Page 69 of All Hallows Trick

“No, I—” But I did. I did know.

Cruelty’s eyes twinkled, a gleam I’d seen in Nightmare’s eyes but more refined, the sharp edge of viciousness honed by delight. A kiss—that was all it took to save Miz.

“Go,” she laughed. “Run to him. I’ll be right behind you.”

It was a threat, but I didn’t care. I knew how to save my husband, and nothing would stop me.

I ran towards the castle, willing to beg whichever god I found first to take me to him, desperation beating against my ribs. Everything that had frozen and slowed turned to urgency, burning hot and rapid like the flow of lava. I needed to get to Miznow.He had minutes, but I could save him even seconds from death. I knew how. That determination made my spine straighten even as pain throbbed from the slashes all across my skin, and I ran faster, my shoes pounding the ground and—slipping across a patch of shadow until a dark plume of it caught me up and carried me away.

Cruelty, I thought, until the darkness whisked away and my next step fell on the path to Madde’s castle, Cruelty nowhere to be seen. But she said she’d be right behind me. And Miz was more important than questioning why she was so eager to help me when she’d delighted in tormenting me.

I threw open the front door, the entryway passing in a blur. Voices came from the sitting room where we’d spent that first night, but I didn’t recognise them. Death gods, I presumed. Instinct tugged me upstairs. My feet hit the steps, pounding carpet until I was on the landing and racing down the hall to the room I’d shared with Death, Miz, and Tor.

The door was already open; I skidded into it.

“Is he—”

“Still alive,” Tor replied, his voice a husk of its usual warmth. His light brown eyes were devoid of hope when he looked up at me, his face hollowed by grief. He sat on the edge of the mattress, both hands wrapped around Misery’s palm, golden skin against too, too pale.

I swallowed the knot in my throat and forced myself to cross the room, seeing the agony I felt in my chest reflected on Death’s face when our eyes locked. He looked exhausted but it was the sheen to his eyes that made my bottom lip wobble again.Madness stood at the foot of the bed, gripping the footboard in white-knuckled hands, inked hearts stark against his skin.

Those hearts taunted me. Everything I did from now on was for love, even if it hurt, even if it killed me. If it saved them, it was worth it all.

I couldn’t tell whether Madde knew my intention, couldn’t read anything on his face except anguish, his usual vivacious happiness nowhere to be found. Did he know I’d made a deal with Cruelty?

I swallowed, guilt driving into the grief weighing me down. My feet scuffed the carpet as I moved to sit on the bed opposite Tor, my hands trembling as I rested my weight on them. The slashes on my thigh left a smear of blood on the pale covers. Something to remember me by.

“He’s wearing the ring,” Tor rasped, barely above a whisper.

I nodded, struggling to swallow with the lump in my throat. “Good. It’ll help him.”

It’d give him strength when I couldn’t be here to give him it.

A single kiss would bring him back to the half-life of all death gods. It would bring him back to us. No, to Tor and Death, not to me. I wouldn’t be here. A spear of pain cut through the muscle of my heart and Tor inhaled sharply like he felt it. A kiss, that was all it took, and a small scrap of my life, shared from lips to lips.

“You have to—to come back to us,” I whispered, fighting the sobs crowding my chest as I leaned over Misery, his skin almost as white as paper, veins standing out against his closed eyelids. “You have to come back.”

An hour ago, I hadn’t known where the essential glow of life lived inside me, but now I reached directly into that pocket in my soul, enclosing inner hands around it, that precious drop of life. Warmth travelled through my chest and up my throat as I guided that drop, following the knowledge Cruelty had blessed or cursed me with. If this saved Miz, I wouldn’t regret whateverbargain I’d entered into. If it failed, I’d sold my soul to the devil for nothing.

“Come back,” I whispered against his mouth, warmth tingling on my tongue as I parted my lips and pressed them to his in a feather-soft kiss. I felt the drop of life leave me, cold spreading through my body in its absence. I hadn’t stopped to ask what giving up a drop of my life would do to me. It didn’t matter.

A sob pressed against my throat when I drew back, Misery’s face unmoving, his eyes still behind his eyelids, body frozen in repose. His breaths were so shallow I couldn’t see them, or maybe he’d stopped breathing entirely.

“Cat, I don’t think—” Tor began.

“He’s coming back,” I snapped, my voice too weak to add any real fire to the words. “He’s coming back.”

“Sit down, you dumb fuck,” Tor snapped at Death when he wavered on his feet. Death dropped onto the bed with a grunt, his breathing laboured as he set his hand on my arm. “I can’t deal with losing you, too.”

That made another sob claw its way up my throat, the cold spreading through me until I shook with it. I couldn’t feel the drop of life where it had flowed into Miz but I could feel its absence inside me, a point of freezing ice where warmth and life should be.

Death bowed his head, hiding his face, and Ifeltit—the creeping sense that life was fading, a slowing of heartbeats, a subtle darkness sweeping in to wrap around a soul. And snuff it out.

Would Miz’s ghost end up here? Would I ever get to see him again, or would he just fade away to the place where everyone else went in their afterlife? What happened to the spirits who didn’t cling to themselves, who didn’t linger here in Death’s domain? What happened to the souls who passed on?

“What will happen to him?” I asked, my throat so tight the words cut like shards of glass. “When he—will he come here?”

Death’s hitch of breath told me everything I needed to know. We’d lose him forever then, not even a spirit left behind.

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