Page 46 of All Hallows Masque

“Shit,” I breathed. Yeah, my plan was better than no plan. “So,” I panted, “we’re going to smash our way out of the conservatory—”

“Destructive, I like it.”

“And then I’m going to shift, and you’re going to ride me.”

“A little kinky, and it’s probably not the time but—”

“Alfie!” I barked, too afraid, too wary of being caught to handle jokes right now. “Or Pain. Or whatever your name is.”

“Technically both,” he mused. “Who gave you these shadows?”

“Huh?” I skidded across the polished hardwood floor at the bottom, swinging my body towards the short hallway to our left.The conservatory was in sight. With any luck, the door there would be unlocked, but I doubted our luck lasted that long.

A shock went through me, deeper than my skin, deeper than muscle and bone, like an intimate stroke to my soul, and I gasped, startling. For a moment, I thought it was Madde, and I flung myself at the place where my darkness used to live, screaming his name. But that place was still deserted, still silent and hollow.

“It’s not a signature I recognise,” Pain mused, and I jerked around to give him a questioning look. My stomachdroppedwhen I saw him running his tanned fingers through tendrils of darkness that clung to the air around me.

“Stop that,” I gasped, growing breathy as that sensation grew. Like he was caressing my soul. I shivered. Hard. “It feels…”

“I know,” he replied, and cleared his throat when it came out thick with an emotion I struggled to identify. His eyes had darkened behind the gold mask, the green in his hazel irises almost black. “Come on, we need to get out of here—”

“Does that music seem louder to you?” I asked as we broke into a run, sprinting faster towards the ornate conservatory doors ahead. The soaring notes of the string quartet were louder, a melody I didn’t recognise, both sweeping and haunting.

“Yes,” Pain replied grimly, pushing very confidently on a window beside the door. I opened the door without a word, and pretended not to see the flush that crawled across his cheeks beneath the mask. “Useless bloody shadows,” he muttered.

“Would it help to take the mask off?” I asked, trying to hide my curiosity. What did he look like unmasked? Was he handsome? Cute? Devastating?

“Nope, it—” His words cut off like a sword had severed them, and he darted forward with a snarl on his mouth, pushing me behind him.

“I wondered when you’d catch up,” Cruelty’s smug, delighted voice made me flinch into Pain’s back, the recoil travelling through my whole body.

She’d been here all along. Waiting for us. The conservatory wasn’t an escape route; it was a pretty cage, and we’d walked ourselves right into it.

“You’re dreadfully predictable, Kitty.”

The music was louder here, the string quartet hidden somewhere in the riot of dark blooms and deep burgundy leaves but close enough that I felt the vibrations of the cello’s cry on my skin.

“How do I use them?” I hissed to Pain, peering around him to see Cruelty standing under a frame of black, red-veined leaves, that pulsing shadow magic she’d hit me with earlier wrapped around her hands. “The shadows. How do I use them?”

I’dfeltit when he touched them, which meant they were connected to me somehow. If I could use them to get out—

“You don’t,” Cruelty said before Pain could reply, her tone dismissing, as if I wasn’t capable of calling on a single shadow.

“You need to—” Pain began, but he fell back into me before he could finish. I cried out, throwing out my arms to catch him before he dropped to the floor. I didn’t know if Cruelty had been lying about us being bonded, but I knew he was my only ally in this place. Orwell wouldn’t stand up to Cruelty, and without Pain I was on my own. That made him my person, and I would fight like hell to protect my people.

I wouldn’t lose anyone else. Couldn’t. So I held onto him tightly, even as his weight threatened to drop us both, and gritted my teeth against the sensation of a dozen different points of contact on the shadows. It was like a raw nerve being touched. Not necessarily pain, but overwhelming. Alarming and intense.

“What did you do to him?” I demanded, my heart kicking harder when my words slurred, my tongue heavy and unwieldyin my mouth. I blinked as Cruelty seemed to rush closer, but my lashes stuck together, the blink sluggish, and I realised she’d moved at normal speed. I was slower, weakening. I swore filthy when Pain dropped to the floor, my arms too heavy to hold onto him.

“I didn’t do anything,” Cruelty said with a soft, rustling laugh. “But I did hire averytalented string quartet. They were a project of my brother’s. Exceptional, aren’t they?”

My knees gave out, my legs folding under me. I landed like a sack of bricks, and even the pain that should have spiked through my hip was muted, like a blanket had been thrown over my senses.

“Ssstop,” I slurred, trying to lift my hand, to implore her, but Cruelty snorted as the sweeping cadence of the music rose higher, and the whole world went black around me.

29

Death

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