Page 5 of All Hallows Fate

I muttered indistinctly and considered punching him again. “So Violence will fade away under there,” I breathed, the thought hitting me with a deluge of relief.

“If fucking only,” Ender muttered, glaring into Exile. “You’re a fledgling god. He’s a powerful prick, and very difficult to kill. He’ll come back, angrier than ever.”

I stared at him. Waited for him to laugh at the joke he just told. “I’m a what?”

“Ah.” Ender sighed at the white sky. “Yeah, that. I was going to break it to you slowly, but that ship sailed. You know that endless thirst you have for judgement? It’s because you are Judgement. Only the second in existence, in fact.”

“What happened to the first?”

Ender was silent for a while, frowning at the emptiness on all sides of us. “He fell in love, and was punished by the higher power for it.”

“They killed him?” I breathed. What if I fell in love? What if I was already in love? There was a feeling in my chest sometimes, a pang of longing alongside the tremor of the cello’s low note.

“Worse. They sent him here for eons. For entire ages.”

I stared at Ender, a furrow between my brows. “You’re the first Judgement. But if you’ve been here forever, why am I the second? Why haven’t there been others since?”

He smiled, a little wry, a little sad. “Judgements are only created when the balance of life and death is in turmoil. That’s your job.” He glanced at me. “To fix it.”

My heart jumped, the next few beats crashing together. “I don’t know how to fix life and death!” If the entire world relied on me, it was going to have a very swift apocalypse.

“Don’t worry.” He patted my shoulder. “You have a very good teacher. The best you could ask for, in fact. What do you think all these lessons have been for?”

“Magic…?”

He scoffed. “Magic is the first step. Accepting the power of judgement is the second. That’s what we’ll work on next.”

“And after that?” I asked, and wondered if I should keep the question to myself.

“Every crack in the domain needs to be repaired. Every rift healed, every wrong righted. Only when that’s achieved will the domain be in one piece, and power return where it belongs—with Death, not Violence.”

He watched me, as if that ought to have some effect on me other than panic. How was I meant to fix the balance of the universe? I didn’t even know who I was. Thanks to Ender, I knew my name was Cat and that I’d died an unjust death. I knew I had magic, and there was a slumbering beast inside me who thirsted for blood. But that was it—the grand sum of who I was. A name, a hunger, and magic.

“That seems like a lot of things to accomplish,” I said uneasily.

“Not to worry.” He grinned. “I’ll write you a list.”

4

Misery

Blood spilled through my fingers, dripping onto my clothes as I knelt beside Cat, a horrible silence filling my head, numbing my chest. It was her blood, but I felt my own life seep out of me with every drop through my fingers.

It had been minutes since Violence ripped a hole in her throat and threw her at Death, as if she was trash to be discarded and not the most precious person in all the universe. As if she wasn’t my entire world.

“He’s gone,” Tor said bluntly, hoarse from the furious scream that tore out of him in the moments after Cat’s death was confirmed. “Violence. He’s gone.”

I blinked, the only outward sign I’d heard him. Inside, there was nothing. Silence. Harsh, ringing silence. If I’d been faster, if I’d harmed Violence, weakened him, even seconds earlier, Cat would still be here. Breathing, fierce-eyed and furious, like a woman from myth, a Valkyrie to be feared and respected and never underestimated. But my Valkyrie was dead. My universe was collapsing in on itself, the black hole of grief devouring everything within me.

I’d known grief before. I’d lost two families, and never recovered from either loss. But this? The light of my life, the light of all our lives… A broken, choked sound escaped my squeezing throat.

Open your eyes. Open your eyes.

It was an incantation that repeated in my head over and over, but Cat never heard me, never even fluttered her lashes. Where she’d gone, she couldn’t hear us.

“We need to get to the domain,” Pain said in a gritty voice. “If her spirit is there, we can find her.”

Death didn’t react to the words, our lifeless wife clutched tight in his arms. Her blood was cold now, the flow of it merely a trickle from her saturated clothes, from the spill that had soaked into his braids, stained his chest.