Chapter 8

CHAPTER EIGHT

DEATH

T he decay started on the very edge of the realm, where it had gone unnoticed for weeks. Not a single death god sensed it, not even Pain who lived in the borderlands to catch spirits who attempted to escape where my power stretched thin.

"How long has it been like this?" I asked Pifang, who'd been the one to raise the alarm. He was a fifty-something man who'd died so long ago that the previous Death had handled his passing, and his appearance and clothing reflected the Zhou dynasty of the 700th century.

"Too long," he replied gravely, and with more than a little disapproval. Grave and disapproving summed up Pifang perfectly; his stern face was usually scowling, his mouth pressed thin beneath a fiercely sharp moustache. "It's been several days since I noticed it. Several days," he added with a sharp look at me, Miz, and Tor, "during which I've received no assistance."

"We were needed elsewhere," I said, brushing the man's shoulder in apology. I might have shared a name with this realm, might have ruled over it all, but my reign would be chaos without men like Pifang who kept the dead in check. I'd been absent more in the past few months than ever, spending time with Cat I should have used to assure order in the domain.

I'd spent even more time with Miz and Tor since that day on the moors when Nightmare ripped off the curse to expose the ugly truth. Cat's feelings were never real. And I worried ours weren't either.

"Are you questioning Death himself?" Tor demanded when Pifang began to speak again. "Do I need to tell you how fucking stupid an idea that is?"

"Torment," I said gently, an ever-present ache in my chest. I hated that he was so unhappy, and that I could do nothing to ease his pain.

Pifang wisely ignored the comment, turning back to the corner of the city where he oversaw a group of dangerous spirits, and where the end of the road had vanished. Bricks were broken in half, entire houses split down the middle like a model home shattered by a child's tantrum. Like someone had taken giant fists and crushed part of my realm from existence.

"Miz," I warned when he got too close to the edge where the realm had broken, only mist and blank, white space on the other side.

"It doesn't feel hostile," he said, his voice the same flat, guttered voice I'd heard since that day. And that was if he spoke at all. He didn't trust himself, didn't trust Nightmare to stay out of his head, and I couldn't say it wasn't warranted. She got to him here, where he should have been safe. She'd been fucking with his head all this time, letting us think he was free when she could have controlled him with a single word.

"It feels frayed," he added, turning to give me a worried glance, his golden eyes so soulful and deep that my stomach twisted. "Like it's falling apart and there's nothing to hold it together."

"Relatable," Tor muttered, kicking a rock that had rolled from one of the broken houses.

"What happened to the people who lived here?" I asked Pifang, grateful for the domain's eerie magic that took the words I spoke in English and rearranged them into Pifang's native language. It wasn't a magic I controlled, either natural to the realm or the work of its previous rulers.

"Gone," Pifang replied, his mouth thinning. "Disappeared with the rest of the road."

Shit. Tor and I exchanged a look. Decay was unmaking part of our realm, and anyone caught in the crossfire was wiped from existence.

"Misery, come here," I said, harshness slipping into my tone. The idea of him falling into the breach—or jumping —made my whole chest hurt. A vice clamped around my lungs and didn't release even when Miz turned, scowling, and caught sight of my face. He returned to us without a word.

I knew it wasn't just Nightmare that made his shoulders slump, and his feet drag along the ground, any pride and strength he'd possessed diminished. It was finding out Cat had never felt anything for him. For any of us. It didn't matter that she said she truly cared for me; without Tor and Miz, it felt like a betrayal. Insensitive, to be loved with them hurting. It felt wrong.

"Go back to the castle, Miz," Tor said suddenly, a bite in his voice.

I watched the unhappiness on Miz's face turn to caustic anger. "Excuse me?" he demanded, a flicker of laughter in his voice. A warning.

Tor straightened his broad shoulders and took a step closer. "I said, go back to the fucking castle."

"Or what?" Misery asked, that laughter growing—bitter and dangerous. He began to say something else but froze when a snowflake drifted from the sky and landed on the hand he lifted to shove Tor. It was painful, watching him go perfectly still. A statue of terror and trauma.

"Go home, we'll handle this," I said gently, squeezing his shoulder and hating the way he flinched. "We'll update you on everything when we get back."

"It can't be snowing," he said in a hollow voice. His eyes shot to me, his beautiful face gaunt with panic. "How is it snowing?"

"It's probably related to the decay," Tor pointed out. Any bitter rage he'd exhibited before was swept behind cool confidence. "We'll get it sorted. Probably just a poltergeist escaping to the mortal plane like the last time shit started going crazy."

Miz's pale throat bobbed. He didn't believe that. Neither did I. This felt different, the unravelling of the realm so much bigger than the thunderstorms we experienced when malevolent spirits escaped. What the hell had the power to do this to the realm of the dead? Only another god possessed this level of power, which meant one of us had turned traitor.

Or they were making a power play for the big position. My position.

"It can't be snowing," Miz repeated, frozen as snowflakes gathered on his shoulders. It had been snowing the day Nightmare made him kill his sister. His misery was so pronounced now that I sensed it even though that wasn't my gift, my curse.

"Write a report," I told Pifang, trying to keep the bite of panic from my voice. "Everything you can think of. I'll be back in three hours."

His scowl expressed his disapproval at us bailing on him again, but this was more important. Miz was more important. If someone wanted to steal my mantle, they were welcome to it. I'd never asked to be Death. But now they'd scared Miz, I'd make sure they knew pain inside and out.

Tor glanced at his phone as we turned from the wreckage at the edge of our realm, his face tightening with pain or anger before he swept the expression away. Even knowing Tor as long as I had, it was hard to read him sometimes. He was so open with his emotions that him concealing anything was a surprise.

"What is it?" I asked, wrapping my hand around his arm.

"Cold caller," he drawled, the life and amusement returning to his face. I wasn't sure I bought it. "Probably trying to sell me a fire extinguisher because my men are so damn hot." He threw his arms around my shoulders and Miz's, as if he didn't have a care in the world.

That I definitely did not believe.

None of us mentioned Cat, but I got the sense our minds were synced in thinking about her.

The same way it felt wrong to be with Cat without the guys, it felt wrong to be here without her. But none of it had been real. It was all Nightmare manipulating us. A fling—that was how we had to think of it. Just a fling.

But even that felt wrong.