Queen of rot and pain

Enosh

I was a man of my word.

A god out for revenge.

And yet, here I lay, on a bed swaying a foot above the ground from the willow in my wife’s garden, letting time pass us by.

For days, I’d put my grudge aside for the sake of enjoying my woman’s touch. How she drew letters beneath my shoulder blade. Tugged on the ends of my hair. Traced the sway of my ribs.

When her movements slowed, I let a groan muffle into the furs. “Do not stop.”

I sensed her cheeks bunch where her face rested inches from mine. “I thought you were asleep.”

“Had I been sleeping, your heart would have stopped.” Instead, I had found bliss in days of conversation and nearness, while eventually drifting into comfortable silence and quiet rest. “Your touch is… hypnotizing.”

Ada increased the pressure, letting her nails gently scratch down each side of my spine until the fine hairs on the small of my back lifted. “Not cold?”

“Cold is all I have ever known, my love.” I slowly blinked my eyes open, stretching my legs and inhaling deeply before I cupped her cheek. “You will be warm again soon. Until then, I shall be the beat of your heart, the throb of your pulse, the rush of your blood, and the salt in your tears.”

A gentle smile curved her lips, pink again from the constant supply of warmed blood borrowed from others I sent through her veins. “When will we leave?”

“As soon as we have made ourselves look presentable.” I rubbed my other hand over my cheek, smooth shaven since we’d bathed together the night before. “Black mink, white fox, or brown sable. Choose.”

“Black mink.”

“Excellent choice. But first…”

When I rolled her onto her back and climbed between her legs, she gave a pitiful shove at my shoulders. “You just had me.”

“Mmm, yes, in the most curious way.”

Oh, my brother called me a bore, but had he ever loved a woman at the bottom of a spring, encapsulated in heat while he happily drowned? How strangely wonderful it had felt, filling Ada with my seed as my lungs filled with water, unable to die but succumbing to the panic of its premise, nonetheless.

“Are you denying me?” Clasping her wrists, I brought them over her head, letting the ropes of hair that suspended our bed gently bind her. “Tell me, little one, what happens if you do not allow me to touch you, hmm?”

Ornery thing she was, she pressed her foot against my chest and wiggled her toes. “I’m sore, almost as though you refuse to ease it.”

“Because this is how I prefer you, feeling me between your legs long after we coupled.” Shoving her leg aside, I lowered my head to kiss our child, as I had promised I would. “You are counting, yes?”

My kisses over her belly ripped the most adorable little giggles from her as she writhed beneath me. “I can’t count that high.”

“I shall teach you, but for now, it serves us well since the sun has long risen beyond that gate.”

And yet I kissed her scars a dozen times more, letting my senses reach into her belly. I could not feel my child, so I touched it the only way I could. Focused on the tiny void, I caressed around it, letting it know I was there, never again to fail as its father.

Lips benumbed, I rose, then reached out and lifted Ada from the bed just as I removed the bonds and dressed my wife for the occasion. “Keeping you warm will pose a challenge, for the lands are sleeping beyond a layer of snow and the winds are biting.”

“Which explains the sheer weight of this.”

She glanced down at the dress forming around her, with long trumpet sleeves, a high collar with bone buttons in the shape of small robins, and a heavy cape that rested on her shoulders. Fur-lined gloves of black leather formed around her hands, and matching boots completed my creation.

I let a black leather outfit form around me, with inlets of the same mink, the inside lined. “Is it to your liking?”

She slipped off my arm and spun, letting the train fan out until the fine hairs of the pelts bristled. “Beautiful, like everything you create.”

“It is still unfinished.”

She startled when I let her strands weave themselves into a nest of golden braids, bringing a look of sheer wonder to her face. Oh, how little she’d seen of the powers bestowed upon me. Raven feathers fa

Reaching her gloved fingers up, she let them tap it as realization widened her eyes. “Feathers.”

“Behold, the Queen of Rot and Pain.” I let black beetle shells compress into a crown upon my head—almost shaped like thick antlers—along with swirls which I imagined coming together by my forehead. “What say you?”

“Behold, the King of Flesh and Bone.” She rose onto her toes, ru

Among other organs. “Now we are ready to ask the world to bend its knee.”

A tug on my senses.

Had she just flinched?

Unable to find any traces of it in her muscles, I disregarded it as no more but an odd tremor and opened the gates of my kingdom. The ground shook, letting the beads of bone and nail above our heads clank together.

Ada reached for my arm. “What was that?”

I intertwined my leather-clad fingers with hers and guided her toward the stairs for the throne room. “Allow me to show you.”

I led her downstairs, into the familiar reek of death and decay barely dulled, for I had not bothered to do so.

Orlaigh slouched on the dais—as she had for days—her face puckered and grayish-green, painting her as the traitor she was. Her betrayal should not have come as such a surprise. She was mortal, after all, wicked and dishonest.

“Orlaigh.” I stared down at my gloves, tugging on one finger where they refused to sit right. “I have wasted two centuries trapped in the past, and I shall give it my mind no longer. Let us keep this brief. Will you climb into my throne, or shall I make you?”

The old woman slowly shook her head in acceptance of my judgment and struggled herself onto her legs. “Nay, Master. Ye di

And yet she gave my wife an apologetic look, preying on my little one’s goodness.

With success.

A small cluster of tension around Ada’s shoulders. A set of muscles that contracted along her arms. A toe that curled slightly in her boot. My little one’s flesh and bone betrayed the kind of unease that sharpened the edge I thought I had already crossed…

… only to find myself still balancing.

Ah, my love had told me she could be anything I needed her to be. I needed her to be cold, detached, and out for revenge—needed her to be all those things she’d accused me of. If only for a little while…

What if she could never be that?

A shadow fell over my chest.

Here I stood, a god shaped to perfection, powerful in so many ways, yet it bought me no reprieve from gravity and how it made me sway on this line with a deep crater to each side. One held the loss of my wife’s warmth and child. The other, the loss of my cold wife’s love.

Where would I rather fall?

The answer came easily.

I would rather embrace the cold body of the woman who loved me than desperately clasp to the warm body of the woman who grew our child in a core of chilling hate.

But alas, I was a god.

Gods ought to be above choices.

There was always my brother and his whispers—a last resort should I fail at making my little one embrace the sad truth about mortals’ corruption.

Until then, I would balance.

“I sense the tension in your muscles, unaware of how deep Orlaigh’s betrayal might have reached.” I cupped the back of Ada’s head, pulled her in for a kiss, then placed my lips by her ear. “Have you ever asked yourself why we’ve been overwhelmed by such a large force in the forest? Curious, do you not agree? As though they had only waited for us to emerge that day?”

Her stomach clenched as her gaze dropped to my chest, and she ran a finger over the soft pelt of her sleeve. Thinking. Judging. Trying to find excuses for mortal’s wickedness.

Her blue eyes sought out mine. “Pa told me how High Priest Dekalon had every town and village form a militia. You might be mistaken.”

Yes, I might be, but that made Orlaigh no less a traitor. At least now, the old woman could serve a greater role in restoring my wife, helping me to stand by my word for I had promised Ada a child.

A traitor would make me no oathbreaker.

“Has she not left the Pale Court many times?” I asked, letting my fingers stroke over Ada’s belly. “Knew her way around the markets and taverns?”

A rush of blood warmed Ada’s veins—courtesy of my command—then her gaze shot to Orlaigh. “You informed people of our plan to ride out? And cost me my baby?”

Orlaigh shook her head so rapidly, it matched the tremble in her voice as she whimpered, “Nay, lass. Never.”

“Perhaps you have… perhaps you have not.” I rested my hand on the small of Ada’s back, where I tugged her into motion before her anger could ebb away. “Such is the plight of the liar, never to be believed again. Go ahead. Feed your body to my throne.”

Ada braced against my urging. “No.”

No?

A muscle twitched in my jaw, and my lips parted as though eager to call upon the God of Whispers. If my little one could not watch the woman who betrayed her get her due punishment, then how could she possibly sit back and watch the slaughter of—

“I want to see how the throne swallows her.” Ada’s words cut through my thoughts and worries alike. “She knew I had signs of pregnancy. Oh, I’ll never forget that look she gave me that day.”

My heart stumbled over one beat, then another, only to quicken into a faster pace that set my arteries awash with relief. Perhaps this blade I balanced was still there, yes, but welded thicker than first assumed.

“And has Orlaigh not asked me to remove the rot from her before we left?” I circled her belly, reminding her of what this woman may or may not have cost us. “As though she knew we might not return for a while.”

“Yes.” The word fell from Ada’s lips, a mere mumble before her voice took on the gust of an encroaching storm. “Three times she betrayed me. Threatened me with the throne. Now, I want to see her in it.”

“And what my wife wants, my wife shall get.” I whispered a kiss against Ada’s temple before I said, “Orlaigh, you heard my queen…”

Trembling like leaves in the autumn breeze, the old woman stepped around the throne. She poked her head through the opening I shaped in the backrest, right between Lord Tarnem and Commander Mertok. It was getting rather crowded.

The bone closed but a second later, swelling around Orlaigh’s neck like white quicksand as she gasped. “Aaah… Ghrrr—”