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Enosh
I was ruined.
For eternity.
There she stood—my woman, my wife, my queen—with a wicked mortal bleeding out by her left foot and a stu
That made the premise of her resurrection as frightening as the thought of her renewed mortality.
“Her breath for mine.” Leaning over, she brought the blade close to Eilam once more, then let the bone clank to the floor. “Or I swear I’ll not just be a speck on your memory, but a lesson on what those strange creatures called women are capable of once they have nothing left to lose.”
I rocked the crying boy in my arms like I had witnessed mortals do, loving the monotony of the motion, but I must have been doing it wrong for he kept screaming. “If you want her soul bound, we ought to call upon the God of Whispers.”
“I changed my mind.” Ada turned toward me while forming a cradle with her arms, her features warm as she blinked down at the baby, yet a stoic, almost resigned strain came to her jawline. “Let me see if I can calm him. Shh…”
Tugging on the woolen blanket, I covered the child and lowered him into her arms, watching how she hushed him. How she gingerly stroked from his forehead down along the bridge of his nose, again and again, until… yes, it calmed him.
I committed the sight to memory.
So much to learn about babies…
Once his cries faded, Ada carried him over to a nearby cradle, like she would soon do with our child… if my brother proved true to his word.
The trembling, uttering mortal who swore he had no involvement posed no threat, so I strolled over to my brother. Oh, he looked positively shaken, unaccustomed to the pains of the flesh and taken by surprise by who had inflicted it.
Eilam rose, still bare, snarling down at his bloody hand. “Your wife dared to cut me.”
“And if you refuse her once more, she will cut you again in places far more painful.” I let breeches form around him, along with a plain leather jacket. “It is over. Stand by your word and give her your breath, or on my vow, I shall turn these lands into a boneyard and dance with my wife upon a carpet of skulls.”
His lips twitched with renewed anger, so unlike his usual apathy. “At what cost?”
My stomach tightened.
I glanced at Ada where she stood by the cradle, rocking it with her knee while her bloodied hand rubbed over her dress. Desperate to wipe it off. But it were the abrupt movements that caught my attention. Was she resolved? Shaken? Were her muscles twitching from unbridled energy? I could not determine one or the other.
If the latter and my brother still refused, how would she continue? What if my little one had fulfilled my brother’s demand out of desperation? How much more death could Ada witness before she would distance herself from me once more?
I bit the inside of my cheek if only to keep myself from slamming Eilam against the wall for forcing me to yield some. “What else is it you want?”
A pout played around his lips. “Will you not guess?”
His damn balance. “Very good. Villages, towns, peasants… I shall spare it all until High Priest Dekalon is dead, the temples are destroyed, and the priests strung to Ada’s tree. After that, we shall return home and be peaceful.”
“I do not think so, Enosh.” Eilam straightened, making him stand taller than me, if only by half a hand. “I demand you open your gates and return to your duty of spreading rot, cleansing the earth of all that once lived.”
A small concession, considering that I had given this promise to my wife already and would see it fulfilled as agreed upon. “You shall have my promise.”
“Not only that, but you will end your crusade against the temples and priests now, and your quarrels with them shall not cost another mortal life.”
“Impossible!” Daub rilled from the walls, and the wooden planks beneath my boots creaked with how old bone in the ground writhed with my anger. “Each time I step foot into these lands praying to a false god, I will be hunted, captured, and burned, returning home to my wife and child eventually, yes, but charred to nothing more than cartilage and bone.”
“Had you done your duty, it would not have come to this,” he said in all his glorious ignorance, so oblivious to the hardships of being the only god bound to his form. “Time shall restore their beliefs and—”
“I vowed to have the high priest’s head in my throne, and you will not take that from me. Brother, you will not. I have suffered pains you ca
In no hurry, he stepped toward a wicker basket that stood on a stool, and pulled an onion from it, which he examined with utter fascination. “Choose, Enosh. Your revenge or your wife. Now, before you question the value of my word once more, hear this.” Onion tossed back into the basket, he turned to face me. “She shall have her breath regardless of your choice… but for how long can she keep it this time? Mortality is nothing but a sickness. She suffers it like all her kind, making this nothing more than one quarrel between brothers… of many more to come.”
Bone shivered across the lands, ready to shape into a spiked rod to shove up his prick sideways. And while nothing would delight me more than to see him bleed out from his genitals, I willed it all to settle in the ground once more.
Oh, I hated him so.
Righteous, dull, celibate Eilam.
Unfortunately, his words made sense.
Decades, centuries, eons… As old as time, I had witnessed a great many crossroads, yet none had felt as significant as this one. I ought to think on this for a moment.
My Ada called me ill-tempered, and she was correct, for I was tempted to turn around, take my wife, and keep on killing. Eilam would be forced to return her breath eventually. Oh yes, he would restore my wife’s life… after I’d either killed her feelings for me or eradicated the part of her I loved dearly.
And if we demanded her breath now while I refused to bow to his demands…? He would chase after her breath for eternity, and then I would chase after him to return it. Armies of corpses, beheadings, bloodshed, gods at each other’s throats…
There would be no peace.
Only hatred and revenge, both of which I had sworn off for it had cost me my wife and child once before. I could not let it affect my family a second time.
“Give her the breath of life and, on my word, I shall do as you ask. I will revoke my vow of vengeance to the high priest.” For my wife and child, I would do this, so they would be alive and well within our home. “However… you will promise not to take her breath again should anything ever happen to her.”
Eilam shrugged. “It leaves her soul fragile just the same.”
“Her soul shall be of no concern to you, so as long as you leave her breath alone,” I said. “Do you promise me this?”
His eerie black eyes took me in for another moment before he gave a curt nod. “We are agreed.”
I turned away and walked over to my little one, stepping up behind her with a kiss on her shoulder. “My love, are you ready to receive the breath of life?”
She stared at the sleeping boy for a moment longer, then turned just as her lips struggled up a weak smile with the oddest answer. “We need to ensure he’s taken care of.”
“Gold coins take care of mortals, I have learned.” I clasped her chin, bringing those bright blue eyes up to meet mine. “Are you well?”
“No,” she said in all her painful honesty, yet a nod followed. “But I will be. Once this is finally over. I need this to be over, Enosh.”
“Then come.”
With my hand on the small of her back, I guided her toward my brother. At the same time, I extended my mind, commanding the dead to spread out and secure a path to the Pale Court. I had to protect her better from now on.
“Ada…” Eilam walked up to us, assessed my little one for another moment, then took a deep breath. “Cure her of any rot and decay, or she will come back to life ridden with foul sickness, and I refuse to take the blame.”
Removing even the tiniest specks of corrosion from her form, I stroked her cheek, willing her muscles to ease and give where her shoulders wanted to stiffen. “Shh… it is almost over now. Take two deep breaths. One for you. One for our baby.”
“Our baby,” she said, then inhaled.
Inhaled again.
Nodded.
“Wait,” I said when Eilam stepped closer, letting my arm clasp around Ada’s waist while I cupped her face. “Any moment now, you will leave the prison of your death. I will be neither guard nor master, neither punishment nor absolution. Only your husband who loves you very much. The question is, what will you be? I need to hear it.”
Say that you love me.
For a couple of breaths, Ada only stared at me, but understanding soon dawned on her as she mirrored my gesture and cupped my face. “And if I don’t answer, will you keep me trapped in death?”
I forced a smile. “Facing the premise of losing you this very moment, I just might.”
Ada smiled back and patted my cheek, thumbing the emerging stubble on my chin the way she did often and seemed to enjoy. “If that is true, then you don’t deserve the answer until after.”
That made me grin with its painful truth. No, I had botched our relationship once by wearing it down with old distrust, and I would not risk it again. Would trust she had found some love for me. That my little one would return to me. Always and forever return to me.
If not… well…
…I could always collar her again.
I gave her a nod. “Stubborn, obstinate, beautiful woman.”
“Arrogant, cruel, a
I placed a kiss to her lips, trying to taste the remnants of the vows she had given, the devotion with which she had once spoken them. “I shall ask you again once your heart beats on its own.”
Eilam leaned slightly forward, bringing his lips close enough to hers that my jaws clenched, leaving but a sliver of air between them. Air which turned frigid, letting even my little one’s breath billow. Eilam’s eyes blackened further, seemingly turning into liquid tar.
I watched with sheer wonder, having never witnessed my brother’s power of giving and taking life.
But only until all strength was sucked from Ada’s form, as though she was nothing but a puppet with its strings cut unexpectedly, and I could not keep her upright.
Heart hammering in my chest, I caught her in my arms and pulled her against me. “Ada! Ada, what is it?” No reaction. Not even a blink. “What have you done to her?”