Page 74 of All Hallows Fate

Violence’s laugh made me scream, a riot of sound purged from my chest, raking up fistfuls of power with it.

“Let the girl go,” Joanna ordered, halting a few paces away. “She’s new; she’s not an obstacle to your rise to power.”

“She may not be the biggest obstacle, but she’s no less in my way,” was his cool reply, and that voice, that tone, the smugness and cruelty within it…

I was back in that room in Darkmore, ropes chafing my wrists as I fought to get free, the mirror watching over me as Violence fixed the full point of his brutality upon me.

The mirror… was it still leaking magic? Was it still turning Ford residents on each other? Was it still—

Phil. Where was Phil? Had she gone ahead to Milton Hall and the cracked mirror, to sacrifice her eternal afterlife into repairing the cracks? The last time I saw her was when we headed through the woods, but she’d been absent since.

My attention was snagged by Darya as she drifted closer, her rage filling her whole face as she fixed upon Violence and where he held onto me. Then she met my eyes—and rolled her own.

What? I mouthed as Joanna and Violence threatened one another.

You’re a goddess, Darya said soundlessly, followed by another eye roll.

I frowned—and then my expression smoothed. She was right. I was a goddess; why was I behaving like a mortal? I might be weaker than Violence, but I was harder to kill than I’d been when he murdered me. It wasn’t just magic that becoming a goddess had given me; it was immortality.

I gathered a sliver of magic into a spike and cupped it around my elbow, then drove it back into Violence’s ribs, tearing myself free. His magic gnashed through my throat, and the fear was automatic and visceral, the blood sudden. But the area was already tingling, heating. Healing.

I joined Joanna, shoulder to shoulder, my breathing hard, ragged. But I was still here. And the blood only lasted a minute.

“Bitch,” Violence spat.

“Get a new name,” I croaked at the same time Joanna huffed, “Do try being a little more imaginative, Violence.”

“Where are my husbands?” I demanded, not taking my eyes off the wrathful incarnation of violent death.

“Pain’s on the floor like a coward. I haven’t seen the others.”

Fuck. A tremor went through my soul, but I couldn’t think of that yet. Not until Violence was dealt with. Weakened, imprisoned, dead—I didn’t care what it took to take him out of commission.

“You might want to look behind you,” I taunted as Duncan’s flamethrower belched another gust of fire and melted spirits where they stood—and Orwell leapt into the air, into shadow. He reappeared behind Violence.

“Nice try,” Violence drawled. Assuming it was a trick, right until the moment Orwell slammed into him, grabbed his head in two hands as if to snap his neck—

And screamed.

My heart faltered. I’d heard this harrowing scream once before. The night of the Halloween party, when Nightmare drained Orwell’s life to assume her own rise to power. All on the commands of Cruelty and Violence.

“Scales,” Joanna barked. “Now.”

I dove to wrestle them from the mud, my fingers slipping against the warm metal as I poured an explosion of magic into the plates. The force of their power knocked me back, ripped strands from my head and threw mud into my eyes. Blinding me for a moment, hazy and long. When my vision cleared, Orwell was on the floor with Violence’s shiny shoe on his throat and Joanna—

“No,” I breathed, jerking forward but I stumbled in place. Helplessness cinched like a band around my lungs, squeezing when I saw the roots trapping me where I stood. “Joanna,” I argued.

Because she was a goddess with unknowable power, and she might be more powerful than all of us. Because she could fight Violence, because she knew he could be killed and had promised to help us.

Because a woman had appeared from the ether to bury a serrated knife in Joanna’s stomach, and when she dragged it out, it left a gaping hole in Joanna’s gut.

The woman looked exactly like the last time I saw her, splayed on the polished floor of one of Cruelty’s masquerades with fury in her dark eyes and murderous rage in the set of her jaw. This time, there was a blankness to her expression that sent a chill through me. Her movements were fluid but robotic as she dropped both hands to her sides, the knife dripping blood. Her own mother’s blood.

So the daughter that Violence had captive was the girl I saw at the masquerade. Moth. And judging by how firmly she was under Violence’s control, by how she’d stabbed her own mother, we could not call her an ally.

“Stay there, Cat,” Joanna barked. “I’m fine. It’s a scratch.”

“I can see your intestines!” I argued, scanning the lake, the gods, desperate for help. “Passion!” I yelled at the man closest to us. “We need help!”