Page 21 of All Hallows Fate

“They’re amazing,” I said, and meant it. I would never have thought to search the entire domain of the dead to find a single species, let alone one so cute. “But I thought all the spirits had gone. We haven’t seen any…” Until the tower, the Wake, with its three rings of pearly guards.

“Ways and means, my pretty lioness,” Madde said with a wink.

I stiffened when a silken filament of magic stroked my mind, far beyond any wall and shield I had up, as if it bypassed every ring of security he helped me build. The friend whose name I couldn’t remember.

Ways and means, a dark purr filled the chambers of my mind. A sensual threat. A declaration that no shield I had would keep him out. Nothing I did could keep him out of the most inner part of me.

I snapped.

Magic pressed through the pores in my skin, encircling my arms in serpentine coils, draping down my body like a shroud, tangling with my hair until it was threaded with pink and black.

“Get,” I snarled, my voice deep, loud, sonorous, “out!”

Madde stumbled back from me, clutching his chest, his eyes big and hurt. His breath rasped from him as if I’d pierced a lung, and panic crammed itself in my chest, but when Death grabbed Madde’s shoulders he rasped, “I’m fine. Just a bit winded. Lioness?”

I trembled, the power, the ferocious thing pacing, snarling inside me—it had grown too much power, slipped its collar and plunged head-first into the pool of new death magic. Bathed in that power. Soaked it up and became a thing of untamed strength, bucking the control I’d wrapped it in under his tutelage.

When my lips parted, teeth bared, the snarl that came free was pure animal. Claws sliced my fingertips as they grew from my nail beds, as sharp as razors. My canine teeth, too, sharpened to a deadly point, the kind that could rip through flesh and muscle.

“Back off,” I growled at Madness, startled to find my hand around his throat, claws poised to sink into skin.

He shuddered hard, his groan less of pain and more of… arousal. “Make me bleed, my lioness,” he moaned. “Every drop of blood is yours.”

My new power flared, judging the heart of him, and I prised my hand free of his neck when it found a loyal, family-driven man who craved love and acceptance, not power, not the suffering of others.

I lingered only long enough to see the freckled expanse of his throat was free of blood—I hadn’t drawn a single bead—and then I raced over the grassy hill and down into the prairie to unleash myself on those who stood between me and my quarry.

There was a set of scales in that tower, and I needed them. I couldn’t get revenge without them, couldn’t make the one who killed me scream for mercy.

So I stalked into the prairie, aware of the men, my husbands, following me into the eerily circular field around the Wake. The shadow shires followed, smoke trailing in the edges of my vision. A tiny voice in the back of my mind urged me to check on Madde, but the rest of me was honed on the spirits and vauns between me and the Wake.

Someone had placed them here. They wanted to keep me from my vengeance, from my justice. Violence. The name seethed in my mind like a hot poker thrust in cold water. He’d done this. He must have known I’d come for the Scales of Judgement, that I couldn’t restore balance without them. Did he know what else was on my list, tucked in a pouch of shadow beneath the shirt that smelled of lilacs and a fresh fall of snow.

It tethered me, stopped me from succumbing entirely to the snapping, slabbering beast. Or to the bottomless hunger for vengeance. But it didn’t stop me succumbing most of the way, sinking into the thrill as a vaun’s deadly horn came my way and I swung my hand up, claws clashing with the spike poised to gore my stomach.

“Sorry,” I murmured and punched a shard of dark smoke through its neck, ripping away the magic that animated it. The vauns weren’t alive, I quickly realised. They were here the same way I was here—through magic and grit and a higher power’s influence.

It made them easy to collapse, at least until the first glob of fire spit from the throat of a creature to my right. I roared, spinning away from the second crackling ball of fire the vaun spewed at me, the cry catching in my throat when Death caught me up against him.

His enrobed arms were so disarming, so warm, that the claws left my fingertips and a tremor went through me, that cello string humming louder than ever.

“I’ve got you,” he murmured, a layer of his magic covering the burn that scorched my side, just above my hip. The pain went away immediately, and my brow furrowed.

“Have you always been able to take my pain away?” I asked, feeling for a sense of familiarity and coming up empty.

“No,” he replied, choked up enough that I peered up at him. “As much as I wanted to, there’s only so much I can do for the living. I can ease your pain and heal you now that you’re—”

“Dead?” I finished softly, a lump swelling in my throat again. I didn’t like it when he was upset; didn’t like seeing any of their grief. It was like a knife driven into my chest, making each breath painful. I knew these men. Loved them. I hated that I was hurting them.

“Pain!” Tor yelled across the prairie, and the bloodlust crashed back into me.

I was out of Death’s robed arms and launching into a run in seconds, a growl shaking the back of my throat. Pain lay on the ground, clutching his chest where fire had scorched an angry red mark into his skin. The sight of that rippled, burned skin made my head quiet. In an opposite reaction, it filled my chest with a riot of death and fury.

When my magic erupted this time, a wave blast all the way to the tower and through to the other side. The grass thrashed in a dark wind, the world silent for a split second, until the spirits guarding the Wake clutched their heads and screamed.

“Wow,” Madde breathed, coming closer with hearts in his eyes. Unaffected by the explosion like my other husbands, the magic intelligent enough to know if they were hurt, I would unleash myself upon this domain until nothing remained. I couldn’t remember my life with them, but that did nothing to erase the protectiveness crushing my chest. “That solves the ghost problem.”

I scanned him for injuries, did the same to Death, Miz, and Tor before dropping beside Pain.