Page 12 of All Hallows Game

“The bride of Death.”

“Hm. Not so bad.”

I whipped my head around to glare at him, coarse words leaving my mouth before I’d agreed to speak.

“She married me to three death gods—I was literally the bride of death. I was their wife and instead of that being a living hell, it was the only time I can remember being happy in three damn years. But she couldn’t even let me have that. She took control of one of my husbands, compelled him to kill Byron—my best fucking friend—and then ripped the curse off us. So, now I’m alone, I have no husbands, my best friend is gone forever, and the men who started to feel like home won’t come anywhere near me because Nightmare blackmailed me into lying that any feelings I have are fake.”

I breathed heavily by the time I was done, gasping and out of breath. Shit, I really hadn’t meant to confess that. I didn’t dare look at Duncan, wound so tightly that I jumped when he knocked something into my arm. When I saw it was a bottle of whiskey, I grabbed it and took three swallows before the taste could catch up to me.

“God, that’s awful.”

“Awful and expensive,” he corrected, taking a swig himself. “I was a plague doctor. I still feel like I am. My touch could infect and—kill.”

I heard the tight confession in that word. “She made you hurt people.”

He nodded jerkily. “It was like an out of body experience. Like the worst, twisted kind of VR game.”

“I know the feeling,” I muttered. He looked at me, but I kept my eyes forward, watching snow scatter down the spire of Milton Hall.

His hands flexed on his knees. “I’ll go first. Dean Fairchild.”

I whipped around to stare at him. “Shit. She made you—” I swallowed. That was him? Duncan killed our dean?

I forced out,” Darya Henderson.”

His blue eyes widened. “She’s dead?”

“And a ghost,” I said sourly. “She was one of them. One of Nightmare’s followers. Brainwashed and twisted. And such a good liar I never saw what she really was.”

“Shit,” Duncan said, rubbing his face. “Shit. Do you know who else…?”

Who else was working for her? I shook my head. “Only Darya and—and she got to Byron.”

“I know.”

I didn’t dare look at him, my whole body seized by tension.

Very carefully, he said, “Byron was there when she gave me the command to infect Dean Fairchild. He… delivered him to me.”

My heart squeezed tighter, until I had to curl my hands into fists to endure the pain.

Still in that measured tone, Duncan said, “I don’t blame him. Byron. I know what it’s like to be cursed, to have that poisonous bitch in your head. He didn’t have a choice.”

I didn’t tell him Byron hadn’t been cursed like us. Duncan was right; when Nightmare got her hooks in you, none of us had a choice but to do whatever she commanded.

“I’m sorry he’s gone,” Duncan added. “He didn’t deserve that. None of the people she’s killed deserved it. All we wanted to do was come to med school.”

“If I’d known this place was home to a cult, a goddess, and a curse, I never would have come,” I said dryly.

“That makes two of us.”

Silence settled between us, not quite comfortable but bearable. I had to swallow back the urge to tell him about Virgil at least twice, desperate for someone else to know, for someone to help me.

“Hey,” I said abruptly. “Do you know anyone who could trace a picture and find where it was taken?”

Duncan gave me a weird look.

“It might help us find where Nightmare’s hiding.”

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