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I tried to curl my hands into fists, but pain exploded in my skull at the defiance, worse than the sudden flare from before. This stabbed far deeper and gouged a space inside my brain until I gasped.
I gasped.
Knowing it was going to hurt, I prised my lips apart, and said through a guttural snarl of pain, “No.”
It hurt so badly my knees buckled and I wished my husbands were here. I wanted them to sweep me into their arms, to surround me with safety and affection and care. But there was only me, Honey, and Nightmare here. Something kept them busy elsewhere, and I didn’t doubt that was by design. Her design.
“No?” Nightmare gave me that look again—like I was amusing and adorable, like a kitten trying and failing to climb a staircase. “I hope you don’t think it was a request, Cat. Pick up the bag, both of you, carry it to the lake without being seen, and throw it into the water.” Her voice hardened, and my next gasp of pain sent me to my knees on the hard ground. “Now.”
Her words rocked through my head like the aftermath of an explosion, and I bit back a whimper when Honey knelt beside me—not to check if I was okay but because she was bound as tightly by Nightmare’s order as I was. Her hands went to the black holdall but her eyes found mine, watery and full of pain.
We’ll be okay, I silently conveyed. We’ll be okay, I promise.
We just had to do what Nightmare wanted and the command would release, and we’d be free. Just like the day in the clearing, where—where I killed Darya.
Tears burned my eyes and acid razed through my stomach, but I didn’t have enough control over my body to vomit so it stayed in my stomach, my throat, my mouth. I was glad I hadn’t eaten a meal in hours.
My hands found the rough canvas of the black bag, and I gritted my teeth. Fighting. Failing.
Sweat beaded on my head. A scream scratched at the inside of my skull, but my fingers wrapped around the handle and slowly, against my will, I stood.
“Good,” Nightmare praised, almost sweet now, nothing menacing remaining in her voice. I couldn’t even shudder. “Now, take it to the lake.”
All we had to do was carry a bag of hay to the lake. That was all. It was only hay—we’d seen it. And the lake wasn’t far. We’d be fine.
We had to be fine.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
DEATH
Nothing felt right here. I knew it in my bones, felt the clang of alarm through my body, but I couldn’t explain it with any kind of logic. This magic was old and had a will of its own, but it was failsafe in my hands. As Death, it would bend to my command even if it hated it.
“I have a really bad feeling about this,” Tor said gruffly, standing outside the triangle cut into the grass behind my greenhouse. The castle loomed over us, its dark shadow hiding the symbol we’d carved into the ground and the darkness we’d all sent to fill it. Mud speckled his black leather jacket and stained his hands.
“It won’t work,” Misery said quietly, his eyes on the triangle of power, arms crossed over his slim chest. “It’s not enough.”
“We’ll never know until we try,” I countered, matching his soft tone. “We agreed it’s worth a try.”
“I know,” Miz muttered, his expression difficult to read. He looked moody and angry but I knew Misery, and I could tell he was concealing something bigger, some deeper emotion. I squeezed his shoulder, and when that didn’t relax even an inch of tension from him, I pulled him into my arms, brushing a kiss over his lips. “If this works, we kill them all. I don’t care if they’re compelled.”
“Fine by me,” Tor agreed with a shrug. He was frowning at the symbol cut into the grass.
I released Miz with another reassuring kiss, each of us standing at a different point of the triangle. From Tor’s casual surveillance on Cat’s phone we knew she and Honey had been searching the library at Ford for any hints of a curse and how to break it. We also knew there was nothing there to find; any books that had been at Ford were moved here six hundred years ago to my library. And in one of them, we’d found one of the original sigils used to summon Nightmare—or in theory any death god. We’d adjusted it with a single scrawled symbol to summon her followers.
In theory.
Whatever happened, at least Cat was safe with her friend. Nightmare only attacked when she was alone.
“All this bullshit over a husband who didn’t even like her,” Tor muttered, shaking his head. “You’d think she’d want to die to go be with him, but no.”
“Love ruins people,” Misery said with a frown. “It leads only to madness.”
Tor’s face cracked in a grin, and he would have nudged Miz if he were close enough. “I happen to like that brand of madness.”
“It’ll kill you eventually.”
“I can’t be killed.”
