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“Cat?” Darya asked instantly, grasping my shoulders with warm hands. “What’s wrong?”
“Come with me,” I blurted. “Please. I found something.”
I didn’t choose the words. Had Nightmare chosen them, or was this the curse’s own command at work? My voice was just panicked enough to be convincing, but I sounded unnatural to my own ears.
“Of course,” Darya agreed, her eyes wide in her face.
And like I’d been led to the slaughter by the kitten, I led Darya to it. She followed me as I rushed through the trees. I fended off every question she had with tearful, breathless exclamations of there’s so much blood, I didn’t know what else to do, I’m so scared.
And then we were in the clearing, and Nightmare stepped out of the darkness with a slow-blooming smile as Darya ground to a halt, her breath hitching.
“Well done, Cat,” the goddess praised, her voice low and sensual, sliding along my nerves like a caress. “You’ve proven very effective.”
Darya had frozen; I saw her from the corner of my eye. But I could still move because my body shook. I gasped down air while I still could.
“Now,” Nightmare said, brushing the backs of her golden fingers over my cheek, “kill her.”
I reared back. What?
“No.”
Nightmare sighed, her eyes narrowing, one beautiful, one bloody. “I suppose you feel safe under his protection. But shields can fall, and he won’t be around forever.”
My heart jolted. Death. The he was obvious. What did she mean he wouldn’t be around forever?
“I have a little plan for that too, my terror. But first—” Her voice changed, growing deeper, harder, hypnotic. “Kill Darya.”
When Nightmare held out a knife, my hand lifted.
When she gestured for me to turn, I faced Darya.
I looked my friend in the eye, saw panic bleach the colour from her brown skin, but I had no power. Nightmare’s will controlled every atom of my body.
I screamed and ripped at the cage of her control, but I was powerless. Useless.
I took one step, then another, and drove the silver dagger so deep into Darya’s stomach, my hand angled up, that I knew I pierced her heart.
She dropped instantly, her eyes flat and empty, lifeless.
And I died right there with her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CAT
The second Nightmare released me from the iron grip of her command, my legs went from under me. I landed beside Darya, blood soaking into the knees of my jeans, the red damning and bright. All I could do was stare at the knife buried in my friend’s stomach. The knife I’d put there.
Oh god.
Oh god, I killed her.
Nightmare brushed her fingers over my head as she walked past, her fingernails ripping out strands of hair. I barely felt the sting; I couldn’t take my eyes off Darya, off the knife driven into her middle, the blood pouring from the hole I’d made. I’d stabbed her in the heart.
I choked on air, my wheezing the only sound in the clearing except for the slow drip of blood hitting the grass.
Darya was dead. I killed her.
I really—oh god—
