now she can find you anywhere and do whatever the fuck she wants with you. She owns you, Cactus.”
For the first time, I didn’t cringe from my name. I was too afraid to even feel embarrassment over it. “How do I undo it?” I breathed, shaking.
Misery shook his head, his beautiful face cold. “You don’t.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CAT
Tor—which I discovered was short for Torment—rode me back to Ford and deposited me on the road before the scrolling iron gates, sea serpents coiling around the latch. It was dark, only a few lights twinkling in the village at the base of the hill, but more lights blazed from the buildings deep inside Ford.
Death. Torment. Misery.
Three men who embodied those traits, who were responsible for inflicting them on the world. Death gods.
Hearing those words together—death and gods—was my final straw. I’d jumped off the sofa and strode for the door, meaning to run out the gates and back up the winding road to Ford. But when I flung open the heavy black door, it was a whole other city I looked out on, the sky tinged as red as blood, the buildings all formed of blackened stone and of a style I’d never seen before, angular and sharp, with flat roofs. I wasn’t anywhere near Ford’s End—the village or the island.
Magic, again, clear and undeniable. A chill rippled down my arms.
“I’ll take you back,” Tor had offered, following me the instant I leapt off the sofa.
I spun my crown ring around and around my finger, staring at the unfamiliar city. The unfamiliar world? My domain, death had said. I wasn’t sure what that meant.
