Page 38 of All Hallows Fate

“Loving the we in that, beautiful,” Tor said, sneaking closer to kiss her cheek. I watched her eyes track him when he stepped back, so wide and soft, I could have sworn we had the old Cat back.

“But how are we going to convince these grumpy pricks to let us take some iron?” Madde asked from the ground, where Miz now knelt over him, magic wrapping his ankles with splits to help his bones repair straight.

“I don’t think we need to convince them,” Pain said, a smile in his voice that earned him my full attention. “Look.”

He swept a dark tendril of magic across the open drop towards where the three overseers—remarkably healed after Madde’s assault—knelt in a cavern across from us, their heads bowed. Noticing our attention, the lead overseer leapt into the air, crackling wingbeats carrying him over the gorge towards us, his hands outstretched.

“Iron,” Cat breathed in surprise. “You’re giving us this without a fight?”

“I rescind the words I spoke before I realised your true power, Judgement,” the overseer said, his head still bowed, his tone respectful. “You may take this coil and any others you require.”

“Well, well,” Madde drawled. “Look who’s changed his tune.”

“Madde, don’t ruin it,” Miz sighed, whacking his arm as he finished splinting his ankles. “Unless you want more broken bones.”

“Ugh, no.” Madde dropped his head back against the wall. “I love whole bones. I’m a whole bone-in ham, not a boneless chicken breast.”

“You’re a goddamn lunatic,” Miz snarked.

“Why thank you.” Madde took a sitting bow, then seemed to realise we were all looking at him. “Uh. Continue?”

Cat had already stepped as close to the edge as she dared, Pain right there with her but both of them sickly and pale. The second the overseer handed her the iron, the coil as large as her torso, the strand as wide as a finger bone, she scurried back.

“Thanks,” she said flippantly. “But I don’t forgive the whelp comment, or the rude way you spoke to my husband.”

She turned her back to the overseer with the regal composure of a queen, and didn’t let it drop all the way through the tunnel to the mine’s exit. When she took the list from her pocket, two lines were now struck through.

1. A set of scales for Judgement.

2. A coil of iron to fix the gates.

Which left….

3. A home for lost creatures.

25

Cat

“How could I forget my own brother?” I cried, aghast as we rode carefully around the banks of a lake overflowing ghost-silver water. “How could I forget Virgil?”

And not just Virgil. I had another brother. The name was almost there, just out of my grasp. The black hole of my memory clung to that name, but I remembered teasing laughter and comfortable bickering and… sequins? Pink feathers, snarky remarks, and heavy eyeshadow…?

It was a sweeter memory than when I thought of Virgil. I still couldn’t remember everything, and there were whole swaths of my childhood missing, but I knew he came to find me in Ford’s End and was tortured to keep me in line. Transformed into a creature of voracious appetite and murderous instincts. Like me, I suspected, though my husbands hadn’t so much as indicated Virgil and I were the same.

But Madde said I was a jaguar, and I felt the hungry creature that lurked inside me. I didn’t need anyone to confirm the truth for me.

I pressed my hand against my chest, right over my rapid-beating heart and the clean shirt Madde leant me this morning. It was purple leopard print and had a cartoon cauldron on it, with the words hocus pocus can’t fucking focus, which about summed up my state of mind.

How could I have forgotten Virgil? After everything he went through in the name of making me suffer, making me obey? I couldn’t remember who made me suffer, but the knowledge was just under the surface, a hand pushing up through water, searching for the way out. It wouldn’t be long before it broke free.

I was already starting to remember Ford, that twisted medical school in the middle of the sea. The little I’d remembered was enough to make my blood cold and my panic spike, and I had a feeling it was a drop in the ocean compared to everything I had yet to recall.

Fuzzball turned her head to peer at me, sensing my turmoil, and I scrounged up a smile, stroking the soft fur of her nose. “I’m fine,” I assured her. “Watch where you’re walking. You might be made of death and magic, but a turned ankle is a turned ankle.”

She huffed warm air over my hands, nibbled at my knuckles, and then faced forward. It was the strangest way I could remember being comforted, but it had its own kind of magic. My chest eased, allowing more air, and my shoulders dropped from where they’d been hunched.

Tor said they’d kept tabs on Virgil as much as they could, along with the other creatures who’d been brought here and escaped into the wilds of the domain. That’s where we were going now: the wilds, to round up all the victims of experiments conducted at Ford. All so Violence could weaken Death.