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Ada
Decorated with hundreds of fangs and the spindly bones of rodents, the bodice of my dress fa
Aside from my collar.
That made me look like a prisoner, no matter how he’d tooled the thick ring of bone around my neck with images of birds he promised I would never see again.
Brush in hand, I dipped the fine bristles into a small jar of paint made from green pigment and, based on the nutty smell of it, linseed. Trailing it along the edge of the dais, I added another vine to the motive, winding all the way to—
Clank.
“Devil be damned, I’ll never reach the right side with how short he keeps my chain.” A tug on the collar to let some air to my skin, then I scooted back until the tense string of bone rings clonked to the ground. “Here. Take the brush and finish the vine.”
“Ach, lass, me fingers are too rotten to even clasp it well,” Orlaigh said, her hands a speckled green whereas her lips had gone a dark purple.
“One would think you deserve for him to freshen you up, given how you tattled on me.”
“Stopped ye from trying to run again and get us both into trouble,” she mumbled. “I had no other choice, lass.”
No, she hadn’t.
Orlaigh was nothing but a prisoner of a different kind. Whereas Enosh had chained me to his throne for my attempted escape, Orlaigh’s help very well could have earned the old woman to become the collar around my neck.
Or another face on the throne…
I looked up at the corpse woven into the bone. He looked back, his eyes milky-white, yet I sensed his chilling stare on me. As silent as the Pale Court, he observed me but never made a sound.
Probably because Enosh had removed the mouth of both, leaving nothing but the shift of a tongue behind dry, brown skin. Every now and then, he restored the corpses, only to let me watch them rot away again in what had to be eternal agony.
I tossed the brush onto the bed Enosh had made for me, like a roundish nest of bone beside his throne, the inside fluffed with fox pelts and feathers. “Who is he?”
Orlaigh glanced up from where she sat on the dais with a book on her lap. “Lord Tarnem.”
“What did he do?”
“Lured me Master into a trap. A valley surrounded by mountains, the ground so frozen, no bone made it to the surface to help him fight off the ambush. They cut down the few corpses he had with him for protection and captured him.”
Yet another tale proving to be too true for comfort, scraping away my thi
“Ach, lass, the flames could be seen from five towns away. Kept ’em chained to a pillar where they burned me Master for a fortnight.” A slow shake of her head. “Terrible thing, death by fire. But death never came for him while he screamed in pain; skin growing back one moment, only to char black again the next.”
“I had no idea he could feel pain.”
A discovery that should please me or, at the very least, give me a sense of comfort. Instead, my skin broke out in gooseflesh, my mind drifting to the distinct smell that followed Enosh around—like ash sprinkled over snow.
“Gods are not so different from us, lass,” she said. “Me Master suffers like any mortal, be it a battered head or a broken heart.”
“A broken heart?” That lured a scoff from me. “As if he has one.”
Orlaigh looked at me from a tilted head. “Is it so hard to believe that he loves and lusts like any man?”
“Oh, I believe the lust part.” Still felt its sting in my backside, too. “It’s the love part I ca
She only shrugged.
I jutted my chin toward the other man, who never as much as blinked, his thin strands of brown wisps snaking around the porous bone. “And the other?”
A sneer came over her features, showing off a row of graying teeth. “Commander Joah Mertok.”
“What did he do?” When she struggled with the page of her book to make it turn under her unreliable fingers, I leaned over and turned it for her. “Has Enosh always been this cruel?”
“Crueler. For a time. The dead and the living forget, lass, taking their sorrows to the grave.” She looked up from her book, letting her black-veined eyes lock with mine. “Gods do not, and rage on.”
Dread weighed down my shoulders, and I looked over at the crumbling bridge. What had happened to Enosh that made him abandon his duty, sequestering himself in this empty, dull place? On more than one occasion, he’d called us mortals wicked. Aside from feeding him to the fire for weeks, what other cruelties had he endured?
Should I care?
As if my thoughts had conjured him, the man strolled over a bridge and walked up the dais, once more dressed in black breeches and a white shirt. With a gesture of his hand, he dismissed Orlaigh and lowered himself onto his throne.
“Come to me.” Two taps against his thigh as if I was his dog. “Kneel before your god.”
“You lack a great deal of divinity for a god and do a poor job at fulfilling your duty.”
He smiled as if my snarky remarks amused him.
Then he let a wave of weakness gnaw on my knees until they caved in. A death weight followed, pushing against my shoulders until my palms hit the bone.
He made me crawl to him, feathers catching on the edge of the dais until some ripped off, wafting around me like snow as teeth and bones clanked on my bodice. “I’m not an animal.”
“No, animals get scraps, whereas I make certain you receive the best meals from beyond the gates, the softest pelts for your bed, the best paints gold can buy. You’ve been pulling on your collar again.” Hooking a finger under my chin, he guided my head to rest on his lap and gently stroked the sore skin beneath the bone ring. “I’m afraid in regard to your chain, I had to choose thickness over length.”
“Because you don’t have enough bone to maintain the Pale Court.” The reason why I’d been able to break his shackles and one bridge had holes the size of a wolf. “Your kingdom is falling apart around you. Why? Because Lord Tarnem burned you at the stake?”
“He also disemboweled me… twice.” His fingers combed through my hair like he often did, a digit slowly tracing along the shell of my ear. “My little treasure is tired.”
“I’m always tired.” My senses dulled from hours of doing nothing but pace and paint. “Is it night? Day? Nobody ever sleeps. It’s… confusing.”
As if I were a little child in need of a nap, he plucked me from the ground and cradled me to his chest, my bone chain clanking against his throne. “Paints. An entire kingdom as your canvas. The finest dresses I can create. Berries with nearly every meal. What else does my woman need to be content?”
“You’re making me sound like a spoiled brat, not a prisoner.”
“A spoiled prisoner, then,” he said, as if a cage wasn’t a cage, no matter how pretty. “More books, perhaps?”
“I can’t read.”
His eyes went to the stack of leather-bound books beside my bed, jaws clenching as if he scolded himself for not noticing sooner. “Then I shall teach you.”
Ah, great. What a fool I was, earning even more of his attention.
“There aren’t many books left to read ever since the high priests outlawed all writings but those the temples provided.”
“Praising your false god, no doubt.”
“Why would they do that?”
“You’re not listening, little one.” Another pitying stroke through my hair. “Mortals are wicked creatures, always striving for more power than they can handle. If the masses pray to a god who doesn’t exist, then the mortal who speaks for said god amasses great power. Riches too, I would assume.”
My mind went to the tithe the priests collected twice a year. “The temples have gold-plated signs.”
“I have little bone at my disposal, it is true. The price I pay for an oath given.” With a flick of his hand, he reshaped my collar, widening it enough that a calming chill settled on my skin. “The stiffness in your muscles over your discontent is cumbersome.”
“If it’s so bad, how about you take me outside for a walk?”
“No.” A kiss against my temple. “But… I’m ever so tempted to send Orlaigh for fresh flowers whenever you please me.”
My skin heated beneath my collar, driving out his soothing chill until it itched again. “I don’t want damn flowers.”
Fuck the violets on John’s grave, too! I wanted to get out of here, drag three millstones onto my husband’s grave, then run from Enosh until my skin wrinkled and my hair grayed.
But the god only sighed, as if my mortal moods bored him. “Careful with that mouth of yours or I’ll find something to stuff it.”
As if to make a point, I watched my hand lift to knead over the significant bulge behind his leather breeches. Only trickery. “If the idea of my escape vexes you so, then why won’t you rot my husband’s bones like I asked?”
“You want me to leave my court—after two hundred years, no less—to rot the body of a wife-beating man?”
I’d rather be beaten than collared and raped. “I won’t expect a god who abandoned his purpose to understand the meaning of duty.”
“Duty?”
“Of a wife.”
“Something you seem to take very seriously.” His gaze intensified, eyes slipping to my lips for a second. “How come?”
“I gave my vows.”
“Vows,” he repeated slowly, as if tasting the word. “No mortal will find rest within my court, little one.”
“I’m not asking you to rest his bones at the Pale Court. You’ll just turn him into a cup and make me drink from it.”
“There’s an idea that makes this worthwhile.” Of course, he chuckled, ever so amused. “Now, lift your skirts and show me how wet you are.”
Only trickery.
Regardless of how Enosh stirred my flesh, I didn’t truly lust for the god. As long as I remembered it, recited it like a prayer, then my body wouldn’t betray me again.
I shook my head, ignoring the heat climbing my i
“Very well. Touch me, then.”
That… was unexpected.
He leaned back and stared at me, amusement sitting in the depths of his turbulent gray eyes. One corner of his lips carried a slight uptick. It hiked into a lopsided smirk as I reached my damned hands for his chest.
Leisurely, I palmed the vast plains of hard muscle before I let my fingertips curve down along the dips and valleys of his abdomen. A bastard like him shouldn’t be this perfectly built. I balled the hem of his shirt in my fists and pulled it over his head, his scent wafting off him like flames licking the wet chill of a winter night.