My throat shrank to suffocating tightness as I glanced over my shoulder at Enosh. His jaws clenched; eyes so fixed on the flames licking the moist evening air that he spared the girl not even a glance. The girl wasn’t mine but, had I been blessed with a child, wouldn’t I beg the same as this woman did?

Yes, I would.

Only when I pressed my hand to Enosh’s chest did he look down at where I touched him, then his eyes met mine as his deep voice verged a predatory growl. “Little one, the answer is no.”

I swallowed against the grip of heartache and hatred. “She’s just a child.”

The one I never had, yet I felt her mother’s agony bone-deep. Whatever had happened to Enosh, these people had nothing to do with it. Least of all this little girl, her brown hair neatly braided, the end tied with a purple ribbon.

“Enosh,” I whispered. “Can you do this for me? Just this once? Please? Rest them, and they’ll be on their way.”

At that, the muscles in his jaws jumped, but he neither barked nor grunted. Was he considering it? He had to be. Oh, please, please, he had to give me this one thing.

But he shook his head ever so faintly, letting my heart sink as he looked back at the woman. “I have no use for your earthly possessions. Go home.”

“But Lord!” The woman ran up before me, her little girl’s lifeless limbs tossing about, but it was the hiss of fire following behind her that straightened Enosh’s spine. “I am your humble subject. Whatever you wish of me, I will…” Her voice trailed off, eyes going to me once more before she rearranged the lifeless body of the spindly girl. Then, head lowered, she pushed the threadbare cotton of her dress down, exposing a breast. “If you wish to lie with— Augh!”

The man beside her fisted her hair and yanked her about with brute strength, but still, she didn’t let go of her daughter as arms flopped about. “How dare you whore yourself out in front of everyone?”

“She’s doing it!” The woman stabbed a finger at me, voice tight with grief and anger. “He can sard me forward and backward, plunder all my holes—”

Smack.

Her husband’s palm hit her hard enough that the woman spun, then sunk to her knees on a groan. “Shut your mouth before I beat you close to death. Harlot!”

A cry lodged from my throat. “Enosh, please—”

“Be quiet,” he snarled, then turned to let the strength of his voice shatter through the night. “This is my only warning. Leave, before I let the corpses open the ground and swallow you whole.”

I trembled at his roar.

No, the ground did.

It shifted beneath us, letting some people stagger sideways while a wooden wheel vibrated off its axis. The handcart broke down, letting two beaten corpses roll off and splay out in the dirt. A woman cried out.

“Enosh, the ground is shaking…” My words drowned beneath the villager’s screams. “Wh-what is happening? Oh my god, oh my god, oh my— Are you doing this?”

The corpses twitched.

Their death-veiled eyes blinked open.

They jerked to their feet.

Except for the girl.

Still resting in loving arms, Anna wrapped her small hands around her mother’s neck, then clasped tightly. She choked her mother harder with each violent snap of her jaws. Little teeth dug into the woman’s neck, cutting through skin and ripping flesh until her mother screamed. Yet the woman didn’t let go, clasping her daughter tighter as she scrambled to her feet and ran.

It was too terrible.

Too painful to breathe through.

“Stop it!” I shouted, hands pressing to my mouth as I watched the dead chase the living. Whatever rage my voice carried, in the end, it distorted into a long wail of helplessness. “She’s just a little girl…”

Enosh held me tighter. “Be still!”

He let the horse thrust into a canter, passing town after town until my arse burned nearly as much as my tear-filled eyes. The wind made it only worse as we thundered along a dirt trail that eventually changed into the ca-lop-ca-lop of iron clashing cobblestone, lights illuminating windows from afar. I twisted and dug my face into Enosh’s shirt, dampening it with my tears.

This late in the evening, villagers paid us no mind. Not until a man spotted the horse’s white eyes, starting that first mumble, which soon hushed across the village like the foreboding breeze of a storm. They all came together—some wearing their nightcaps—while sleepy-eyed children hid behind skirts as they took in our dead steed.

After Enosh passed the scorching waft of heat from a quiet forge, he rode the horse up to the tavern and dismounted. “I sense the tension in your muscles and the sickness roiling in your belly.” He pulled me down, immediately steadying me on my gnarled legs. “Dare run, mortal, and I shall have the most decrepit corpses the ground has to offer drag you back.”

Sickness wasn’t nearly strong enough a word to describe all the nasty things I wanted to spit at him. After a month at the Pale Court, I’d nearly forgotten how the world outside suffered, fathers feeding their dead children to the wolves just to keep them from wandering.

I pushed his chest. “Right now, I’d crawl through the shit in the streets to get away from you.”

He gripped my arms with bruising strength and shook me. “You want to leave me?”

“How could I not want to leave you? Any woman in her right mind would!”

Something ignited in his eyes. “Then my brother shall give you a wrong mind!”

“I hate you.” I lifted my chin high and met his stormy gaze. “I hate you so much that not even your brother is powerful enough to change that.”

His head jerked back as if I’d struck him. It lasted for the fraction of a breath before his gray eyes darkened with… I wasn’t sure.

He picked me up, carried me up the steps to the tavern, and kicked the door open. “Oh, little one, how you’ll scream my name within the next hour.”

“The fuck I will.”

Behind the door, the three-story tavern lay empty—aside from the town’s drunkard leaning crooked against a wall of wattle and daub. The stench of ale soured between the cracks of rough-hewn tables and benches. Beside them, the tavern keeper stared at us from underneath her plain, cotton wimple.

She blinked wide eyes at Enosh, her hands fumbling with her brown skirts as she curtsied. “I think… I think I know who you are. Heard stories as a wee lass.”

“Then you’ll know it best to be quiet about it.”

She nodded. “Does the King need a boy to lead his horse to the stables?”

Enosh frowned. “My horse is in need of nothing, but I require your best room. You will bring us fresh meats, warm bread, and berries if you can find them. I also expect a tub to be brought to our room filled with clean, warm water and a rag.”

She stared at me for a moment until, with a start, she worked herself out of her daze. “Yes, Your Grace. Gretchen!” Fingers snapped toward the narrow archway behind her. “Come to heel, girl! We have a guest, none less than the King of Flesh and Bone himself. Go prepare the large room. Take the driest kindle—”

“No fire.” Enosh rummaged through the pocket of his breeches, letting a handful of gold coins clink into the woman’s meaty palm. “Will this cover the night?”

“Your Grace is too generous,” she said, reaching the coins back to him. “After a life full of nothing but tales about you from some stinky old priests… I don’t want your gold.”

“My woman is weary. Let this be clear, I will not tolerate your begging at my door. Take the coin, for none of your kin will find rest with me.”

The woman chuckled, a hearty sound that shook her entire belly. “I have no children. All kin abandoned me when I was a young lass. All I have are three dead husbands who broke my heart and my purse. I beg of you, do not let them rot.”

“I can tell we’ll be good friends.” Enosh turned toward the stairs, following a pale Gretchen, pressing me tighter against his chest as he whispered, “I shall raise corpses outside for protection. Nobody leaves this town… least of all, you.”