I devoured the slice of pear and turned to Orlaigh. “Tell me about Njala.”

She eyed me for as long as it took the old woman to shake the furs covering the bed. “Aye, I was there when the little lady came to this world. Nursed her moments later, then watched her grow. Bonny lass. The first proposal for marriage came when she was only thirteen summers old. Dinnae let me catch me breath either, shushing me about even as a wee thing.”

“Did she go with Enosh willingly?”

Orlaigh pursed her lips and lowered herself onto the edge of the bed, eyes going adrift on bone before she turned her head and gave me a smile too tense to be sincere. “Ach, lass, as willingly as any daughter of any lord may go with any stranger he sees fit. A young thing, sixteen summers old, with her reputation stained because of how they found the lass in the stables with that bloody—” A thick swallow struggled down the rest before she rose, shaking the same furs yet again. “Years, a decade, centuries… dinnae even remember the lad’s name anymore. Ach, how the little lady cried when me Master brought us here.”

So she’d been forced, as was the lot for most girls, regardless of station. “Was he cruel to her?”

“Lass, if anything, me Master wasn’t cruel enough,” she said on a sigh. “Ach, the little lords and ladies with their starched bottoms, never content with what they had. The room too cold, the footmen too dead, the sight of corpses too ghastly.”

“She didn’t like the Pale Court.”

“Nay, lass, no matter how me Master shaped it whichever way her mood swayed, so taken was he with the foolish thing.”

The only thing he’d ever shaped for me with enthusiasm was my collar. A fact that, somehow, twinged between my ribs.

“He truly loved her.”

Another twinge.

Did he love her still?

“Mm-hmm, he loved her…” The shadows beneath her wrinkles darkened before she mumbled, “Loved her to death.”

I wrapped my arms around my middle, warding off a sudden chill. “What do you mean? Someone slit her throat, correct?”

“Aye, Commander Mertok,” she said, matching Enosh’s version of this closely enough. “For three days, me Master hid himself away with her corpse, keeping the rot from her in a frenzy. Oh, how the Pale Court shook, bridges cracking right through the pillars.”

Given how he’d made a tavern shake in anger, I didn’t have the courage to picture how he must have been when Njala and the baby died. “Did she… return his love?”

She tilted her head and lifted a brow. “As sincerely as they teach any lady of good breeding.”

So… she hadn’t loved him.

Why not?

Enosh had a loving, attentive side to him. By the sound of it, Njala had seen more of it than I ever would. In a time when the god had done his duty, could it have been so impossible to fall in love with such an annoyingly handsome man? Had Enosh known she hadn’t loved him?

“It’s hard for me to imagine how he must have been before she died,” I said. “I only know him as an enraged god with a grudge.”

“Ach, lass, the lands beyond the Soltren Gate are no more, all over quarrels of the heart.” Her hands stalled on the furs and her pale green eyes bore into me. “Worse than a god in rage is a god in love.”

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter 17

OceanofPDF.com

Enosh

Throughout my existence, I had stood in valleys now covered in water and climbed mountains now crumbled. I had conversations with kings surrounded by riches and beggars rotting in rags. I had seen the sky on fire and the seas turn to endless ice.

Decades. Centuries. Eons.

Never before had I had a wife.

A mortal so selfless and true, she’d negotiated with a god to gain rot for those children she’d never birthed. Little over a month with Ada, and she conflicted everything that had been true to me for two hundred years.

It did nothing to cure my obsession.

I lounged on my throne, one leg perched over its armrest, watching my wife with utter fascination. How she gingerly trailed the hairs of the brush over a young blossom, the lack of a chain allowing her to turn the throne room into a garden of thorns and roses. More curious was how she grabbed the next brush from Orlaigh’s rot-speckled hands with not a trace of disgust stalling the movement.

The strangest flutter came to my chest, touching me in a place where I ought to be numb. Ah, my little one called me heartless, the world I had created cruel; yet it had produced a woman so at ease around the remnants of death, she had begged me for rot instead of fainting at the sight of it.

A most perfect mate.

My woman, my wife.

My queen?

“You may leave us, Orlaigh.” I rose and descended the dais, only to sit beside Ada and glimpse into the depleting oils. “My little one is running out of paints.”

Her eyes remained fixed on the sway of yet another vine, but it didn’t escape me how her blue eyes flicked to me for a fraction of a moment. “Don’t bother sending the old woman for more. I’ll run out of canvas even sooner.”

Ah, my mouthy wife and her snarky remarks, pointing out the lack of bone at any opportunity that presented itself. Whatever her simple upbringing, when it came to convincing me to open my gates, she lacked no ambition.

I hooked a finger underneath her chin, bringing her mouth close enough to mine that I sensed the heat of our lips merge. “There are always the bridges.”

“And leave our child with nothing to paint on once he’s old enough? Whatever will he do all day?”

“Perhaps I will take pity on a corpse outside and turn it into a doll.”

“Bone cradle, skin tunics… heavens, an arm to play stick and hoop, and someone’s skull for a rattle. That has to take at least three.” Her eyes ensnared mine with stomach-fluttering intensity. “Taking pity on one simply won’t be enough.”

An unexpected laugh escaped me, no matter the somber truth of her words. “Ah, I am gaining the sense that my wife will not stop pestering me.”

“A husband’s lot until he dies.” She shrugged, chewing down a self-satisfied grin. “Or in your case, for eternity.”

Mmm, such was the ignorance of her mortal mind. She didn’t understand that I favored an eternity plagued by her ambition over a single stroke of time without her by my side.

I raked my fingers along the back of her neck and into the warm weight of her tresses to cup her head. “Ought we to negotiate anew? Your silence on the matter in exchange for three corpses?”

“You haven’t been around a lot of women if you think a woman’s silence comes so cheap.”

“I have not.” I brushed my lips along the corner of her mouth. “You are only the second living woman I have touched, yet you are second to none.”

Her heart gave a single, out-of-rhythm beat as she blinked up at me. “Sometimes you say the nicest things when you’re not busy threatening to throw me onto a pile of corpses.”

“My pleasure.”

There was a faint scoff. “I’m not sure I have anything left to offer.”

“Start with a kiss.”

Her lips tingled so nicely as she wet them in anticipation. Her mouth brushed over mine, letting my pulse quicken alongside hers. I shared in this sense of weakness claiming our muscles as our faces drifted together. Breaths mingled. Lips connected. Parted. I kissed her, deep and drinking, enjoying how she offered no reluctance, no fight, no pretense. And yet…

And yet…

A single muscle tensed at the back of her neck as it often did whenever we touched, refusing to ease on its own, no matter how I stroked, caressed, thumbed—no, it remained stiff and stubborn, a manifestation of her unyielding mind, turning our kiss stale against my tongue.