Page 8 of All Hallows Trick

“Madde,” Madness corrected, startling me from the memories with a warm brush of knuckles to my jaw. “I’m Madde to you.”

“Alright, that’s enough,” Miz said tightly, wrapping a possessive arm around my waist.

I blinked, looking down at the empty mug I still held. MADDE’S NUMBER ONE GIRL. I blinked again, rapidly, my eyes stinging.

“You’ve been with me for three years,” I said quietly, my voice a rasp that made the arm gentle around me. “Through everything?” I couldn’t think of a single day when the darkness hadn’t been there, keeping me company while my thoughts spiralled, trauma screaming at me like Leo’s mother had screamed when she learned what became of her son. I was a killer. I’d arrived at Ford already broken; Nightmare had only destroyed what shards remained. “Through all of it?”

Madde watched me closely. “I have.”

That was it. The final straw. I burst into sharp, broken sobs.

CHAPTER THREE

CAT

Itried to sleep for hours but I couldn’t switch off, even with Tor beside me, safe and wrapped in bandages, Miz curled up on Tor’s other side, and Death behind me, his arms coiled like bands of iron muscle around my middle. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’tletmyself sleep. I had to listen to their breathing. What if it changed while they slept? What if it stopped?

A dozen different places hurt on my body, each one revealing itself to me as I laid in bed for hours, but it was my husbands’ pain that tortured me more.

Rain continued to pound Madness’s castle.Madde’scastle. The castle where I’d ended up that day I fled the monster from the village of Ford’s End. I didn’t want to think about the familiar eyes in the creature’s face, or the way Virgil had looked in the tunnel when he’d shifted. I ran from mybrotherthat day. I watched him murder an innocent woman. He devoured her blood and skin and bones.

My stomach twisted, bile crawling up my throat, but I choked it down, focusing on the warmth of Death’s arm nestled in the dip of my waist. I listened attentively. Was his breathing weaker, or was that just paranoia? Misery’s breath was even with sleep, a soft puff every two seconds, followed by a slow inhale. Tor’s breathing was deeper, slower, but steady. They were all breathing. All alive.

Virgil was safe, Honey was safe, both of them given a guest room each on the opposite wing of the castle. Sleeping. Alive. But Virgil… the empty look in his eyes was only replaced by hardness and a level of brutality that was a stranger to his expression. His face and body were covered in bruises and injections and scars and bite marks, his movements stiff and abrupt. He was alive but scarred by his captivity.

And god, I wished it was just captivity. I wished he’d only been locked up in that cell, but it was more than that, so much worse than that. He’d been experimented on, his body twisted and morphed into something new. The dead look in his eye when he said he’d tried to fight Nightmare’s control haunted me. That would be me soon. Well. I choked down a laugh, not wanting to wake my husbands. That was already me. Wasn’t my mind scarred by killing Leo Windlow on the lawn behind my house? Wasn’t I haunted by killing Darya, even if she was a traitor, even if she deserved it? I drove the knife into her, felt her blood spill warm over my hand.

How many more people would I kill? My hand shook when I rested it on Death’s arm, tears spilling freely down my cheeks. I didn’t want to kill anyone else. I didn’t want to be a monster.

I saw it behind my eyelids, the lab where I’d ripped the vial of blood bearing my name from the rack, stupidly thinking I could destroy it by smashing it on the floor. I should have pocketed it instead. If I hadn’t shattered it, that smoke would never haverisen from the blood, would never have seeped into me, infected me,contaminatedme.

I hadn’t seen myself since, didn’t know what I looked like as that creature, but I’d been there, a tiny screaming voice inside a monstrosity of a jaguar while it attacked the people I loved. Tiny flashes had made it through—

The sight of Virgil’s face paling as he yelled at someone tostop,the flashing green lights making my beast’s eyes sting.

Tor’s face, warm with a smile.

Where do you think you’re going, pussy cat? Get over here, and let’s see if this beautiful new jaguar of yours can purr.

You’re cute even when you’re biting me.

That voice of love and rich, gravelly tenderness jarred a memory loose, one that had been lost to the darkness and pain of becoming that creature. Fabric and tattooed gold skin breaking under vicious teeth that belonged to me even if they weren’t mine,weren’t mine.Blood spilling over a tongue too big, drenching my taste buds until the beast hungered for more.

I ripped my eyes open, choking on a gasp, and scrambled out of bed as carefully as I could. I laid Death’s arm over Tor with a hand beginning to shake and fled into the dim hallway outside, choking on attempts to breathe. Ibithim. The puncture wounds on Tor’s shoulder that leaked blood and black ichor—they came fromme.I did that.

I buried my face in my hands as my shoulders shook with silent sobs. I didn’t allow myself to make a noise or I’d wake them. I needed my husbands to sleep, to heal, to recover from wounds they got because ofme.I might not have hurt Miz and Death directly, but the only reason they were at Ford that night was because I needed emotional support for the memorial.

My breath hitched as sob after sob wrecked me, tears hot on my cheeks, and I desperately wanted Death’s arms around me, but I couldn’t handle that right now. I couldn’t look him in theeye. Guilt cinched like arms around my chest instead, squeezing so tight, too tight. I could go to Virgil, but… the band of guilt squeezed tighter. He was only taken by Nightmare so she could use him against me and use me against Death.

I needed air, I needed to breathe—

I jumped hard when something brushed against my ankles. In a split second, my mind conjured images of monsters and claws and creeping tentacles, but when I ripped my hands off my face it was a small black cat winding around my ankle. A jaunty pink and black plaid collar circled his dark throat, complete with a little bow and a bell.

A sudden lump rose into my throat, my bottom lip wobbling. I tried to catch my breath, to pull in enough air to speak. “You’re f-fooling no one,” I gasped.

The cat just stroked his face against my calf, coiling his tail around my leg as he purred like a car engine. His ink fur was the colour of night, as pure black as a void, his eyes electric blue when he blinked up at me. I might have been hyperventilating, might have been falling apart, but I still raised an eyebrow.

In response, the cat nudged my leg and walked down the dim hallway, his tail a question mark when he turned back to look at me after a few steps.

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