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He gave a long exhale as he took in the room he’d formed for me, pupils going from bed to stool to bookshelf—and that was it. No tub, no table, no trundle. Only four thin alabaster walls forming a small square room, as bare and boring as the rest of the Pale Court.
It bothered him.
I could tell by how his lips pressed into a white slash, and he briefly rubbed two fingers over his temple as if warding off a headache. It quickened the pulse in my veins because I could use this to my advantage.
But he only sighed and said, “Mmm, but there is always wood from beyond the gates.”
Blast it to hell, I made no progress here. “I’m hungry.”
His brows knitted together, probably because I wasn’t hungry at all and he knew it, but I needed the man out of the room and Orlaigh here in his stead. “Very well. I will have Orlaigh bring you food and take the opportunity to assess the bridges.”
“Thank you. Can I… can I move now?”
Reluctantly, he nodded. “I shall have you again once you have eaten.”
I sat up and, unable to help myself, stared behind his firm buttocks as he left. When the doors closed, my gaze went to the stool and the clay pitcher of water that rested inside a bone basin.
The longer I looked at it, the more my skin itched. I should wash his seed out of me, shouldn’t I? What woman would want a child with Enosh? But if I was hale, how long could I escape that fate? And if it might help me get him to open the gates to the dead…? Wasn’t I allowed then?
I swallowed.
Looked forward to it, even?
Orlaigh cut my internal ramblings short when she stepped through the door, balancing a platter with bread and, from the sweetness of it, steamed pears. “Ach, lass, have a look.” Platter placed on my bed, she lifted her hands and wiggled ten immaculate fingers. “Not a speck of rot on me old bones. Whatever ye did to me Master, do more.”
I sensed my forehead wrinkle. “That’s an issue because I have no idea what I did, exactly.”
A hearty chuckle shook her chest. “Only taken the man as yer wedded husband.”
I quickly rose to wash between my legs, then slipped into my chemise, and took a warm slice of pear. “And gave a vow he doesn’t need. Enosh would’ve kept me locked here for eternity in any case, so what’s the difference?”
She placed her hand onto my shoulder, the touch cold but the gesture warm. “The difference, lass, is that me Master couldn’t make ye give a vow.”
Nothing bores me more than to make you.
One of his first words to me.
Well, he hadn’t looked all too bored when he’d made me swallow his seed or viciously fucked my arse. What difference did it make to him if I came at my own choosing, given how little effort it took him to make me? None. Not unless he actually cared about my opinion of him.
Or my feelings…
My stomach tumbled as I thought back on his brother’s offer. I will make her love you, he’d said. She’ll adore you. Enosh had responded with silence. Something I’d dismissed as arrogant indifference then, but what if it had been hesitation? If he had the very human desire of a mate and a child, what if he also desired to be loved?
My mouth turned dry.
Could I ever find affection for the heartless god?
No… not heartless.
Saying Enosh had neither heart nor compassion would have been a lie. The grave he’d dug for A
It worked on me.
Scraped away my hate one small kindness at a time, uncovering compassion for his pain and an understanding for how the curse damning our lands had come at the hands of mortals. Still, sympathy was a long way from love.
I devoured the slice of pear and turned to Orlaigh. “Tell me about Njala.”
She eyed me for as long as it took the old woman to shake the furs covering the bed. “Aye, I was there when the little lady came to this world. Nursed her moments later, then watched her grow. Bo
“Did she go with Enosh willingly?”
Orlaigh pursed her lips and lowered herself onto the edge of the bed, eyes going adrift on bone before she turned her head and gave me a smile too tense to be sincere. “Ach, lass, as willingly as any daughter of any lord may go with any stranger he sees fit. A young thing, sixteen summers old, with her reputation stained because of how they found the lass in the stables with that bloody—” A thick swallow struggled down the rest before she rose, shaking the same furs yet again. “Years, a decade, centuries… di
So she’d been forced, as was the lot for most girls, regardless of station. “Was he cruel to her?”
“Lass, if anything, me Master wasn’t cruel enough,” she said on a sigh. “Ach, the little lords and ladies with their starched bottoms, never content with what they had. The room too cold, the footmen too dead, the sight of corpses too ghastly.”
“She didn’t like the Pale Court.”
“Nay, lass, no matter how me Master shaped it whichever way her mood swayed, so taken was he with the foolish thing.”
The only thing he’d ever shaped for me with enthusiasm was my collar. A fact that, somehow, twinged between my ribs.
“He truly loved her.”
Another twinge.
Did he love her still?
“Mm-hmm, he loved her…” The shadows beneath her wrinkles darkened before she mumbled, “Loved her to death.”
I wrapped my arms around my middle, warding off a sudden chill. “What do you mean? Someone slit her throat, correct?”
“Aye, Commander Mertok,” she said, matching Enosh’s version of this closely enough. “For three days, me Master hid himself away with her corpse, keeping the rot from her in a frenzy. Oh, how the Pale Court shook, bridges cracking right through the pillars.”
Given how he’d made a tavern shake in anger, I didn’t have the courage to picture how he must have been when Njala and the baby died. “Did she… return his love?”
She tilted her head and lifted a brow. “As sincerely as they teach any lady of good breeding.”
So… she hadn’t loved him.
Why not?
Enosh had a loving, attentive side to him. By the sound of it, Njala had seen more of it than I ever would. In a time when the god had done his duty, could it have been so impossible to fall in love with such an a
“It’s hard for me to imagine how he must have been before she died,” I said. “I only know him as an enraged god with a grudge.”
“Ach, lass, the lands beyond the Soltren Gate are no more, all over quarrels of the heart.” Her hands stalled on the furs and her pale green eyes bore into me. “Worse than a god in rage is a god in love.”