Page 50 of All Hallows Masque

“Pain,” I groaned.

“Yes, darling woe?”

“Tell me how to use this magic I apparently have.”

“It’s instinctual mostly. Breathe, centre yourself, and let the magic flow where it wants to. But you have to quiet your mind or it’ll all go haywire.”

Oh, that sounded easy. Justquiet my mind.While I was locked in an iron coffin with a god called Pain as my only company. When our jailor was a total and utter psychopath. When my men were either trapped inside the domain, or if the mist had really devoured the whole realm … gone. They could be gone, forever. I might never see them again.

“Is it working?” he asked hopefully.

“No.” My voice was thick with unshed tears; I cleared my throat and ignored the soft, sympathetic sigh from across the dark room.

“Well, in positive news, we appear to have unlimited time to practise. I can teach you how to empty your mind. We’ll have to go the boring route since we’re both locked in iron maidens. If we were free, you could ride me to oblivion and that’d empty your mind quite nicely.”

“Pain!” I choked out, my eyes wide.

“What? It’s the best method. There’s nothing at all in the world that can’t be cured with multiple orgasms.”

I closed my eyes and ignored the heat tingling my face, creeping down my neck. “So—boring method?”

“Right,” he began, but froze at a loud, grating creak.

I went completely still, forgetting to breathe as adooropened. Who was it? Cruelty? Someone worse? My heart stumbled, then resumed twice as fast. I could have done with that calming, mind emptying technique right now, but Pain had gone silent too, both of us conscious of how vulnerable we were locked in here. How easy we would be to kill.

I listened intently for footsteps, for the scrape of skirts over stone, for any whisper of sound, but there was nothing—and then I flinched at the grate of the door closing again. She was playing with us. No steps, no breathing, no delighted giggling at getting to play with us. She’d opened the door and closed it again, probably to torture us with all the possibilities.

“Cat,” Pain said quietly, taut with warning. “Cover your ears, darling woe.”

“What—?”

“Now,”he said with enough steel that I jerked, my head hitting the back of the iron maiden. I struggled to raise my arms, to manoeuvre them up my body, but I didn’t have enough room.

“I can’t,” I said sharply after three failed attempts. My panic was escalating. Why did I need to cover my ears? What did he know that I didn’t? He hadn’t seen anything in the room, but what if he couldsensesomething with all that god magic? Hemight not have access to it, but it must have given him enhanced instincts and—

Screaming.

She was screaming again, howling that name over and over.

My son, my boy! My darling boy!

I shook my head hard and renewed my struggles to get my hands up to my ears, bruising my knuckles as I dragged them up my stomach, over my chest.2

“Enough,” Pain snapped, his voice lower, dangerous the way it was when he spoke to Cruelty before. So different to how he spoke to me, it was like hearing a whole other person.

The screams of an agonised mother only grew, so loud that my ears hurt and pressure built in my chest. I wanted to scream at the phantom woman that her son was a monster, that he blackmailed me, threatened me, until something in me snapped. I wanted to scream that her son deserved what he got, that I wished I’d spent longer bludgeoning his head until there was nothing left of his skull. But my hands finally broke over the swell of my chest, my wrists bruised and throbbing, and I slammed my hands over my ears, screwing my eyes shut.

I could still hear the screams but her words were muffled. It took long, long minutes, but eventually the screams quietened, and I tentatively lowered my hands, blinking my eyes open. I could see nothing but the coffin opposite mine, the bodies strung across the walls, rotten and disgusting. No Cruelty. But she had to be in here, tormenting me with the screams of my victim’s mother. And I hadn’t heard the door grate again.

“Pain?” I whispered after another long moment of silence. I needed to hear his voice, needed any hint of comfort even if his was a voice I wasn’t very familiar with. He’d been there for me at the masquerades, and he’d jumped in front of me to defend me to Cruelty. And there was no forgetting that she’d called himmy bonded one. He was mine. “Pain?” I repeated when he was silent.

I jumped hard, my heart knocking into my ribs, when another voice blasted into the dark room. Unfamiliar, but male, deep, and writhing with fury. A voice that would make me run in the other direction if I ever heard it. A voice that invoked blood and flinching and fear that sat so deep there was no escaping it.

“You sick, pathetic boy,” he snapped, making me jump. “You can’t even get to your feet to face me like a man? No son of mine will cower on the floor.” There was a noise, dull and soft. My stomach knotted. This was Cruelty messing with us, but … my bastard blackmailer’s mother’s screams were real. I heard them when she found the body. This snarling, menacing man must be real too. And if he wasn’t from my past, he was from Pain’s.

“Enough,” I said, my voice sticking in my throat.

“Anyone can look at you and see your sorry excuse for a mother in you,” the man spat. “But you’re a weakling. Look at you, snivelling, cowering in the corner like a coward. Be a man and get on your feet. Throw a punch, you—”

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