Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

CAT

M y head pounded as someone whose name I didn't care enough to learn whined about losing the O on her Dior charm bracelet. I didn't know if she'd been cursed or not, but I almost wished Nightmare would curse her just to stop her high, whiny voice driving through my nerves like a garrotte.

It was the first time I'd come down for breakfast in three weeks. Death usually brought me food, or at least left something if he had somewhere else to be. I guess he had better things to do today. That was fine. I could feed myself. The granola tasted of nothing, and the scrambled eggs were like eating ashes, but I could feed myself.

I shovelled more of the fluffy, creamy eggs into my mouth and wondered when I'd start tasting food again.

"I don't know how you can eat," Honey said, dropping onto a seat across the table from me, looking as rough as I knew I must. Dark circles, eye bags, sallow skin, slumped posture, empty eyes. There should have been three of us at this table, and Byron's absence was like a constant gnawing pain.

Even if most days Byron hadn't sat with us. He'd been too busy helping Nightmare torment us, helping her kill for power. The texts and threatening messages had stopped, proving it really was my best friend who sent them. I squashed the hurt that sliced through my heart and sank further into numbness. It was a numb that protected me, that made it possible to sit here in the dining hall instead of screaming with rage and grief.

"Autopilot," I said, sharing a look of understanding with Honey, my only living best friend. Would Byron haunt me, like Darya was able to haunt Ford's End? Would I see him again, with that guilty, tortured look in his eyes he'd had in the minutes before he was murdered? By Misery. The death god I was now painfully aware that I loved.

I loved all of them, but there was no future for me in their lives. Nightmare had seen to that. So I sat here, in the middle of chatter and noise, and let autopilot rule my body until the eggs were gone and the granola bowl was empty. It was a strange combination to eat together but what did it matter when everything had no taste?

"Scale of one to ten?" Honey asked, making no move to get herself breakfast. She hugged a cup of peppermint tea in both hands, watching me with the same blend of guilt, pain, and worry she'd worn for the past three weeks. Being asked are you okay had begun to grate within hours of news spreading about Byron's death—as far as anyone knew, he was murdered by the Assassin—so instead of asking each other if we were okay, we gave a number from one to ten. Ten meant everything was perfect, sunshine and rainbows and happily ever afters. One meant we wanted to kill everything in the world, scream into the void, and lay in the middle of a field and stare emptily at the sky, waiting for a tractor to run us over.

"Three," I replied, watching absently as the annoying woman with silken brunette hair climbed on top of a table. Three meant the world was ending and nothing made sense anymore, but I wasn't contemplating murder. Yet. "Potentially a two," I added, watching the brunette bring two fingers to her mouth, wincing when she issued an ear-splitting whistle.

"Listen up everyone, we have an emergency."

"If this is about the missing charm, I swear to god," Honey muttered, trying for a light, amused tone but achieving the same flat, empty voice we'd both had since we lost Byron. The funeral was supposed to help, to offer closure, but it only compounded my pain until I couldn't deny the truth. Byron was really gone and never coming back.

"I need your help. The O fell off my Dior bracelet and—"

I tuned her out with an eye roll. Only people with insecure money felt the need to name drop a designer brand in every sentence. A bracelet was a bracelet; she just wanted to brag about the cost. I glanced at Honey's wrist where multiple Bulgari bracelets rubbed shoulders with Christian Dior and Gucci. I knew I was harshly judging the brunette, but I didn't care. It was hard to care about anything, and grief, I'd found, had made me mean.

"I'm going to the graveyard," I told Honey, standing and meeting every stare that swung my way, holding eye contact long enough that they got uncomfortable and looked away.

"Have you heard from—"

"No," I cut off, my chest cinching tighter. Grief had numbed even my anxiety, but in moments like these I felt an echo of it and knew once the numbness pulled away, it was going to be brutal. I spun my crown ring around my finger and swallowed a sudden rush of bile at the thought of my brothers. Virgil kept as leverage against me and Zoltan completely oblivious but safe.

I hadn't had the nerve to answer his calls, even though I knew he—and Mum and Dad—were going mad with worry. I'd sent a basic text to all three, but that hadn't stopped the flurry of calls and messages. It should have made me feel warm, but dread was the only thing that formed. I didn't want them anywhere near me. To be near me was to catch Nightmare's attention.

Or maybe it was already too late. If she had Virgil, she could take Mum, Dad, and Tannie too.

"I'll come with you," Honey offered, rising, somehow paler with her hair back to its normal gold.

"I'll be fine, I just want to be alone," I said, my voice raw. "I'll find you later, okay?"

Her shoulders slumped. "Okay. Don't stay there all day again, Cat."

"I won't," I lied. "Love you, Honey."

It wasn't that being with Byron gave me peace. The opposite. It reminded me of the fury boiling just beneath my numbness, and that fury was the only emotion I could grasp lately. I didn't go to the grave for peace; I went to feel.

"Love you too, Cat," Honey said, trying for a smile. I tried to give her one back. I'd only been able to tell her part of what happened. She didn't know Miz was the one compelled to kill Byron. She didn't know Nightmare had Virgil. The goddess made it very clear what would happen if I told a single soul, and the only time I'd tried to tell Honey, blood had bubbled up my throat.

Eyes followed me as I wound through the hallways for the exit. Instead of ducking my head and ignoring them like I would have done before, I found a rush in staring right back. Only one of them didn't look away first; Alastor Carmichael. A shiver went down my spine as our eyes locked, but I choked back the rush of unease and pushed open the doors, leaving him firmly behind.

He'd been Honey's rock since Byron died. Fully integrated into our friend group. Unavoidable and impossible to get rid of. I wished Nightmare had killed him, too.

I half expected him to stalk me around the back of Milton Hall to the graveyard, to throw me up against one of the mausoleums and threaten me again, but only my footsteps crunched dead leaves on the path. The last bit of defiant life that had clung to the branches a week ago was now ripped off by the chill. It was colder today, enough that I pulled my coat closer around myself and wished I'd brought a scarf, surprised the biting cut of chill actually registered. The numbness was erratic, impossible to make sense of. I both needed it and loathed it.

When a few fluffy flakes of snow drifted through the air, I turned my face up and let them fall over my cheeks. I didn't miss the shadows gathering at the edge of the building on my left, but I ignored them until they wrapped around me and Death's fingers slipped between mine.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there when you woke up," he said, running his thumb over my cold knuckles.

"It's fine," I replied, when I really wanted to ask why he bothered coming at all when we both knew things were so different between us that we were unrecognisable.

He squeezed my hand, walking with me past Milton Hall to the graveyard behind, the blocky shapes of the mausoleums arrayed in front of us. "I don't like you being alone."

No little bride. He hadn't called me that in weeks. That was fine. I wasn't his bride any longer. With the curse dissolved, I wasn't anything to him.

"You don't like being with me either," I pointed out, trying to extricate my hand from his and failing when he held on stubbornly. "Just go, Death. Be somewhere you actually want to be."

"I want to be here," he argued softly, his eyes on the side of my face. I felt them even if I couldn't stand to look at him. My stomach twisted into a sick knot of yearning and loss.

"You physically flinched when I tried to kiss you last night," I said, grateful for the emptiness in my voice. It hid the sharp snap in my heart, the fracture Nightmare had formed widening every day.

"Cat," he murmured, tugging me until I stopped on the path in front of the Ford mausoleums, the snow drifting onto their steepled roofs, settling on the shoulders of my coat, my hair, sliding down my cheeks. "You were cursed."

"So you keep reminding me."

"Nightmare manipulated your emotions, and the curse was only lifted weeks ago. Plus, you're grieving—"

I whipped my head around to glare at him. "Oh really? I hadn't noticed." But it wasn't grief making my stomach roil; it was rejection and hurt and a different sort of loss. "Be honest, Death." I looked him in the eye, even if looking at his handsome face physically hurt, even if those storm-grey eyes made me want to cry. "You're not avoiding me because I'm grieving; you don't want me anymore."

"That's not true," he argued instantly, but this was a path we'd walked more than once these few weeks and its tread was familiar. Today I was ground down so low I finally said what we'd both been dancing around.

"It is true. You're right, we were cursed—I was only your bride because Nightmare fucked with us both. None of it was real, right?"

His throat rose and fell. Devastation shone in his eyes. His fingers tightened around mine. "It was real."

"Until she dropped the curse," I said bitterly, dragging my stare away before I wounded myself on those soulful eyes. "And you realised your feelings were all because of her."

"That's not—"

"You forget that I know you," I said with a twisted laugh. "I know you're good, and you care fiercely about people, and you always try to do the right thing. Which is why you're here, isn't it? It's why you won't kiss me. You're not here because you still want me; you're here because you see it as your duty."

"It is my duty. I'm not going to abandon you," he began, but that was all the confirmation I needed. I tore my hand from his and shoved down the pain that tangled in my chest. I'd wanted to feel something; guess I got my wish.

"It might not have been real for you, but it was real for me," I snapped, stalking away. "My feelings are real."

I was glad he didn't follow.