“Shh, do not disguise your lust as loathing,” he crooned inches from my ear, curling his fingers inside me, promising wicked pleasure with how he palmed my tender nub. “Give in to me. You know you want to. Want me to drown you in pleasure until you resurface and bloom. Ah, you are so close, my little one.” His breathing came faster, harsher, panting against my neck with each thrust of his fingers. “Mmm, such heat around your pulsing gem. Release it. Let go.”

I cried out at the torrential wave of pleasure as a riptide surged through me, lifting me to the highest high before it dropped me into the shameful gorge of defeat. Something fractured inside me with my next inhale—perhaps my sanity, though likelier, my self-respect.

“Good girl.” Enosh’s purr broke against my forehead, where he nuzzled the fine wisps along my hairline. “Mmm, do you believe it now, little one? That you long for my touch?”

My ragged breathing soon hiccupped into a pathetic sob. How many times had I succumbed to this man and how easily he weaved pleasure through me? Had I truly been so deprived of touch, of attention, of the feeling to be wanted that I enjoyed this depravity?

His finger stroked through the middle of my forehead and down to the tip of my nose. “Why would you want to escape such pleasure?”

Reality crept back into me one strained inhale at a time. Perhaps I was mad, or lonely, or debauched—God’s bones, maybe I was all three at once. Nothing but a mere mortal with a beating heart, pitted against the devastating whims of a virile god.

He could have my body.

But never my soul.

Never its surrender.

Braving his sly grin, I shifted away from his touch. “No pleasure in this world could make me want to stay around your corrupted character.”

Something cracked in the abyss of his gray eyes. For a grin-dropping second, it appeared as though his mask broke in too many places all at once. Unable to sustain his air of superiority, the age-old face behind the decaying veneer contorted in… yes, anger.

It screamed around a god enraged, barely contained by his mortal form. The room shook in much the same way the ground had earlier, and the glass in the window clattered. Did he do this? Because he was mad? Mercy god, what angered him so? Escape was but a dream already faded.

His hand went to my throat, right above my collar, not choking me but clasping hard enough as if to let me know that he could. “I hold you for hours after we coupled, feeding you from one hand while the other strokes your hair until all tension leaves your muscles. The little skin I have left at my disposal, I weave into the finest dresses, and the softest pelts line your bed.” His forehead lowered against mine, and his eyes closed as he shifted his mouth against my lips. “Kiss me.” He slammed his mouth to mine, kissing, suckling, and when my lips remained stiff and still, he nipped me. “Kiss me!”

His roar stilled my breathing, but I found a sliver of confidence in how his hand slipped off my throat to the sound of dust raining from the crossbeams. “Make me.”

A breath barreled out of him.

A second passed.

Two. Three.

At his next inhale, the room stilled, and his cold mask repaired itself with a new layer of ice that chilled the blood in my veins. “My little mortal is still disquieted over the girl I refused to rot, even though she’s begged and pleaded so nicely.”

No matter the disdain dripping from his voice, his eyes and the slight frown between them somehow didn’t match it. I didn’t know what to do with that—or how his lips curved into a new smile promising nothing good.

Carefully, so very carefully, I parted my lips. “Sometimes I told myself it was a good thing I never had a baby, especially when I heard of the ones still in their cradles the morning after a full moon. I don’t know. Maybe… maybe gods just don’t understand the agony of losing a child.”

“You don’t know the extent of my agony,” he said as a tremble hushed across his lips, but it was gone with my next blink, his mask solidly frozen in place. “If I rot this child for you, what will you give me in exchange?”

Internally, I scoffed. What a ridiculous question. What did I have left to give? What else did he want that he couldn’t simply take?

“What do you want?”

He cupped my cheek. “Become my wife. Give your vow before a priest and god—any fucking god—and take me as your husband.”

The shocking question stuttered my breath. “W-what?”

“I want your commitment, your devotion, your vow to remain by my side. To return to it, should anything ever separate us.”

I snapped my mouth shut and draped an arm over my breasts, the room suddenly cooler. What a piss-poor proposal was this? He wanted me as his wife? But… why?

“You’ve gone mad.”

His stare on me didn’t waver. “Do this, and I shall rot the girl.”

Brittle silence stretched between us.

My mind wandered to Anna. To the little boy born on a full moon. Every child I’d ever held, pressing them against me as if they were my own, even if only for the first seconds of their lives.

I was doomed to serve Enosh for eternity, no matter what. The god wanted my damn vow? What difference would it make to me? Was my pride worth more than gaining rest for even one child? No, but I couldn’t help but wonder just how much this vow was worth to a god.

Three deep breaths bought me the resemblance of the boldness it took to negotiate with one. “And if I agree to become your wife, will you also rot John?”

“However much your determination to see the vow to your husband fulfilled pleases me… I won’t.” Whatever firmness his voice had held at first, in the end, it frayed like threadbare cloth. “I made a vow.”

“So did I. Sounds like a predicament to me. An impasse.”

Where I expected another shout, the muscles in his jaws merely hardened. A strange energy coursed through me, one reserved for the women who held their husband’s attention, instead of being threatened with the whorehouse. The fact that Enosh thought on my words gave me a sense of… of value? What was this god willing to do to secure my vow? God’s bones, was it truly possible I held sway over him?

“It’s a terrible deal.” I held his stare. “One child for a vow until death do us part to a man undying?”

Enosh gave a weak scoff. “Are you negotiating with a god?”

“I’m negotiating my bride price with the man who wants to marry me.” A breath of courage. “No more collars and chains.”

“The chain goes, the collar stays. You look stunning with it.”

Oh, whatever. “No chains. You’ll never twist my legs again. I want a decent room.”

“You’ll have it. All of it.”

My heart stumbled over the next beat, upper body drawing away as I stared at him in mute shock. That… was easier than I’d anticipated.

Clearly, I hadn’t demanded enough.

“That’s not all,” I continued, emboldened by this reckless sense of having value to someone, even if it was the damn devil. “You’ll rot John. In addition, I want to leave the Pale Court once a day at least for a little—”

“Absolutely not.”

“The first or the latter?”

“Latter. Now that I’ve been sighted, people will gossip, plan, and scheme. That I have been demoted from god to king beyond one gate doesn’t bode well for the others.”

He had a point there. “Every other week—”

“Once every fortnight for a brief time, and only in my presence.”

“Fair enough.” I could give him that, but not without adjusting my own demand. “Also, you told me on our way here that you can distinguish between people when you spread rot. I want you to do it for the children. Any corpse under the age of twelve beyond the Æfen Gate.”

 “Out of the question!”

“But—”

“I do not rest the wicked!”

I flinched.

None of us spoke for long moments.

That was it.

That was where my sway ended.