Chapter 5

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My little one stared up at me with a flicker of rage, but it quickly drowned in the blue depth of her glistening eyes. “Sometimes you make it so damn difficult not to hate you.”

A vise of pain wrapped around my ribs, but I would not let my posture betray it, giving her surface to stab where I ought to be numb… but was not.

How unexpected.

Irritating.

Utterly absurd.

What was her hate but a fitful remnant of her mortality? Was she not dead? Terribly cold, yes, but oh-so wonderfully chained to me, her god and master? Never again would she want to escape us.

At least in this, I had succeeded.

“Quite so.” My thumb itched to trace the shell of her ear, to comb the knots from her hair, but I banned the urge to the memories of how this woman had cost me insurmountable suffering. “After all, it was not love that brought you back to me, was it?”

My words turned to ash on my tongue. Bitter, bitter ash. It clogged my sinus cavities, choking me along with the stench of my own skin, driving me mad with the urge to peel it off in layers.

No, whatever affection I’d thought she had for me had been a farce, likely inspired by nothing else but my wife’s ambition to see me return to my duty. So enthralled had I been by this woman and her painful honesty, I’d vowed to open the Pale Court the day she loved me.

A foolish act borne out of this annoying need to make her wholly mine—flesh and bone, soul and heart. Something that seemed to come so easily to mortal men like Joah, perhaps even this… Elric, where my divinity somehow left me lacking.

A tremble hushed across Ada’s pale bottom lip. “How could it be when you treat me like this? You viciously fucked my mouth!”

“Ah, but that is not nearly the heart of why this… encounter angered you so, is it? Little one, you would have let me fuck your mouth until your neck snapped in half in exchange for a single touch of my hand upon your head.”

And I’d wanted to touch her.

Wanted it still.

Succumbing to this damnable need, I pinned a strand of her blotchy hair behind her ear. Bloat in her stomach, atrophy gnawing on her muscles, corrosion curdling her blood… My cold wife was rotting away this very moment and, somehow, I wanted her still.

Had not been able to let her go.

How could something this false continue to rouse tender feelings within me? I needed to rid myself of them. Strangle whatever affection I’d foolishly allowed to blossom in my—

Pain stabbed my temples.

My court faded away.

Time stalled and stumbled.

Searing heat flared across by body, sending a nauseating whiff of ash into my nostrils. Through the fog of looming delirium, I clenched my eyes shut, but it only amplified the echo coming from the black cleft that was my sanity. Elric… Oh, where is my beloved Elric?

I blinked the fogginess from my mind, only to stare straight at my wife, the source of my agony. She could not love me…?

Then hate it shall be.

“My poor wife, left even without a word of praise over how deep she took me.” I let my fingertips stroke over the black feathers of her dress, reminding myself of the wounds she carried beneath and why. “Not a single caress of my finger around the shell of her ear. Not even a mumbled, mmm, my love, your skilled mouth feels so good.”

All things I had offered her freely and generously, doting on her for hours, giving her my undivided attention, and never leaving her unsatisfied. Gentle touches. Words of praise. Fine gifts. Not once had she found any appreciation for it.

And I would never offer it again.

Would never elevate her above the others of her wicked kind ever again. What was she other than flesh and bone for me to rule, to use as I wished, no matter how depraved?

“I don’t even recognize you anymore.” Her eyes glistened with what had to be the last of her tears. “Everything I told you was what I thought true.”

My muscles tensed.

And I’d wanted to believe it.

Here she stood, my wedded wife, her ribs too pronounced from too little food and with a new scar slashed across her cheek. Not to mention the fact that she was quite dead…

Hardship was written across her battered body and could not be ignored. The fall off the horse was plausible, along with the story of her dying father—for she had mentioned it before—or the lack of coin.

Not so much her joy.

The one I could never inspire.

“For centuries, I’ve ridden the mortals’ lands, sensing their many hardships and their heavy limbs, even without such dire circumstances as yours,” I said. “Oh, little one, I’ve been rather tempted to rein in my rage, my disbelief, and this biting jealousy over the mortal whose name echoed in your thoughts.”

Until she’d mentioned the child.

Remnants of fury flared in my veins, heating my blood to such a degree that her corpse body mindlessly shifted its balance toward me. It only angered me more, this longing for my warmth she couldn’t suppress, making it no more sincere than anything that had come before.

However…

It was my due, nonetheless.

And I would make use of it until the coldness would be nothing more to her but a thing to accept. Yes, my little one would learn what it felt like to want something so desperately… only to be denied.

She clenched her eyes shut for a moment, not letting her tears escape, precious as they were. “There was no other man.”

Liar.

Liar!

My muscles tensed beneath my skin and my mind fogged once more. I’d been chewed up by the lying teeth of a woman before, for I had understood so little of the power they could wield over any man, be it mortal or god.

And still it was not the bodily betrayal that angered me so. Flesh and bone held no memory, no devotion. The mind, however, did—breeding a disconnect in a place where my power had no say to make it otherwise. Why had she resisted me so? Had I not tried to please her?

“Hear me, Adelaide, you could have whored yourself toward the Pale Court in your difficulty, and I would not have judged. Never that.” I shoved my fingers beneath the weight of her hair, gripping it tightly to justify touching it in the first place. “Make no mistake, I would have killed every man who touched what is mine. I would have forgiven you, if only it meant you’d stood by your vow and this candor of yours I’d come to appreciate so greatly. It is the dishonesty I cannot forgive, the fact that another inspired what I cannot, and how you tried to hide it behind the most hideous lie.”

“If you think I had nothing else to do but smile at other men with that slashed cheek of mine,” she pushed through clenched teeth, “then you’re mad.”

My eyes slipped to her lips.

Perhaps I was.

Why else would I want to kiss her? To take her into my arms, this woman I had come to care for so deeply—perhaps more than I wanted to admit to myself.

“Who would not go mad during a fortnight in the lick of never-ending flames?” I yanked her closer to me—torturing her, torturing me, agonizing us both. “I bleed like you. I hurt like you. The only difference being that I cannot die. Truly, little one, it has done the state of my mind no favors.”

Her chest expanded with another futile inhale, the dark veins of her oxygen-deprived blood still prominent above her collarbone. “Clearly, because you sound insane.”

“Yes, little one, utterly deranged.” So much so, I pulled on her hair until her head tipped back, bringing my mouth near hers. Oh, how I wanted to lose myself in her kiss and the false comfort it promised. “For nearly a fortnight, all that kept my mind from shattering anew was the thought of how you waited for me. A fortnight, little one. A fortnight, and not even a fucking furlong closer to the Pale Court, but overly joyous over something you are not telling me!”