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He laughed hard enough that the expanse of his chest let ribs crack against the ungiving cage of bone that trapped his body. “Yes, she came. And then she vanished, spirited away by the commander of my own forces.”
My guts constricted, and for once, I was certain it was neither hunger nor maggots churning my stomach. “So, Joah took her away of his own account?”
“Hmm, yes.”
I choked on a spike of shock as imaginary puzzle pieces reshaped before my mind. One after another, the echo of many accounts from different people distorted, only to rearrange into a grotesque picture that left me reeling for its meaning.
Yes, Joah and Njala had been lovers.
Always.
Forever.
Even before Enosh?
The shocking intensity of this possibility left me stu
I blinked myself out of my daze. “They had an affair, and you broke them apart when you gave her to Enosh.”
“As a lord with no son, no heir, a daughter’s reputation can carry the weight of alliances for generations to come,” Lord Tarnem said. “Stained as it was, no other man of nobility from neighboring parts would have her, but the god does not care about such things. Before Joah could put a bastard in her belly and render her worthless, I promised her to Enosh, silencing the damaging gossip while securing a powerful ally.”
“Worthless.” That word stung deep enough it poked a sense of solidarity toward Njala and how she’d shared in a woman’s plight same as I had. “Why keep Joah on as the commander?”
“Dismissing him would only have given credibility to rumors.”
“So Enosh didn’t believe that you had no part in her disappearance, which prompted him to accuse you of keeping Njala away from him so he would bend to your demand.”
“When he marched his corpses to my castle, I had no other choice but to capture him. To keep him my prisoner and my lands safe until I retrieved my daughter, contained the proof of her disloyalty, blamed Mertok, and returned her to the god as a sign of my goodwill. As you can see, child, gods make poor prisoners. He freed himself, and his corpses flooded my lands with the fury of their master without one more word spoken between us.”
“But when Enosh closed in on Njala, she refused to return to him and instead, chose death.” My palm glided to my bodice, pressing against the braids of hair to soothe the sudden itch beneath. “And because she’d never wanted Enosh’s child to begin with, she chose death for the both of them?”
“Did she?”
A moment of brittle silence stretched between us, filled with the phantom beat of my heart and a dull ringing at the back of my mind that begged for my attention. Joah had shaken his head as vehemently as one might expect of a corpse this old, telling me they’d meant to save the child? From what?
I gulped.
Or from whom?
I pressed my hand against my parched throat. It started as a tremble in my chin, that moment when a startling question ripped the world out from underneath me, sending me stumbling off the throne.
Had Enosh even been the father of this child, or had Joah—
“No, this can’t be…” My mumbling faded into silence as I lifted my gaze to Lord Tarnem. “Njala was already pregnant when she left the Pale Court and ran off with Joah, is it not true?”
“Yes, she was.”
Njala came and left as she pleased, Enosh’s voice resonated in my mind before it shaped into Orlaigh’s odd lilt as it whispered, Chaperoning her was like herding a bunch of flea-ridden cats. Foolish, foolish girl.
The question pounded louder inside my skull, making me choke on a wave of dread. “Who was the father of this baby?”
The corners of Lord Tarnem’s lips twitched. “Child, you might very well be the only one capable of answering this question.”
“She saw him. All this time, she secretly met with Joah.” I wrapped my arms around myself. “If she continued her affair with Joah, he might have been the father of the child.”
A self-satisfied smile came over the lord’s face. “The mortal child.”
The one Enosh had sensed.
My mind wobbled somewhere between wary suspicion and wicked sanguinity as all strength left my corroding muscles. Pain stabbed me in the belly, sharp and cold. I looked down at myself, halfway expecting my bodice to stain red from wounds bleeding anew.
I sunk to the ground, trembling. Fought the heart-wrenching hope spreading through my core and how it might set me up for harrowing disappointment. No, I could not go through this again. But how could I avoid the impact and potential meaning of this revelation?
Enosh sensed all the dead.
All the living.
But not his brothers.
I pressed a hand to the wounds on my belly and circled them as overwhelming sorrow dulled my senses. Again. If Enosh could not feel his divine brothers, then what were the chances that he could feel our divine baby?