Page 9 of All Hallows Masque

“My cleverest trick to date!” Cruelty’s response was excitement, not the cagy suspicion I expected. Okay. I needed to remember she was insane. “What’s your question?”

“She compelled Misery and managed to keep that connection alive even decades later,” I said, curling my hands into fists behind the counter where she couldn’t see. “How did she do that? I thought death gods couldn’t control each other.”

“A perversion of magic,” Cruelty said with a quiet laugh, pulling a pre-made pancake batter from the fridge and removing a frying pan from a shelf full of them. She seemed at home here, like she genuinely spent time in this manor and hadn’t just used it as somewhere to lure me out to. It was like she brought a friend home. It was messing with my head a little.

“She had his blood, and found a way she could use it with her power over nightmares.” She turned to me, bright-eyed and smiling, like she was sharing a secret or swapping gossip. “I encouraged all her little experiments, but sometimes evenIdidn’t know what she did. I have a theory she dripped nightmares directly into his blood until she was a part of him. How twisted is that?”

She laughed like she loved it.

“That’s my husband,” I said quietly, pulling myself onto a stool for something to do. “Ihatethe way she used him and tortured him. He didn’t deserve that.”

“You really love him,” Cruelty mused, pouring batter into the pan when the oil was hot. She glanced across at me, waggling her eyebrows. “He must be incredible in the bedroom.”

Bile hit my throat. I was going to throw up. Pretending to be BFFs was one thing, but gossiping about my sex life? Absolutely fucking not.

“He’s mine,” I breathed, dropping my gaze to the quartz island before I choked her. “I’ll kill anyone who hurts him oranyof my husbands.”

Cruelty made a contemplative sound. “I’d do the same for my brother, so I understand. And Nightmare’s gone now, so all that nasty business is over. You did a spectacular job of that.” Her laugh filled the kitchen. “What a delightful mess you made of her. Better than I could have dreamed.”

Be friendly, be friendly. Honey, not vinegar.

I pulled my snarl into something smile-ish. “I enjoyed killing her. She deserved it. Eating her was disgusting, though.”

“Eesh.” Cruelty faked a shudder. Or maybe her horror at cannibalism was real. “What did she taste like?”

“Vomit.”

She snorted, like this was normal, like we always spoke about that one time I ate a goddess’s still-warm corpse. “Yours or hers?”

“Mine.”

“Well, forget all about that yucky meal and eat this one.” She put a plate of pancakes in front of me, and as much as I wanted to find my own food that I knew wasn’t drugged or poisoned, turning my nose up at her cooking wouldn’t help this friend charade. So I cut off a small corner, and when it didn’t taste metallic, bitter, or overly sweet, I doused it in the maple syrup she slid across the counter and dug in.

See, you can trust me,I said with every bite.We’re friends, so you can tell me all your secrets.

“What are we going to do about the gates collapsing?” I asked, keeping my eyes on Cruelty as she sauntered over to a modern coffee machine. “I presume you want to go back to the domain at some point.”

“At some point,” she agreed.

“I want to visit my men,” I said, carefully managing my words. If I said I wanted to leave forever, I didn’t know how she’d react.

“It’s not as easy as just fixing the gates.” She sighed, and I must have worded it well because her eyes weren’t flashing with rage. She leaned against the island and met my eyes, unable to suppress a smile. “The realm itself has fallen into imbalance. Your men have been very, very naughty boys.” Her smile became a grin and she leaned closer, her blue eyes wide as she whispered, confessing a secret that delighted her. “Every one of us has a role to play. My job is to make humans cruel.Theirjobs are to give them torment, misery, madness, and to see them safely to death. But they were a trifle distracted by their pretty little bride.”

She tapped the tip of my nose with her finger and I jumped hard, my heart knocking into my ribs. I managed not to flinch through sheer effort, though the pancakes churned in my stomach.

“What?” I whispered, my voice faint as her words registered.

I distracted them from their jobs? I knew they were supposed to influence humans in the living realm, but I hadn’t spared much thought about what that meant, or how much time it might take. How much time they gave up from their work to spend with me. I thought it was an innate, automatic thing. Even if I had realised, I wouldn’t have expected the realm to collapse because they stopped spreading misery, torment, madness, and death.

“What does that mean? Humans have stopped dying? No one’s in misery or torment? People have stopped going mad?” That was crazy. Of course they were still experiencing those things.Of coursepeople were still dying.

Right?

“Exactly!” Cruelty laughed. “It’s complete pandemonium up here. Mortals need balance—kindness and evil, good and wickedness. It’s the natural way of things. If we didn’t have evil, there’d be too many humans on the planet. We’redeathgods for a reason. We’re all things that can bring about death.”

I thought about Madde calling himself Love and wondered if he wasn’t far off. Love could kill people.

“I owe them, really,” she said with a little laugh, reaching across to pat my hand. “It makes it so easy to slip in and make even more mortals cruel. We’ll be right back on track for deaths in no time.”

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