Page 67 of All Hallows Masque

The words made no sense for a moment. When comprehension hit, I couldn’t fucking breathe.

39

Death

“No!” I roared when my brain caught up to what I was seeing. Tor was trapped behind the glass of the ornate mirror. No wonder Violence and Cruelty weren’t here; they’d laid their trap and Tor’s protectiveness drove him right into it.

And as Tor was absorbed into the mirror, a woman stumbled into the room from thin air. A pale hand scrabbled at the wall as her legs buckled, and when she lifted her head, an unfamiliar fifty-something woman stared back at me.

“Get him out,” I snarled, not caring if she was guilty or innocent as I rallied my shadows and drove them at the woman. They pinned her shoulders to the wall and wrapped around her throat, squeezing pointedly. “Get him out!”

“I can’t,” she whispered. “I don’t know how.”

“Oh, there’ll be no getting poor Torment out,” an unwelcome voice oozed satisfaction.

A dense wall of shadow slammed down between us and the door, thrumming with enough magic that I felt the crackle of pain even from here.

“What did you do to her?” Pain demanded, angling himself in front of me. In front of Cat.

“Little ol’ me?” Cruelty’s giggle crushed out what remained of my nerves, and I struck her with a tendril of death so quick and sharp that she stumbled back, rage replacing that falsely innocent expression on her face. “My brother did what my brother does best,” she gloated, her attention going to the wall behind us. To the mirror. No—to the woman who’d been freed.

“I can’t say I’m thrilled to have you free, you irritating little gnat.”

The woman spat on the floor. “Go to hell, Cruelty.”

“Get him out of that mirror,” I ordered. It took all my effort to keep my eyes on the goddess of cruelty as movement flickered behind her, a familiar figure cutting through the hallway. Panic and pride rose at once and tangled together. If she hurt Miz, too … but Madde was with him, and the other gods were right behind them.

That was the only thing that kept me sane as Cruelty threw herself at Pain’s shield with a cackle, dark power throbbing from her like explosions, each one destructive and powerful enough that I flinched. Shit, Pain and I were the only thing standing between her and Cat, and she’d clearly come back to finish the job, to take my wife from me, to kill her—

Pain faltered with a cry, and Cruelty blast a way through, another wild laugh filling the room as she leapt through that break in the shield. I turned, curving myself around Cat, willing to give my life if that was what it took to protect her. Pain must have had the same idea because he leapt in front of us, shadows like a second skin on his body as he shielded Cat’s front.I’d wonder why he was so protective of her later, because now Cruelty was…

Where was she?

“What the fuck?” Misery demanded, his voice making me jump. “She just vanished?”

I lifted my head, frantic and terrified until I saw he was right. She was gone. “Violence?” I asked.

Madde shook his head, rushing into the room and towards where I held Cat. “No sign of him.”

Miz was right behind him, the four of us crowding around Cat. She hadn’t reacted to any of it, hadn’t even blinked. “Lioness?” Madde asked in a small voice. “It’s alright now, we found you.”

Misery’s arm settled across my back and he pressed his forehead to my shoulder for a moment before lifting his head. “Where’s Tor?”

My shoulders slumped, my chest moving with a sigh. How the fuck was I supposed to tell him Tor was trapped in a mirror? I glanced to the back wall—and everything inside me jumped in shock. Horror was swift on its heels, churning my stomach.

“She took him,” I breathed, holding Cat tighter.

“He got trapped in a mirror,” Pain explained gently, raking a hand through his curls. “The woman over there was pushed out of it, like he’d replaced her, but the mirror hung on the wallright there,literally two minutes ago. This is so fucked up. I’m no good at tracking. Are you?”

“That’s Tor’s strength,” Miz said quietly, staring at me. I braced for accusation, for him to blame me for Tor being trapped and kidnapped, but there was only pain, only a plea for this to be over. Because we had Cat back, but she was catatonic, and now the same psychopath who took her had Tor.

“What do we do?” Madde was the one to ask it. He bounced on the balls of his feet, jittery and restless. “What do we do?”

I only realised in the silence that I was waiting for Cat to speak, and everyone else was looking at me, waiting for a miraculous solution. But there was no way to know where Cruelty had taken Tor. I didn’t have an answer for that question.

What do we do?

I didn’t have an answer.

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