Queen of rot and pain

Ada

“The one with the fish cages stacked beside the door.” Sitting astride our horse upon a hill, I pointed at the house in the valley before us near the forge, the wattle and daub freshly whitewashed, the roof neatly thatched. Pretty. “She should be in there.”

As requested, Enosh had once again dressed me for the occasion. This time, my husband had outdone himself with a dress of feathers, the bodice swan-white, then turning grayer and grayer down along the train, only to end in black plumes and a fringe of soot-covered fingers.

Courtesy of Henry and Arne.

The house we’d stayed at had been low on wood, and my husband proved quite incapable of finding more in the forest. His solution? Let their parched bodies climb into the hearth, feeding the flames as he continuously restored their bodies.

Enosh cast his gray eyes over the powdery-white village, his cape of crow feathers matching the train of my dress. “Unless the farmer lied.”

“You’d be surprised how merrily people turn against strangers.” As Rose had done with me, and as I would do with her. “What if I want her in your throne like the others? Will you do that for me?”

“I will not.”

My gaze shot over my shoulder at him, finding a lopsided grin that tugged on the corner of his mouth, playful in a way I’d never witnessed before. Was he… trying himself at humor?

I stretched my arm out, warming my black-gloved fingers on the seven-foot flame a soulbound and gagged Arne so kindly provided beside us with his remaining body parts as I tried to decipher my husband. Enosh looked younger like this, carefree, lending him an air of mortality.

I arched a brow, twisting further in the saddle to ensure he saw it. “How was that? Your goal to gain my heart remains unchanged?”

A single, breathy laugh burst from his throat. “Negotiating with a god once more, that mortal woman who has neither patience nor a shred of obedience?”

“You prefer me that way.” My cheeks bunched at the playfulness between us, the familiarity we’d grown around each other. “Rose in your throne in exchange for an inkling of love.”

“As though your chest is not full of it already, fluttering so nicely between the beats of your heart for me to sense and revel in.” For a moment, he lifted his chin by a haughty inch the way he’d used to, but I saw the twitch on his cheek, the teasing twinkle in his eyes. “My throne is rather crowded at the moment, but are you not my Queen of Rot and Pain?” He stroked a strand of my hair back, twirling it around a joint on my jawbone tiara, letting the veil of teeth strung on threads of skin at the back clank at the motion. “Once we return home, I shall fashion you a throne beside mine… right after I have made a cradle. Decorate it as you please.”

“Her head in my throne, and her legs, drumsticks for my child to play with.”

He dipped down, letting his lips warm mine in a gentle kiss, followed by a quick nuzzle of my nose. “What my wife wants, my wife shall get.”

Willing our horse into an unhurried walk, he followed a narrow trample path that led into Hogsbottom. Smoke lingered between the quiet homes, mingling with the wet fog of the early morning. How strangely narrow all this seemed, walls creeping toward me as though I no longer fit into such a place.

Somewhere, a creek prattled underneath a thin sheet of ice, coming together with the ca-lops of hooves hitting the cobblestone cleared of snow. Until we came to a halt by the fish cages.

An old man leaned against a stable with a pipe hanging from his mouth, puffing into the air as he squinted at us. If he were smart, he would stay just like that.

Enosh dismounted, glancing around and assessing our surroundings as he helped me down. “You are still determined?”

My gaze went from the snow gently rolling from the roof, to the breeze tugging on the naked twigs of a shrub, to the gentle flutter of the feathers on my dress. Was Eilam watching?

“More than ever before.”

Arne might have driven the blade into my belly, but who had taken my help only to betray me? Who had chased her brother and cousin after me like hounds? Who had sold out Pa? Who had set this entire mess into motion?

Rose.

Beneath the unholy hate quivering in my core and the determination to end this once and for all, I had neither capacity for doubt nor pity. I wanted her dead with an urgency, and I might just kill her like I’d done with Henry.

Fast. Simple.

Get on with my life.

Literally.

At my gesture, Enosh kicked the door in, letting out a swath of heat that lured me toward the crackle of flames and the screeching of chair legs over wood.

With unbending resolve, I stepped inside the home, only for shock to paralyze every single muscle in my body. My joints locked. My mouth gaped open. My temples throbbed with the echo of my foolishness.

There she stood, peachy-cheeked Rose, scrambling back like the rat she was until her back hit the wall so hard the baby gave a warning cry.

The one in her arms.

I swallowed air, my eyes so fixed on the bundled-up babe that I barely registered how her husband lifted a chair before his chest as though it would offer protection. Curse me, I’d forgotten all about the fact that she’d been pregnant back in Elderfalls.

No, not exactly forgotten.

I’d simply worried so much about my own child and it hadn’t occurred to me once that I might find her with a baby in her arms, its dimpled cheeks red from the generous heat in the hearth.

Should that deter me?

Enosh must have worried so, because he kicked the door shut, then placed his heavy hand on my shoulder, giving a sobering squeeze. “Is this the mortal woman responsible for your death?”

Lips trembling, tears streamed down her cheeks as Rose’s eyes flicked to her useless, cowering husband, who mumbled prayers, then back to Enosh. “I… It was my brother’s idea, my cousin who held the knife. I swear, I—”

“Mortals swear a great many things, though few of them prove true.” Enosh gave the onsets of trembles on my fingers a concerned side glance, then straightened and jutted his chin toward Rose’s husband. “Give him the child, for I shall remain true to my vow and punish those who have brought misery to my wife.”

“No, please!” Rose clutched the baby to her chest, letting it startle and flex its chubby arms from the woolen blanket with another warning cry. “Please, I… ask of me whatever you wish but… please, my baby needs me.”

Enosh smacked his lips. “Yet another conundrum, for my baby, too, needs its mother. I shall not place yours above mine.”

When Enosh extended his arms to take the child and shifted forward, I stepped in front of him. “No, I need to be the one.”

I had to do this.

On my own.

“Very well.” Enosh let the same blade I had used to kill Henry shape there in his open palm, my husband’s forehead wrinkling with a dozen justified doubts. “The wind picked up when we arrived.”

“I know,” I said when I took the knife, the handle somehow going slick and damp in my grip as I looked at Rose. “Give your baby to your husband.”

“No…” Rose whimpered, holding it tighter as she sniffled and cried until snot drooled onto her upper lip. “Oh my god, Helfa, I just wanted a better life for me and my baby instead of fish stew every damn day.”

My stupid stomach clenched as though recognizing the hunger pains any fisherman’s wife or daughter experienced whenever the damn beasts wouldn’t bite. But only until I looked around the house.

Fragrant, golden straw poked from the linen on the mattress, a fire that burned away throwing barely any smoke into the room, and a fat cured ham hanging from a rafter. Oh, she’d made herself a nice little home, indeed.

With the coin from the priests.

I took a strong step toward her, gripping the handle of the blade tighter. “You sold out my father. Where is he? What happened to him?”

At my questioning, Rose’s feet slowly slipped out from underneath her, and she sunk along the wall until she pooled into a puddle of cries on the floor. “They t-took him. Said he’d be useful to the high priest, paid me a handful of c-coins, then put him on a mule. Elisa… Adelaide, please… look at my baby.” Before I managed to focus my gaze elsewhere, she turned the little thing, showing me its stubby nose and flakes of white on its chin from when it must have spit some milk. “Look at my… my baby.”

I did look.

God help me, I stared down at the baby, its eyes hazel-brown. A handsome thing, with chubby cheeks, full lips that rooted for a nipple, and a thatch of brown hair poking out from the blanket draped over its head.

A heavy weight came over my chest, so overwhelming I squatted before them. If I killed Rose now, this child would never know its mother—just like I had never known mine.

That ached me.

For a moment, I might have contemplated to spare her. There were plenty of other wicked souls out there I could kill to show Eilam that I had meant what I’d said. Maybe.

Until the god took shape right beside Rose, ripping a startled yelp from her but leaving her no direction to flee. Trapped between walls on two sides, the bare god to her left, and me in front of her, she simply folded her arms over her baby.

‘Ada. His voice filtered not into my head like his brothers, but rather, into my very core. Will you truly rob a babe of its mother? Condemn it to grow up without ever knowing her embrace when it scraped a knee, or the sound of her voice when she sings it to sleep?’

“Shut up,” I mumbled, probably sounding like a madwoman, rambling to myself like this, and perhaps I was because the weight of the knife tripled as though I truly wanted to spare that bitch. “You think this will hold me back?”

It couldn’t.

Not with how Eilam sat there with that smug smile all the brothers seemed to have inherited from whatever hellhole birthed them. All this killing would continue if I succumbed to doubt now. All those corpses out there…? They would have died for nothing.

Was this not better?

To kill one, yes, but spare the rest?

Did that not make me a hero?

Besides, what if I failed now, and Eilam would go back on his offer? What if he didn’t? I couldn’t bring myself to kill someone less deserving of punishment than this woman. What if Enosh would wipe these lands like he’d done before? What if—

‘Ada.’ Eilam’s voice had my nostrils flare and my molars grind together. ‘Think of the baby. The i

“Quiet!”

Rose startled so hard at my shout that the baby shook in her arms. One warning wail, and another, then the boy started to cry with vigor. Tiny red veins popped up all over his wrinkled face, chunky fingers clenching and unclenching.

“Shh…” On instinct, I reached my hand forward, hushing him, wanting to pick up this boy and hold him against me.

Rose pulled him away from me.

Did what I had wanted to do instead.