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Ada
I was dead.
I had to be.
Time meant nothing to the dead.
Time meant nothing to me.
It no longer passed in hours, minutes, or even seconds, but instead, time passed in pieces of my soul chipping away one moan at a time.
“Enosh…” Clink. Dignity, gone.
“Enosh…” Clink. Duty, gone.
“Enosh…” Clink. Hope of escape?
Gone.
Whenever I was awake, the god worshipped my body in ways I hadn’t known existed, from feasting on my sex to rutting me from behind while he pi
He brought me pleasure so many times, it overwhelmed and exhausted me into compliancy. The kind where I often fell to sleep rolled up in my nest, or worse, sitting on his lap as he nuzzled my temple.
When I was his good little mortal—screaming his name across the Pale Court—he brought me flowers. He turned the dais into a garden of pink roses, fragrant lavender, and stu
And I wilted alongside them.
Limbs heavy and senses dull, I kneeled on the ground before Enosh, where he sat on his throne, and yawned. “I’m tired.”
“You only just slept, my little one.” He twirled a strand of my hair around his finger, once, twice, then draped it over my bone collar. “Your body shouldn’t be so tired, its weariness burdens even my senses.”
Had I just slept? “Is it night or day?”
“It is both and everything in-between.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, of course not.” Scooping me up from the floor, he rose and took that one step into my nest, letting me sink into the warm bed of pelts and feathers. “Would you like to paint?”
As if I had any canvas left. The surrounding dais was covered in paintings of roses and ravens. “You could take me outside.”
“Or I could bring outside to the court.” He showed me his hand, palm up, and let bone dust form into the skeleton of a bird. Shortly after, gray flesh covered it and black feathers appeared around it. Its wings soon flapped, lifting into the air, only for tiny feet to wrap around the edge of my hand. “You can play with it.”
“I’m not a child.” A hard-to-defend statement considering how I clung to his neck as he cradled me. “How can you not get bored in here?”
“I assume immortality cured me of that.” His fingers slipped underneath my skirts, stroking my i
“That depends.”
A snarky remark? His cock down my throat. Pretending that I felt nothing? So many orgasms, it left me sore. Refusing to moan his name? His fingers pinching my nymph. Snarling at him, calling him a bastard, and cursing him to drop dead? His cock up my arse…
“I’m unclean,” I said after a while and, when wrinkles formed between his brows, I clarified, “My bleeding arrived when I woke.”
“I know. Why does my mortal woman think I had Orlaigh provide cloth and braise for it?” Something I might have called considerate if I wasn’t the prisoner of a lusty god. “How curious of you to call yourself unclean for something so… natural.”
“Helfa forbids a man to lie with his wife while she’s impure.”
I flinched at my words.
I shouldn’t have said that. Enosh hated few things more than talk about another taking his place beyond the Æfen Gate. On a much more serious note, I also shouldn’t have said it because I wasn’t his damn wife.
“I am your god.” Where I expected rage in his voice, I only found the slightly elevated pitch of a smile, as if he were so very pleased with how I’d called myself his wife. “And I see nothing impure about you or the act we share as man and woman while you bleed.” He leaned over and pressed a kiss to my cheek. “Very well. I’ll give you this one concession, my little wife.”
My pulse thudded faster.
Did he truly spare me the indignity?
Because I’d called myself his wife?
That… scared me.
I rubbed at my tired eyes. “I’m not your wife.”
“Indeed, you never gave me your vow.”
A sudden heaviness settled on my shoulder, followed by a voice I’d almost forgotten. Almost.
“Flesh and scar and skin and bone, feed her body to the throne,” the voice sing-songed into my left ear before it shifted to the other, curdling the blood in my veins. “Sweat and breath and soul and flaw, my brother surely… fucked… you… raw.”
My skin crawled wherever muscles tightened. I was mad, mentally unwell. My mind drained from the dullness and monotony of this place; why else would I now hear voices?
At the very first shiver gripping my arms, Enosh cupped my cheek, bringing my eyes to meet his. “Why is your heart racing?”
My shoulders hiked toward my ears, but it did nothing to ward off the cacophony of whispers hushing through my skull. “Heart and blood and veins and death, the third will come and steal your breath.”
“What’s this voice?”
“Voice?” Enosh took my face between his hands, thumb stroking over trembling lips. “What does it say, little one?”
“Terrible things…”
With one quick move, Enosh slung his arms around me as though to shield me. “Get out of her head.”
“But it is… so…” The whisper turned into moist breath, breaking against my cheek. “Fun in there.”
A man took form beside us, his face inches from mine until he shifted back. He perfumed the air with sandalwood, staring at me with grass-green eyes. He straightened to an impressive height and skipped down the dais; long, auburn hair shifting on a brown felt jacket elaborately embroidered with golden leaves.
“Did John escape his grave? Who will take care of Pa?” Voice mockingly high-pitched, the man fa
“Enough!” Enosh barked.
“—hole in his skull. His death is on my conscience. I am worthless. An unwoman.” The man clapped his hands. “Oh, what delicious agony houses behind those blue eyes of hers, matching your misery, Enosh, so per—”
The man choked on his words before a swell of blood pushed from his mouth. Thick and dark, it ran down his chin, dripping onto a spike of bone now protruding from his neck. The air turned heavy with the taint of metal. Glancing down at it, he wrapped both hands around the spike and dragged it out under gargling wheezes.
My stomach convulsed at the sight, my mind spi
“I wish.” With a sigh, Enosh wiped a palm down his face, which he then dismissively waved at the man who fell to his knees, chin sinking to his chest. “Ada, meet my brother, Yarin.”
Brother.
The word stabbed my temple.
As if Enosh wasn’t bad enough already…
A wet chuckle drooled from Yarin’s lips. “She doesn’t think well of you, brother. I dare say she hates your guts.”
Did Enosh just flinch?
I must have imagined it as he curled his fingers into my waist with a possessive grip. “How long have you been hiding between her thoughts?”
Yarin rose—the hole in his neck gone—and brushed his fingers over the blood staining his jacket. “I only had this tailored a fortnight ago. Now look what you’ve done. It took a great deal of traveling to find felt of such quality and craftsmanship.”
“How long?”
“Ever since you cheated Eilam and kept her from dying.” Yarin slowly spun, head shaking repeatedly as he glanced about the chamber, then his eyes settled on Enosh once more. “You’re notorious for taking what isn’t yours to take, Enosh, and it vexes him so.”
My gaze bounced back and forth between the men. “Who is Eilam?”
“Our brother.”
When Yarin winked at me, my head swung to Enosh. “You have two brothers?”
Enosh’s hold on me tightened. “Stop whispering into her mind before I needle your bitter flesh with bone!”
“You’ve always been so quick to threaten physical punishment. And no, Ada, we’re not brothers in the mortal sense.” Yarin’s eyes held mine captive. Adorable, how he stashes you away like his little secret. And look, he set a blue gemstone into your collar. “We’re purely bound by this brotherly love between us. Isn’t that so, Enosh?”
“You’re making her nervous,” Enosh grunted. “Stop muddling her thoughts, or I’ll have my corpses drag you outside and toss you onto a pile.”
“Her thoughts are muddled already. Mortals do poorly if deprived of light and stimulation. I tried it. She slit her wrists.” A powerful set of teeth sunk into an apple Yarin had pulled from a pocket, ripping a bite with a wet crk before a sly grin formed on his mouth. “Anyway, given the poor state of your court, your threats leave much to be desired, and… um…” Yarin raked a lazy hand through his strands. “My, my, would you look at this shithole. No servants, no feasts, no music. Only the Pale Court stripped to its bare bones, so to speak, and my brother drowning in self-pity and the cunt sitting on his lap.” Green eyes snapped to me. “What pleasant company your mouthiness would have provided at my court.”
I straightened. “What court?”
“The Court Between Thoughts,” Enosh said on a groan. “Believe me, little one, you don’t want to go there.”
“Oh no, you don’t, Ada,” Yarin added. “It’s dreadful. All my entourage and I do all day is fuck and sing and drink… and fuck. On a more serious note, brother, I can tell you two converse little beyond the beastly grunts you exchange when you bed her.” Yarin lowered himself to the dais, one leg folding over the other. “See, Ada, Enosh rules over the bodily remnants of everything that once breathed. Your soul, however, belongs in my keep. And then there’s your life breath, of course, which was supposed to go to Eilam. Unfortunately for you, mostly, my brother here is so smitten with you.”
“Guard your thoughts or he’ll twist them,” Enosh whispered into my ear, lulling my muscles into a state of lethargy with calculated strokes along my spine.
“Oh, you don’t want me to twist them for you, brother?” Yarin’s eyes locked with mine, and whispers infiltrated my head in never-ending echoes.
“I’ve never been worth anything to John while Enosh locks me away like a treasure. When was the last time a man wanted me? Lusted for me? Does the god not tend to my needs? Kisses me so gently? How much longer can I deny there’s true pleasure in his touch, and—”
Yarin groaned.