Chapter 30

Light struggled to reach the ground here, the dense tree canopy encouraging the darkness that ebbed and flowed around me. It was the same thriving dark I'd seen from Death, Miz, and Tor, but where that had never felt malevolent, this darkness wanted to hurt me and would revel in it.

I'd tried to speak, tried to choke out Death's name and pray names had power like in old fairy tales, but I couldn't open my mouth or choke out even a gasp.

I felt so stupid for walking directly into a trap, for playing into her hands. Terror caught me in its icy grip that Nightmare had learned enough about me to know I'd instantly pick up the kitten and try to help it. She'd used that against me—the part of me that wanted to care for vulnerable animals, that wanted to nurse them back to health. She'd taken the one good part of me that anxiety had never touched, and made me resent it.

"There you are," Nightmare's sultry voice called through the trees, and there she was, standing in a clearing. Her golden skin and long red hair were dappled with sunlight, darkness gathered around the skirt and train of her black lace dress. I couldn't bear to look at her unnatural beauty, but with her curse in my veins and whatever she'd done with the kitten, I couldn't tear my eyes away.

Tears gathered, burned, and streaked down my cheeks. I didn't even have enough agency to flinch when she neared, the train of her dress gliding over the ground. She brushed the tears off my cheeks with sharp-nailed thumbs.

"No need to cry, my terror," she soothed, holding my face in her hands. Inside, I screamed, fought, and threw up, but outwardly I did nothing. Stood there like a sacrificial lamb. "I won't hurt you."

She smoothed ragged strands of white hair from my face and said, "I only need one little thing from you. An act of loyalty, a tiny test of how amenable you are to my commands."

No,I hissed, screamed, pleaded. No. Please. I don't want to do anything.

She smiled, her face so unnaturally beautiful and blood-chilling at the same time, the iris of her white eye leaking blood steadily down her face. "I just need you to get Darya Henderson alone and bring her to me. Use any means necessary to get her here. You can do that, can't you, Cat?"

I couldn't. I wouldn't. I wasn't going to hurt Darya; she was my friend.

I tried to wrench away from Nightmare, tried to spit in her face, to snarl, scream, and curse her a thousand times, but all I did was stand in place, my face unchanging, lips utterly silent.

And when Nightmare stepped back, her nails dragging along my cheek, so sharp they left tiny cuts, I found myself turning. My feet lifted one by one until I left the forest, crossed the campus, and stopped finally under a tree outside Milton Hall.

I waited, as still as a statue, until lectures ended and students arrived, and then the expressionless mask of my face changed, twisting into distress. Tears overflowed my eyes again. I didn't choose to cry, didn't choose to race out of the tree's shadow and grasp Darya's arm. I felt the texture of wool against my fingertips, but I was distant, any control I had overruled by Nightmare's command.

"Cat?" Darya asked instantly, grasping my shoulders with warm hands. "What's wrong?"

"Come with me," I blurted. "Please. I found something."

I didn't choose the words. Had Nightmare chosen them, or was this the curse's own command at work? My voice was just panicked enough to be convincing, but I sounded unnatural to my own ears.

"Of course," Darya agreed, her eyes wide in her face.

And like I'd been led to the slaughter by the kitten, I led Darya to it. She followed me as I rushed through the trees. I fended off every question she had with tearful, breathless exclamations of there's so much blood, I didn't know what else to do, I'm so scared.

And then we were in the clearing, and Nightmare stepped out of the darkness with a slow-blooming smile as Darya ground to a halt, her breath hitching.

"Well done, Cat," the goddess praised, her voice low and sensual, sliding along my nerves like a caress. "You've proven very effective."

Darya had frozen; I saw her from the corner of my eye. But I could still move because my body shook. I gasped down air while I still could.

"Now," Nightmare said, brushing the backs of her golden fingers over my cheek, "kill her."

I reared back. What?

"No."

Nightmare sighed, her eyes narrowing, one beautiful, one bloody. "I suppose you feel safe under his protection. But shields can fall, and he won't be around forever."

My heart jolted. Death. The he was obvious. What did she mean he wouldn't be around forever?

"I have a little plan for that too, my terror. But first—" Her voice changed, growing deeper, harder, hypnotic. "Kill Darya."

When Nightmare held out a knife, my hand lifted.

When she gestured for me to turn, I faced Darya.

I looked my friend in the eye, saw panic bleach the colour from her brown skin, but I had no power. Nightmare's will controlled every atom of my body.

I screamed and ripped at the cage of her control, but I was powerless. Useless.

I took one step, then another, and drove the silver dagger so deep into Darya's stomach, my hand angled up, that I knew I pierced her heart.

She dropped instantly, her eyes flat and empty, lifeless.

And I died right there with her.