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Ada
“A, n, d.” Letter for letter, I put the sounds together like Enosh had taught me, finger trailing over black ink on yellowed paper. “A, an, and the g, o, d… g, go, god, and the god r… ra— Curses!” With a groan, I let my face sink into the copper pelts of my nest. “It’ll take me hundreds of years to read this damn book.”
Worse yet, I would still be alive, stuttering around stories where one letter looked like the next. If the tail went up from the circle on the left side, it made buh. From the right side crossing to the left? Duh. If the tail went down, it made puh, but on which side? Left? Right? What fool came up with the idea of creating a letter and tipping it around in books?
“Patience, my little treasure.” Enosh folded an arm under one side of his head where he rested inches from me in my nest and tugged a strand behind my ear. “You did well.”
I hated when he praised me.
Loathed how something inside me soaked it up like the cracked ground did when rain came after a drought. ‘You did well’ sounded so much better than ‘You failed to conceive yet again.’
My finger went to the gemstone set into my collar, trailing around the smoothed edges that came together in the shape of a teardrop. “What’s this stone?”
“A diamond.”
When I glanced down hard enough, until chin hit chest, I could see it sparkling a deep, vivid blue from the bottom edge of my vision. “Where did you get it?”
“From the royal house of Nazameh. They’re long gone, decimated during one of the many quarrels about lands, wealth… power.”
“Is it precious?”
“To me, it’s something of beauty that matches the color of your eyes—a blue like the sea between the Kilafa mountains before the land split apart and drowned some thousand years ago.” His hand stroked over the sway of my hip and the thousands of black feathers that covered me as he rose. “But yes, mortals consider it precious.”
I’d never worn anything precious. Never held much value to anyone except Pa, even though a widowed daughter made for an expensive burden. Husbands were generous with their seed when it came to making babies, but stingy once the midwife came knocking. That some worried my fruitlessness might be contagious didn’t help matters…
Enosh let a high-collared jacket of black leather form around his torso, the bone buttons carved with skulls. “It’s time.”
My gaze drifted to the cloud of bone dust swirling at the bottom of the dais. It formed the distinct shape of a horse, coming together in sturdy bones as my chain dissolved where it rested on the steps. Hide soon followed, covering the creature in brittle skin before dull hairs arranged in a black coat.
I rose, brushing down the black feathers of my dress. “What’s this?”
“Yarin is waiting for us.”
My stomach bottomed out. “Us? You’re… you’re taking me with you?”
“I’d rather have you by my side where I can see you than return home to find your collar broken and the few corpses I left scattered in pieces across the court.” He walked up to me, his black hair framing his regal features so perfectly, and took me into his embrace before he whispered, “This will only hurt for a moment, my little one.”
My heart stumbled over a beat before it hit the back of my throat. “No, please, Enosh. Don’t do this—”
“Shh…” Warmth swathed me, coaxing my stiff muscles into a false state of ease. “Once we return, I’ll mend your bones.”
Crk-crk-crk.
Bone crackled beneath me.
Pain shot up and down my shins. It seared my flesh, pushing me toward unconsciousness. I heaved, wheezed in air, choking on my own saliva until—
“There, there. I’m already dulling the pain away.” Enosh caught me at my first sway, carried me down the dais, and propped me on the horse’s back.
I pulled on the train of my dress, sour bile sweeping up my throat at the sight of bone spurs stretching the skin along my shins so taut it yellowed. “I should’ve expected no different from you, you fucking bastard.”
His chuckle echoed from the surrounding bone as he gracefully swung himself onto the horse behind me, his voice a purr across the side of my neck. “If my woman wants my prick up her ass, she only needs to say so, and I shall oblige.”
Nothing but a quiet threat, all while he caressed me into a state of dull acceptance, slowing my heart until it beat evenly. I didn’t hate him nearly as much for breaking my legs as I did for calming the rage pumping through my veins into a mere tingle.
And a comforting one at that.
Bastard.
Enosh wrapped his arm around my middle, anchoring me to him, which was a good thing considering I’d never been one for riding sidesaddle—and there was no saddle at all. “We’ll ride over those hayfields you claim to miss so dearly.”
“And see the sky you promised I would never see again.”
He grunted.
In that, I took some small comfort.
After Orlaigh gave me a satchel with bread and dried meat, we left through the Æfen Gate. Hooves clopped over stone and up the incline, back through the passage Augustine had dragged me through. At the surface, I clenched my eyes shut against a sun suddenly too bright for eyes accustomed to the dim glimmer of the Pale Court.
Enosh’s chest hardened behind me, his entire body rigid while the cracking of bones and squishing of flesh drove out the faint chirping of birds. “Keep your eyes closed for another moment.”
“Oh please, as if a carpet of smashed corpses is worse than how one of your decrepit servants dropped his jaws into my soup during the last meal.” When he made a gruntled sound at the back of his throat, I casually asked, “Will rot follow you to Airensty?”
“No. It is something I purposely do, going so far I can even distinguish between which body rots and which will not.” So I’d achieved nothing. “Open your eyes. See your sky and your birds.”
I kept them closed for another five breaths, sucking in the moisture of the dew beneath us, the waft of soil climbing into my nostrils, and the first traces of winter berries lingering in the air. My lungs expanded until the leather bindings of my bodice moaned, sun and shadow playing over my face in a caress of warmth and cool.
My eyes blinked open and my heart ached at the sight of a crow circling the pink-streaked horizon. “It’s beautiful.”
Enosh glanced down at me, brushing one of my strands tousled by the breeze off my shoulder. “Indeed. So captivatingly beautiful.”
Did we speak of the same thing? My head turned to glance back at him, but I stopped myself. If it had been flattery, it meant nothing coming from his lips.
“Don’t you enjoy this?”
“Very much. But what I enjoy even more is the lightness coming over your chest after you’ve been so sluggish as of late,” he said, as if it came as a surprise to him that chaining a woman to a throne in a dim chamber might have this result.
His fingers stroked over my belly as if ensuring himself I was, indeed, still here, infusing my body with… nothing.
No prickle.
No pleasure.
So I wasn’t going insane after all.
Which could only mean one thing… “You have no control over my flesh out here, do you?”
“Only over the dead scattered across these lands.” As though he despised admitting it, his voice hardened. “Make no mistake, my little one, I have an endless amount of bone at my disposal to make certain you remain by my side.”
As if he needed such drastic measures. “You broke my legs.”
“Twisted,” he corrected with a sigh of a
“Danger? You can’t die.”
“No, but you can.”
“My god, are we riding into battle?”
When he kicked the horse into an u
“Toward the god who’s abandoned them.”
His low chuckle vibrated against my spine, but it held no humor. “Do you believe this is the first time mortals would rebel against a god? The living have chased me since the begi
My stomach clenched, my mind going back to what Orlaigh had told me. Was this the life of a god? To be chased and chained, disemboweled and burned?
“Why?”
“Because I require flesh and bone to maintain the Pale Court,” he said. “Something mortals aren’t always willing to give up. The higher they are in station, the more they treasure the bone of their kin, as though it makes a difference to me if I drink from a baron or a beggar.”
Neither would I want Pa to span a bridge. “But the dead walk toward the Pale Court on a full moon on their own, anyway.”
“Only because I deny them to rot in the ground. I have no control over it. Naturally, the dead seek my closeness because I am their master.”
“Is it true corpses once burned?”
“The only curse I cast about the lands.” He nodded and pressed his lips into a grim line, a gesture so human, it looked out of place on the face of a god. “Of all the deaths I didn’t die, my little mortal, the one where they burned me at the stake for a fortnight was the worst. To this day, the stench of ash follows me, as if my skin somehow trapped it when it returned.”
The hairs rose on my arms as I thought back on the witch the priests had burned last winter, her high-pitched screams forever branded into my memory. Hemdale had reeked of singed hair for days, bitter and biting. Imagining Enosh screaming like she had…? For a fortnight?
Bile licked my throat.
“I’m sorry.” I didn’t want to be, but the apology slipped from my lips without consent. “Why did Lord Tarnem capture you? Because you wanted his wife’s bones or something?”
His deep inhale pressed against my back. “He sought me out nearly two centuries ago. Asked me to raise an army of dead for him so he could fight off a group of barbarians invading his lands. Gods ought not to meddle in the affairs of mankind, but… what he offered in exchange…”
I turned back to look at him once more. “Offered what?”
“His daughter Njala.” It wasn’t so much the name that offered me another puzzle piece to a picture I struggled to grasp, but how old traces of pain roughened his tone. “She was supposed to be my companion for eternity.”
Something pinched beneath my ribs, then again when I took in the features of a god gone ashen. “Did you love her?”
His features hardened, brow taking on an audacious curve. “Your question suggests that you think me capable of love, little one.”