Queen of rot and pain

Ada

One year later…

I stepped into the tavern, the air thick with the scent of sausages, herbs, and sizzling lard. It had brought many a patron to the rough-hewn tables that stood about, most decked with foam-capped tankards and wicker baskets that held slices of bread.

Men and women turned their heads, then bowed as they ought to as they mumbled, “My queen.” Amidst the occasional screech of bench legs over wooden planks, none dared to leave. That might have earned them my suspicion—something best avoided.

Because worse than a god in love…

… was a goddess out for revenge.

I walked over to the keeper, an old woman whose wimple hung as crooked as her back, and handed her a coin of goodwill. “How many?”

“Your Grace,” she said with a bow that lacked more grace than my own ever had, and jutted her chin toward the stairs. “First room to the right. Three priests and two men with swords.”

A sigh escaped me.

Five men?

How dreadfully boring.

But alas, such was our plight these days, chasing those last followers of Helfa from the small taverns, musty cellars, and secret hideouts in damp caverns.

I lifted the train of my dress, its fabric the sheerest skin, with petals of black beetle shells shaped like a thousand spring roses. Around each, white feathers shifted with each of my steps in lieu of leaves. A crown of fingers that had once pointed at me came together into a crown upon my head, scraping along the low-hanging ceiling as I ascended the stairs.

Traitorous mumbles soon resonated the corridor, hushed whispers and lies that came muffled from behind the door. A door I kicked open but a moment later, letting a priest tumble from a bench while the rest of the lot scurried into the corners.

“The Queen of Rot and Pain. My queen!” One of the priests, who hid a metal pendant in the shape of a sun behind his cotton tunic, raised his arms. “This is but a small gathering of friends, I swear it.”

The hairs bristled along my arms.

Oaths. Promises. Vows.

Nothing but lies.

Proven at my first step toward them, when one of the men unsheathed his sword in all his foolish courage. “We meant nobody any harm.”

Except for me and my husband with how they’d preyed upon us last month, when we wanted nothing but a peaceful walk with our daughter about the meadows.

My eyes fell to the pommel of the man’s sword, engraved with the spread wings of a falcon. “Ah, the crest of House Tertiel. Remind me, mortal, how long has it been since your lord bent his knee, vowing us his loyalty? Three months? Four?”

He slipped his hand from hilt to pommel, covering the symbol as though it could be made unseen. “I came of my own account.”

“I shall put your statement to the test once I come for the bones of your lord’s ailing wife.” What a fine new archway she would span by the Æfen Gate, along with these five dissidents. “For now, I am convicting you for pla

“No! Please, Your Grace,” one of them shouted as chains of bone shaped around his wrists. “Please, have mercy!”

“Oh, but I do.” After all, in the generosity of my kindness, their souls would be allowed to depart to the Court Between Thoughts. “You are lucky my husband—”

One of the armed men stormed at me, sword raised high above his head and ready to strike. “I won’t let you slaughter me like—”

I sent a bone dagger at him, letting it clank against his sword and rip the blade from his palm. Metal hit wood. I gripped his throat. A foolish mistake, because something bit me in the belly.

I stared down at the knife protruding there, close to my waist, where he’d driven it in with his other hand. Nothing too severe. Bleeding, yes, but I was more upset about the damn hole in my dress. Fashioning myself such an ensemble was no easy feat.

“Fool.” I pulled the knife from my body, turned the blade around, and rammed it into his belly. “Such a mess on my dress for nothing. You want to cause me pain? Make me suffer? Well, mortal, then you ought to stab like so.” One pull, and I cut upward into his ribcage before I stepped back and let him slump to the ground. “How wasteful of my time.”

There I stood, counting the minutes to eternity while the man bled to death. The others waited neatly bound and attached to a bone chain, whimpering, and begging, and regretting their—

Ah, finally dead.

“Now rise.” I watched how the man stood, how he stared down at himself in shock, as they always did. Next, he would scream, so I gagged him with a patch of skin. “Take the chain and lead your friends outside. Hurry now. Against what rumors may say, I do not, in fact, have all the time in the world.”

I turned around and went back down, the tavern as silent as the grave aside from how the five men shuffled behind me, bone chain clanking across the ground.

“Follow me,” I said as I crossed the empty market, and left the little village through a slender copse of trees that opened into a spring meadow dotted with orange tulips. “No need to litter this quaint little place with your intestines. That is far enough. Now kneel before your queen.”

Against the dead man’s grunts of protest, he kicked his four friends into the back of their knees. At my silent command, he unsheathed a knife, bringing it to the priest’s throat as tendrils of braided skin slithered about the calf-high grass. Hay season. My favorite.

“I’m growing tired of the likes of you.” Most of all, I was growing tired of how the priests prayed to Helfa. Still. “You know, if you prayed to me instead, the kind part of me might yet be swayed. Ask my husband. Too caring, he calls—”

“Ada! Come and see!” Enosh’s voice came from downhill, strained with unbridled excitement. “Ada!”

“What now?” I mumbled as I turned away, leaving the men behind to piss themselves some more.

I walked down the sway of the hill, palms outstretched so I may feel the gentle scrape of the cat grass along my knuckles. Not far down, Enosh sat on a blanket of braided hair, his hair tousled from the spring breeze, carrying a blueish tint with how generous the sun shone down this day.

And there, in front of him, was Amelia.

A chain of red clover blossoms her father must have tied together sat among her black wisps, bringing out the rich blue of her eyes. She gingerly rocked back and forth on her hands and knees. Would she do it this time?

I stopped several feet away from them with an excited tingle in my chest, watching our sweet daughter with rapt attention. How she carefully lifted one hand and reached forward, chunky legs going wobbly. With a high-pitched squeal, she shifted her balance forward. So close.

Until her other arm gave out underneath her. She quickly jerked herself back into a sitting position, skipping the warning cries and going straight to screams and tears of disappointment. Dramatic, just like her father…

“Shh…” The sweetest hushing sounds resonated the meadow as Enosh picked her up, pressed her against his chest, and tenderly rocked her. “Patience, my love. Not much longer now, and you will crawl about court. Oh, how Orlaigh will groan as she chases behind you.”

Something the old woman would do gladly, considering that it kept her out of Enosh’s throne. It had taken little more but soiled clouts, a bout of colic, and teething pains to convince my husband that we needed a maid.

Raising a child is more exhausting than I had anticipated, Enosh said often, usually right before he went to bed. There, he lowered Amelia onto his chest, one arm wrapped around her as the two of them slept for a day or three.

My heart clenched at the memory, but it burst with ardor when Enosh pressed a kiss to Amelia’s forehead, then shoved the tip of his nose into her hair, breathing her in. He was a good father, showering her with attention and love, often taking her on walks.

Enosh glanced over his shoulder back at me and smiled. “You missed it.”

I walked over to them and sat on the blanket, and gave my little Amelia a kiss. “I’ve been watching you all along.”

“My little princess is in need of a nap,” he said as he gently stroked his thumb from her forehead down the bridge of her nose. “The mortals?”

“Waiting for death up the hill.”

“Finish, so we may go home.” He pressed his lips to mine in a loving kiss, but it was the way his other arm came around my middle that had me hiss in pain. “What’s this?”

I looked from the blood on his fingertips up into the approaching storm in his eyes. “It is but a scratch, borne of a mortal’s stupidity and my eagerness to get this over with.”

Enosh was having none of it and rose, pressing Amelia tightly against him as he stormed up the hill. “Who was it?”

“Not now, Enosh. She’s tired.” I got up and hurried behind him. “Besides, the mortal is already dead.”

“With his wicked soul still about,” he growled down at the gagged corpse, who shuffled back a step. “You dared to touch my wife? Draw her blood while our daughter is learning to crawl only a handful of feet from her?”

Beside them, Yarin quickly came into his form with a wide grin lining his lips. “Amelia finally crawled?”

“No, she got scared, but it can’t be much longer now,” Enosh said, then lifted our heavy-lidded daughter into Yarin’s arms. “Hold her.”

“Sweet little thing, Uncle Yarin is here.” He took her, drumming the tip of her nose in a way that never failed to lure a giggle from her. “Oh, how tired you look, but there is mischief to be had, Amelia.”

Enosh swatted the chain from the corpse’s hand, gripped the hair at the back of his head, and all but dangled him by it to a nearby boulder. “Another family memory stained by the likes of you.”

He slammed the mortal’s face against the rock. Crack. And again. Crack. And a third time. Slosh.

The corpse hadn’t slumped to the ground yet when Enosh spun around, assessing the cut on my side even as he let out an a

“I was.” Not truly. I’d been bored, letting down my guard at the dreadful premise of coming all this way for merely five men. “It is nothing, Enosh.”

After he convinced himself of it, he nodded and took my face between his palms, letting his forehead sink against mine. “No more, Ada. Not until your bleeding comes, and certainly, none of this should you be with child again. Yes?”

“Yes,” I whispered, finding a strange comfort in this hint of ash sprinkled over snow that we shared in. “Let me finish this real quick.”

One after another, I shaped a bone dagger in my palm, ramming it into the bellies of three men.

The fourth one, one of the priests, stared up at me from tear-drowned eyes. “I ca