Page 47 of All Hallows Masque

Paranoia had sunk its clawed fingers into me, and I still fought them even as Mort raced out of the endless void. There was a heaviness to the pitch blackness around us, like a weight pressed on my head, a monster perched on my shoulders, pressing my chest flat to Mort’s back. She didn’t slow for a second, making me so damn proud by running straight through the void with no arguments or bucking. I’d reward her with as many treats as she could possibly eat the moment we were safe.

But even as the inky darkness gave way to hazy, mist-draped rooftops and buildings made of fog, roads paved in a white, cloudy haze, I couldn’t shake my paranoia that the clawed, reaching hands had followed us here. Even street lamps were made of fog, casting a ghostly glow. I didn’t know what those clawed things were. Almost a thousand years as Death, and Icouldn’t begin to guess what those grasping, cutting hands were. What Exile itself was.

A place where gods who’d broken the balance between life and death were sentenced to spend eternity. But sentenced by who?

Mort thrashed her head, ripping me out of that maudlin train of thought, and I murmured reassurances, stroking her neck until she gradually calmed. But her nostrils still flared, sending hot clouds of breath into the colourless road as she slowly, tentatively picked her way across the cobbles.

“Wait,” I breathed, mostly to myself, but Mort paused too. “Ignore the fog and focus on the buildings—don’t they look familiar?” My heart quickened, my shoulders slumping as the weight I’d carried from Exile fell all at once. I knew these homes, knew these roads. We were home.

The void hadn’t led me to Cat at all, even though I’d kept her in my mind the whole time we passed through it, but we were back in the domain. And there, on the hill watching over us, made entirely of opaque fog, was my castle.

“We’re home,” I breathed, relief and wonder filling my heart until I wondered how it didn’t burst.

Mort broke into a sprint without my permission, but I didn’t stop her as her hooves thundered up the steep, winding road. Shadows flew from her hooves to darken the milky road. I didn’t know how we’d got here, or why the void brought us back. Unless … had Cat made it back to the domain?

The thought of seeing her again so soon made my heartbeat deepen, hope stealing the air from my lungs. I urged Mort to full speed and she gleefully obeyed, panting hard as she crested the hill and devoured the last distance to the castle.

“Cat!” I yelled, casting my voice through a fine haze of shadow. “Miz! Tor!”

If my loves weren’t here, I didn’t know what I’d do. Break down on the castle steps, overcome with pain and longing. It had been days in Exile, hardly any time apart, but it felt like centuries. I needed my arms around all of them, needed their scents overwhelming all my senses, needed to see they were whole and unharmed. It was the longest time I’d spent away from Cat, and I couldn’t stand it.

The doors burst open as my voice reverberated around the courtyard, and I jumped down from Mort’s back, turning to press my forehead against her neck in thanks. She let out a loud cry, right by my ear, and I winced as I pulled back, my ears ringing. But then I saw the reason for her bright cry of excitement, and we both lunged forward at once.

I grabbed Tor into a squeezing hug, reaching out to entangle Miz in our embrace at the same time Mort nudged him with her snout.

“Where thefuckhave you been?” he snapped, his voice a battle, a war declared, but it was so welcome and so beautiful that I bowed my head, tears gathering.

I jumped when another body collided with us. “You’re back, you’re back!” Madde burst with overflowing excitement. “Does this mean we can find Cat now?”

“Find her…” I pulled back, wiping at my eyes, smiling when Miz’s glare clashed with mine, a grin hooking deeper when Tor gave me that scowl that promised he’d give me shit for making them worry for weeks, if not punish me for months. “She’s not here?”

Madde shook his head, and I jolted to see dark circles carved around his eyes, his face more gaunt than it had been, absent its usual manic smile. His eyes were bright, crazed blue, but he looked like a walking corpse. “She’s gone. You vanished, and we haven’t been able to find you, andthenmy mental bond to my lioness ripped away like someone cut my lungs out of my body orused a circular saw to cut open my skull, reach inside, and hack my brain to bloodied bits so I can never speak to her—”

“Madde,” Tor interrupted, reaching across to squeeze his shoulders. “We’re gonna find her. And she’ll be able to restore the psychic bond, remember?”

That wasn’t a guarantee, but one look at Tor, at the heaviness of his expression and the exhaustion drooping his eyelids and I saw that he’d taken on the weight of holding Madde’s sanity together. Miz’s too, probably.

“Right.” Madde nodded, raking a hand through his messy red hair. “Of course. My lioness can fix it. Duh.”

I exchanged a heavy look with Tor that promised he’d tell me everything later, and then launched into an account of Exile, Ender, and the last few days.

“He said something right before I was sucked into the void. He said someone else is missing, and I can’t shake the feeling it’s one of us. Have you seen all the gods since the domain collapsed?”

“Most of them,” Miz replied, giving me a surly gold glare that made me want to grab a fistful of his hair and kiss the pout from his face. But Cat was missing, and so was someone else, and I couldn’t help but think the two were related. “The only ones we haven’t spoken to are Cruelty, Violence, Fear, and—ah. Shit.”

“Pain,” Tor finished, dragging an inked hand over his bristly head. “We haven’t seen Pain since the night Cat went missing.” A light entered his eyes and he turned away, walking into the foyer then breaking into a run.

“What is it?” I yelled, following with Miz and Madde on my heels.

“I have a shell he gave me. I can track the bastard. And if we find him—”

“We find Cat,” Miz breathed.

30

Cat

“Cat.”

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