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Nightmare smiled indulgently at the robed, hooded figure to her left. “Of course, I wouldn’t have this follower in my grasp without my darling Misery.”
“He’s not your anything,” I hissed, my pulse hammering against my throat. I held onto Miz’s pinky finger harder. He was his own person, and if he belonged to anyone, he was mine.
Nightmare gave me a pitying look and turned to the robed follower.
“Where are the other four?” I blurted, stalling, terrified. A tremor started in my legs, threatening my knees. “At the party, there were five robed people.”
“Now, those were ghosts,” Nightmare said with relish at my flinch. I’d been in the room with ghosts. I’d spoken to one, had felt its stare on me.1
“I must say, it’s been entertaining to watch you all turn on each other, playing your violent guessing games about who’s my disciple. I didn’t even plan that part,” she added with the air of someone confessing gossip. “The paranoia and bloodthirst of mortals never fails to impress me.”
I hooked my finger tighter around Miz’s, holding on for dear life. “You set us up to attack each other, and sat back and watched.”
“I did, didn’t I?” She looked immensely pleased, her eyes trailing over the hooded figure. “I’m sure you have your own theories about my dear follower. Or as I hear my terrors calling him, the Assassin.”
Calling him. So it was a male. My stomach sank. Byron, what have you done?
“Of course, none of you could know that some of the hooded figures you saw since Halloween were my new followers—not dead, but living. Like this gentleman. I believe you’re acquainted.”
I shook my head hard. “No.”
“Forgive my flair for the dramatic,” Nightmare said, savouring my panic as I cringed away. I don’t want to know, I don’t want to know—
She ripped the hood off his head and there was Byron, his dark, shaggy hair falling over his forehead, tears clinging to his long lashes. His eyes begged me to understand, to forgive him, but I glanced away, staring at the dark, empty moors. Why was there never anyone around when I needed them? Please, someone, anyone.
Nightmare had two men I loved under her control, and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to save them.
“There, that’s better,” Nightmare murmured, stroking Byron’s cheekbone. “Now everyone can see each other. But I see you’re not falling to your knees in shock, Cat.”
I swallowed, scraped my teeth over my bottom lip. “He lied about having a boyfriend.”
“The boyfriend,” Nightmare sighed, shaking her head. “I should have taken him, too.”
Taken. I shivered at the word. “Are you going to take me, too?”
She laughed, a sharp burst of sound that rippled across the moor. “Heavens, no. That would hurt Death far less than what I have planned.”
“Hurt Death,” I echoed, barely above a whisper. I trembled harder as the wind picked up, fog whispering around my ankles. “Why would you care about hurting Death?”
I knew he’d vanquished her once before, but I realised now I knew very little about how or why he’d done it. And for some reason, that felt deliberate. They’d all kept me in the dark.
“This whole enterprise has been about making Death pay, you understand,” Nightmare said, a laugh lingering in her voice. She gave me a half pitying, half judgemental look. “Why else would I care about making you his bride? Everything has been to weaken him so when I get the chance, when every domino has fallen and the right cards are in my hand, I can kill him.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I demanded, pain spreading through my chest. My husbands had lied. Miz was under her control. Byron was one of her robed followers. And she’d led me here, to the moors where she could torture me with these truths, and had yet to reveal why.
“Because it amuses me,” she replied, patting Byron’s cheek. “And it furthers my agenda. Did you know Byron failed his entrance exams?”
The question was so abrupt that I didn’t understand at first, and then frowned. “No, he didn’t.” Now she was just bullshitting me, trying to turn me against my best friend, and it wasn’t fucking happening. I needed to be as clever and cunning as her, needed to get him away from her, needed to take him and Miz and run to Death’s domain.
He said, all those weeks ago when we first met, his domain would answer to me. Surely, I could call up the castle. He told me death was everywhere, that it could be accessed from any place. All I needed to do was find a way to summon the domain and then—
“He bribed his way in,” Nightmare said with a grin, her eyes gleaming. “Isn’t that delightful? He couldn’t get to Ford on merit, so he used his parents' money to buy a place.” She laughed, the sound grating my ears, scraping my soul.
“Byron would never.” I shook my head hard. “You’re lying.”
“I never lie, my terror. Why do you think he ran out of the party before the ritual was enacted? I gave my first disciple explicit instructions to send him a message and then call, ordering Byron to leave unless he wanted the truth leaked to both the governing body of Ford and the press. Can you imagine the scandal?” She gasped. “Son of the CEO and CFO of Everett Corp buying his way into university. It would have ruined him. And ruined his family, by extension. Of course he ran out and followed my every command. Of his own free will,” she added with emphasis.
I shook my head. This was bullshit. There was no fucking way—
