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Byron smiled, a tiny, defiant thing. “I’m sick and tired of doing what Nightmare commands, so no, I won’t run. I love you, Cat. You and Honey are the best friends I could ever ask—”
Miz drove the knife under his ribs and into his heart before the last word could leave Byron’s lips, and part of me died right there with him.
My scream was deafening and raw.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CAT
Nightmare released me enough to let me drop to the ground, and my knees hit hard-packed dirt and grass, dew soaking through the ragged hem of my dress. I didn’t care about the cold or the damp. I didn’t care about anything. Byron was dead.
“Ah, here comes the cavalry,” Nightmare said cheerfully. Pay close attention, my terror. Her voice flowed through my mind like smoke, wisps reaching even the deepest recesses. I flinched, digging my fingers into the dirt, and realised I was still screaming.
She took a step forward, the train of her black lace skirt sliding over the grass. “You can go now, Darya. You’ve been very helpful.”
“Happy to serve my goddess,” Darya murmured, sounding thoroughly brainwashed.
My scream died, a horrible silence filling its void. I stared across the moor to where Byron had fallen, the blade sticking out of his gut. I couldn’t look away even when cold, dark shadows glided across the grass like a river flooding its banks. I didn’t look away even when Tor rasped, “Miz? Cat? What’s going on?”
He killed my best friend. I didn’t bother saying it; one look and they’d know what happened. Miz’s hands were covered in blood. Byron’s blood. My best friend’s blood. My best friend was dead. Dead, and a murderer, a liar, a traitor, and I was screaming again.
Grass rustled as Death knelt beside me, throwing up a veil of darkness between us and Nightmare.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he soothed.
“Liar,” I cried, pulling away from him. Cold rushed into my side but I didn’t care. “It’s not okay. Byron is dead.”
“Miz, come here,” Tor said in a strange tone. Something like blind terror shone on his face when I glanced up, another wave of tears spilling from my eyes at the motion. “Come here.”
I laughed bitterly. “He won’t answer you.”
Tor’s face twisted with anguish as he looked at Misery, standing a little too close to Nightmare, then at me. I didn’t bother getting to my feet. Didn’t lean closer to Death.
“She’s right,” Nightmare said amiably. “He won’t answer you until I tell him too.”
“You took control of him again,” Death growled, his voice unsettling and deep, the air vibrating around him until all my hairs stood on end. I swore the temperature dropped.
“Again?” Nightmare’s soft laugh was a whisper on the air. She was enjoying this immensely. “Oh no, I never lost control of him. I’ve been speaking to him this whole time. I simply commanded him to forget our little conversations.”
“Did you never wonder why all your plans never quite worked? Why books and weapons went missing? Cat, you must have wondered who trashed your room, who planted the cameras I used to monitor your every movement.” She lifted her hand to Miz’s tense shoulder but a lash of darkness from Tor snapped her hand away.
She’d been watching me? Because Miz planted cameras? Oh god, he was there when I found my room open and all my things ransacked, wrecked. The room he ushered me into with promises that I’d be safe… bugged, watched at every moment. All the times I’d been with Miz, with Tor, with Death, she’d watched.
I twisted aside and vomited the contents of my stomach into the grass.
Death rose slowly to his feet, power vibrating around him, his rage palpable. “Release your hold on him. This is your only warning.”
Nightmare snorted. “No. And this is your only warning. If you take so much as a single step towards my first disciple, I will end everything you hold dear.”
“Miz,” Tor said quietly. “Fight this.”
Words I'd said to him, right before he killed Byron. I looked at my friend, laying cold and still in the grass, his blue eyes open and unseeing. Miz did that. Miz who—who I was falling for. I covered my mouth with my hands, choking back a sob and tasting bile.
Tor took a step. Nightmare smiled.
My stomach roiled harder when a ripple of magic went through the air like a heartbeat, like a pulse. I’d felt it before, in Ford House.
“What did you do?” Death demanded of Nightmare, rushing to Tor, grabbing his shoulder to keep him in place. “What the fuck did you do?”
