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I looked back at her. “Will you throw me to the wolf once more?”
“Before it bites me in me howlin’ arse, aye, I will. Does that make me the villain? Did Njala not betray me the same as everyone else, leaving me behind for the god’s wrath to chew me up when I’d only shown her leniency?”
“Perhaps you were too kind, same as me.” I rose, shaking off her hold. “Something I’m trying to rectify.”
Her lips pressed into a thin line for a moment before she smacked her tongue. “Not at the cost of me bones.”
A chill shot up my spine, cooling my raveled mind enough for my brain to recognize the threat. Enosh might think me a liar, but I was nowhere as skilled as Orlaigh—a woman who held enough of his trust to keep the truth from him for two centuries where I held none.
“Not at the cost of mine, either,” I said. “You said it yourself; he loves me.”
“Aye, loves ye to death.”
I shuddered.
Stepping away from her, I turned, then fled toward the clack-clack-clacking that resonated the passage back into the Pale Court. My mind spun and my heart ached, but I couldn’t allow myself to succumb to either. How could I approach this without sending myself straight into the throne?
If I hadn’t gone to Orlaigh in anger, I could have avoided pitting her against me. Could have conjured up a way to tell Enosh the truth. Preferably one that didn’t contain me blurting, I am maybe carrying your child, after all. Njala ran away with Joah of her own choosing. Or, the worst option yet, The baby was probably never yours.
Well, it was too late now.
Devil be damned, my skull ached under the pressure of my crown and how my brain frantically tried to compose a plan. More so when the corpse children huddled up to me with their grinding clanks and clonks. What to do?
I pondered that question for what felt like an eternity as I combed through their tousled strands until an idea struck. What if I avoided Enosh’s suspicion and Orlaigh’s deceitfulness altogether and went straight to one of the other gods?
I frowned.
Not Eilam.
Aside from the fact that I trusted him the least—not that Yarin could be called trustworthy by any means—his court was the world. That was a pretty big place to go looking for a god.
But what about the Court Between Thoughts? I’d been there before. Could I somehow go there again? Would Yarin notice the potential of a divine child and convince his brother of it?
It was an option.
My only one.
I just needed to find out how I could get there, given that it was no physical place. At least, I didn’t think it was. If I remembered correctly, then it was between my thoughts… wherever that was.
In her wariness, Orlaigh would be of no help with this, leaving me no other choice but to pry hints from Enosh. And while I was at it, I could contemplate how to explain to a god that he’d been made a cuckold…