She didn’t.

Of course she didn’t.

My little mortal watched as Yarin leaned over the woman, placing the knife in her lap and his mouth to her ear. “First, little Henry taken by yellow fever, and now Thomas… What’s there left to live for? Nothing. Why not put an end to this misery?” Without a single tremble, the woman took the knife and pressed the glinting blade to her neck. “Do it. You know you want to. Can’t stand the thought of continuing like this. Do it now. Cut!”

One slice, deep enough that dark red blood sprayed from the woman’s neck with each dying beat of her heart, raining down on her husband’s corpse, soaking the front of her dress.

I tasted bile.

Not mine.

My little mortal leaned away from me before she retched onto the ground. She emptied her stomach of her breakfast as all strength leeched from her muscles. I would need to find her food and, if possible, a bed so she may rest.

“Shh…” I pressed a hand to the back of her sweat-covered neck, sensing how the exhaustion of the day finally overpowered her. “See, my little one? Your plight could be worse. You could have ended in the arms of my brother instead.”

“I didn’t think this through,” Yarin yapped as he bound the soul. “That’s on you, Enosh. Always rushing me. Now look how she bled out, her skin all pale and sickly. At least fix the wound or it’ll make odd slapping sounds each time I thrust into her. Who wants that?”

With a sigh, I closed the wound, then let the woman rise. “Two more. Hurry up. My little one is tired and in pain.”

“That one over there, with the spear stuck in the head. Oh, don’t cry, sweet thing.” Yarin stroked tears from the woman’s face that would dry out soon enough on their own. “There will be no more hunger, no sorrows. I’ll take care of you now, yes?”

The woman nodded. “Yes. You’ll take care of me.”

“That’s right, my love. You’re mine now, and I’ll have you in any way I want.”

“Any way you want,” she crooned and pressed her hips flush against him. “I love you.”

“Of course you do.” Yarin’s eyes snapped to mine as my veins heated, but they ignited when he grinned and asked, “Jealous?”

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter 12

OceanofPDF.com

Ada

“We shall bed down at the tavern,” Enosh said, steering toward the glinting lights of the town ahead. “You need a warm meal, a bed, and rest. Something I should have taken into consideration, but… I haven’t had to care for a mortal in a long time.”

He said it as though he wanted to apologize for starving me half a day but didn’t quite know how. “Thank you.”

The tips of his fingers slowly raked over my scalp, which he did often, seemingly content with the monotone motion. “How come you never remarried?”

“Probably because proposals are sparse around barren women who got their husbands killed.” Beyond tired, I let myself sink back against his chest. “Eternity will feel twice as long if I keep wondering so… will you tell me how Njala died?”

There was a long beat of silence until he finally cleared his throat. “There was an argument between Lord Tarnem and me when he demanded more corpses than we’d agreed upon. Against my telling her not to get involved, Njala left the Pale Court without my knowledge to speak to her father.”

“Orlaigh helped her sneak away?”

His chin brushed along the side of my head as he nodded, first stubbles catching on my strands. “He kept her from me, sending her across the land with Commander Mertok, trying to force my hand by keeping her out of my reach. When he refused to come to his senses, I marched thousands of corpses to his hold. He offered a parley then, stating a misunderstanding, saying that he himself had fallen victim to a betrayal. He lured me into a frozen valley.”

“And trapped you.”

“Ah, my little one, a moment of utter folly on my part, but gods are not free of failure, and I was desperate. Eventually, I freed myself and leveled his kingdom to the ground. I chased across the lands beyond the Soltren Gate in search of my companion. But by the time I reached Njala, months later, Commander Mertok slit her throat as… as an act of revenge.”

My ears pricked at the hesitation. “You didn’t chain her soul?”

“It departed quicker than I could act.”

Quicker than he could act.

An unexpected hollowness formed in my core. When I turned to look at him, I shuddered beneath his unguarded stare and how those hairline cracks in his icy mask opened into gaping craters. Shadows played around his face in the setting darkness, as though wanting to hide what I discovered behind the fractured facade of the cruel god.

For the first time since Enosh had taken me captive, I saw the man beneath the immortal, heartbroken and vulnerable, the reasons for his undying rage clearer the more he shared with me. For us mortals, grief ended with death, but his lasted for an eternity, spent as what had to be a lonely existence.

I straightened and looked forward once more, not liking how all this softened me toward him. “If you killed those responsible for your loss, then why condemn the rest of us?”

“Because the depravity at the mortals’ core is to blame for all this, their never-ending hunger for power, which is not for them to have.”

“If we’re all so bad at the core, then why keep me? I’m one of them.”

“Mmm, yet you carry the least of it, a precious particularity about you I failed to recognize when you first came to me.”

There was that word again.

Precious.

My core expanded at the sheer sound of it, my ears utterly unaccustomed to the word. How twisted my life had become, where I tried to escape the man who refused to let me go, only to get back to the man who’d once wanted rid of me.

I rubbed at my itchy eyes. “One step out of your court and you could’ve cut one of those virgins down some idiots had sacrificed off a trunk two hundred years ago.”

“Lift your chin. Higher!” His fingers wrapped around my throat, tilting my head back until he had access to kiss along the side of my neck where he whispered, “For as much as I torment you with need, you do the same to me, mortal, or I would have tossed you outside to let you die among the corpses. Servant, plaything, treasure… above all, you are my woman.”

I shuddered.

Not an unwoman.

Not a woman.

His woman.

He held no power over my body out here, but his words infiltrated me just the same, sending gooseflesh across my skin. The ardor in his tone even over a word such as plaything, the possessiveness of his grip where another had once threatened to discard me… The urgency with which he wanted me roused a faithless flutter in my belly.

I ignored it. “Maybe—”

“There he is!”

My gaze swung around.

My fingers numbed.

A handful of villagers hesitantly approached from a dark orchard, carrying limp corpses or wheeling them on handcarts, the moonlight breaking against the blades strapped to the three men among them.

Enosh hissed at the sight of the torches they carried, the horse dancing underneath us as if it sensed its master’s fear.

He feared fire.

Why else would the feathers grow damp against my skin where he dug his fingers into my belly, pulling me against him as he shouted, “Return to your hearths!”

They didn’t turn but at least they stopped, exchanging glances, shrugs, and mumbles. Of course, gossip about a man riding a dead horse had spread.

“M’Lord…” A woman stepped forward, the girl draped over her arms a pale blue even against the orange flickers of fire, old sores speckling her cheeks. “This is Anna, my only child. The pox took her three winters ago.” Her eyes shifted to me for a breath before the woman lowered her head. “My husband and I will give you all we have if only y-you… merciful Lord, please let her rest. For days, she battled the fever. All I w-want is for my daughter to rest in peace. Y-you have this power, do you not?”