Page 23 of All Hallows Fate

“I don’t want a crown,” I complained, walking past them and unable to fight a chill when the spirits parted, creating a path for me to reach the door. “But if Violence wants to be king, I’ll happily rip it off his cooling corpse.” I glanced over my shoulder to Death. “You’re the highest ranked god, right? You can have the crown.”

Death blinked, then smiled, a full, gorgeous smile that made my heart skip. I opened the door to the Wake and hurried inside before I could acknowledge the wild frenzy my butterflies burst into.

16

Cat

Three dachshund ghosts scurried ahead of me up the stairs inside the Wake. The tower was a tight spiral of stone stairs interrupted by a solid landing every twenty steps, the wall beside it punched through by a window that overlooked the prairie. The ghosts floated up a flight of steep stairs I knew those short legs would never be able to mount if they were living, and a smile pulled at my mouth.

Footsteps echoed off the old stone as my husbands scaled the stairs behind me, their presence both a comfort blanket and a constant charge of electricity, threatening to shock me if I got close enough. Tor was serious about crowning me, even though that was pure insanity. And the way Death had smiled at me… my stomach was in knots as I thought about it, the staircase never-ending enough that it gave me plenty of time to think about the fight in the prairie, their reactions, and my own.

I completely flipped when Pain got hurt. It wasn’t a conscious decision, instead pure instinct triggered an eruption of rage and protectiveness so strong it transmuted into magic. I made sixty spirits scream, ripped Violence’s compulsion away from them, and I didn’t even see what happened to the vauns. I had a feeling they spontaneously combusted. All because Pain got burned. All because he cried out, whimpering at the scorching agony.

I might not know who I’d been, but that was who I was now. Someone who took no prisoners when the people I cared about were hurt. Someone who ruthlessly pursued revenge.

The stairs circled around again, carrying me past a window, but when I looked at it, it wasn’t the slightly warped, thick slabs of glass that peered out on the prairie. This was a view through a crystal-clear pane, the window twice the size of me and casting light across a hallway landing. My stomach rippled, a thrill quickening my heart. Illicit. Sexy.

I blinked and I was pressed against the glass, the window cold against my bare skin. Pleasure carved a home through my body, spreading to my toes, to the fingers I splayed over the glass. And when I glanced over my shoulder, panting, my back arched, it was to see the glory of Miz fucking me. The look in his eye was pure obsession.

I stumbled back to the Wake when my toe smacked into the next step, and I gasped when Tor’s arm came around my waist to stop my fall. There were layers of clothes between us, but my skin burned. My heart galloped, wild and out of control. When he turned his face into me, pressing a lingering kiss to my sensitive neck, I shuddered hard.

“Careful, beautiful,” he said, delicious and gravelly. “Do you want me to carry you to the top?”

“No,” I rasped, and cleared my throat. “No, I’ll be fine.”

I’d keep my gaze fixed forward from now on, no more detours into the past until I had the scales. And that was the past. It was too clear, the sensations as real as if Miz had me pressed up against this wall, driving in and out of me.

I shook myself and pulled away from Tor, my whole body heated, and I kept walking.

17

Cat

Like we saw from the outside, the top of the Wake was made entirely of glass panels, giving a three-sixty view of the prairie and the hills that wrapped around it. It was beautiful and like nothing I’d seen—that I could remember anyway—but as I took a step across the polished, cherry wood floor I couldn’t help but feel I’d fall off the edge of the tower.

“I hate heights,” Madness breathed, edging closer to me.

“Ditto,” Pain said, pale as he looked around the room.

“Just so you know,” Madde added. “I might need a hug as a reward for being very brave.”

He was infectious; I couldn’t help but smile even if I sensed his fear was more discomfort while Pain’s was absolute terror. I tried very hard not to think about grinding myself all over Madde outside, about how quickly I’d come and the fact it was the first climax I could remember. My body remembered others, but to me that was a first. Madde was my first kiss too, pressed up against the wall in Death’s castle.

But it was Misery I couldn’t look in the eye as my husbands fanned out around me, keeping to this side of the room as if fearful of traps between us and the silver plinth in the middle of the room. The walls were covered in shelves and cabinets full of curios and an entire curved wall held a bookcase full of romance books, but that plinth drew my attention and didn’t let go. A set of rose gold scales sat on a velvet cushion, nothing on either plate but the left sunk so deep it touched the purple cushion.

You need to fix the balance of life and death, a memory whispered through my mind, one of my many lessons. Until those scales were even, the domain would be under fog, and it would keep falling apart. Worse things would happen in the mortal world, I knew, even if I couldn’t quite grasp the details of that warning. Death, destruction, and the end of the world seemed a sure guess.

“Careful,” Death warned as I took a step across the lacquered floor, though he didn’t reach out to stop me.

The floorboard creaked as I put one foot in front of the other, refusing to get distracted by the bowing shelves full of shining, ornate things all around me, my attention glued to the scales. They tugged, urged me closer, until my hands itched. I had the sense of the others following close behind, Pain’s magic scouting every step before I even placed my foot on the floor, but my husbands didn’t get in my way.

No warning bells blared, and even my feral beast was calm as I reached for the scales, setting my hands upon the cool gold. The fulcrum was sturdy and cold under my fingers, sending a rush of tingling shivers up my arms and down my back, not entirely because of the cold. A rightness fluttered over my skin, brushing the seething hunger for justice within me until it settled, almost purring.

I wrapped my hand around the cool rose gold and lifted the scales, my breath trapped in my throat as I waited for those unbalanced plates to dance, to waver. But they didn’t budge, as if they obeyed laws far more important than gravity and motion. Nothing sat upon them but I could sense the magic pooled on each curved gold dish, reading the energy all around us, the ebb and flow of life and death being read by the clever magic that imbued this artifact. This instrument. My instrument.

“Do you have one, too?” I breathed, not looking away from the scales as I lifted them from the silver plinth, a strange burst of emotion in my chest sitting alongside that rightness. Melancholy that I was here, ripped from my life. Anger that I’d never be alive again. Relief that I could still breathe and think and walk and speak. “Do you have an instrument?”

“All death gods do,” Tor replied, at my shoulder. “But we only use them at the worst of times. Most are weapons. A sword or dagger, sometimes a scythe, sometimes a powerful book, other times a metal box full of all the world’s screams.”