The Shadow Self lets out a triumphant grunt and starts undoing his pants.
But this isn’t him, this isn’t him.
He is no longer in control of his Shadow Self.
I don’t know who this is.
“Who are you?” I manage to say. “What do you want?”
His eyes glitter menacingly beneath the mask. “I want you, Hanna dear,” he says smoothly. “So precious. So pure.” His voice turns ugly, mocking. “Such a rare jewel you are, pale and fragile and untainted by the horrors of this land. You think you’re better than us. You think you’re better than me.”
It’s Death’s voice, and yet it’s not.
It would take someone with great power to take over his Shadow Self, because to do so they’d have to get past Death himself.
Who—or what—did he find in the dungeon?
“What did you do to him?” I whisper, horror running through me. “What did you do to Death?”
“Same thing I’m going to do to you, you insignificant human,” he says, voice dripping with acid. “But first I’m going to show you what true humiliation is. If Tuoni wasn’t already Dead, he’d never want to touch you again, you worthless, tainted whore.”
He takes his cock out from his pants, starts lifting up my skirts.
Oh Jesus. Oh no.
No.
I have to break free. I have to get my knife.
“Struggle all you want, bitch,” he hisses at me. “I prefer it when you bleed.”
Tuoni says a lot of dirty stuff, but he would never call me a bitch.
“When I’m done making you ugly, I’m going to take that pathetic knife of yours and fuck you with it, push it so far inside you that it comes out your throat. Slice off your tongue. See how you like it for a change.”
I gasp internally, my eyes shocked wide.
Louhi!
This is fucking Louhi!
My heart drops out of my chest, freefalling.
I am so fucking screwed.
I’m dead.
And, apparently, so is my husband.
She murdered my Tuoni.
Rage rises inside me, pushing aside the pity for myself, the sadness, the defeat.
She’s not going to fucking win.
I won’t let her.
She’s trying to rape me first, but I won’t even let her get that far.
I’ve been caught in this position before in many of my classes, and I’ve learned when and how to get away.
I start to haul my knees up, hoping to get them to my chest so I can push out. Usually when a male opponent has you in a lock, your first move is to get them in the groin, which is difficult because every male instinctively protects himself there.
But a female hasn’t learned the hardship of being kneed in the groin.
In the Shadow Self’s body, Louhi barely moves—I doubt she’d move even if she were in her own body—and she doesn’t know how Tuoni’s body operates.
I get her in the dick. Hard.
In the back of my head there is a faint satisfaction of getting payback for the oubliette thing, but then I’m focusing on the now and springing into action.
Louhi yelps in agony and lets go of me, distracted by pain for just a second, but it’s enough time for me to roll out of the way, pick up the knife, and get into the ginga pose, moving back and forth, crouched low, figuring how to strike. I’m also still aware there’s a deformed spider person behind me eating a baby, but hell, I think at the moment I’d rather be fighting it than Louhi.
Don’t say that, I think to myself. You want to fight her. You want to defeat her again.
“You bitch,” she snarls at me in Death’s voice. She reaches up and rips the mask off her face and I flinch, because it might be the last time I look at my husband’s face. How fucking beautiful he is, even when it’s not him inside.
She comes for me, fast.
Fuck! She knew it would distract me if she took off the mask.
She tackles me against the wall and the impact makes bricks fall, and the torch topples to the stones, lighting the ground on fire as if it’s been doused in gasoline. The wind is knocked out of me and I can’t get a single breath in.
“You whore,” she says, Death’s hand going over my throat and squeezing hard, the other hand pressing my wrist against the wall. The fire is now racing toward us, and I have to wonder why everything is so flammable, but then I realize—hahahaha—I’m in Hell.
And I’m going to die here too if I don’t do something.
Problem is my neck is about to be snapped in two, I can’t breathe, my vision is going fuzzy, and there’s not a fucking thing I can do about. The selenite knife is still in my hand, to the point where it feels fused to my skin, but there is no way I can stab her from here.
The fire is now licking at our feet. I always wear boots under my dresses because apparently I’ll never be a real lady, and I believe that true queens wear shitkicker boots, but even so I have a few seconds before the leather starts to melt.