“No.” I flexed the fingers on my right hand. “I figured it might take a push, ill-tempered and arrogant as you are.”

I lifted my palm.

I thrust it at his face.

With a hiss, Enosh gripped my wrist, bringing my futile assault to a predictable halt nowhere near his cheek. “You dare try to strike—”

I slammed my mouth to his.

Pure, violent heat melted my lips, letting them shape so perfectly around Enosh’s. It was all-consuming, the feverish passion that softened our bodies against each other, burning me to the coldest, innermost part of my core.

Enosh’s lips first stiffened, then trembled. Then they parted on a groan, inviting me deeper into this kiss. Releasing my wrist, he brought his arms around me, holding me in place against the upward thrust of his hips. But instead of letting his breeches vanish, he busied his hands on me, letting them stroke, caress, and palm wherever they reached while holding me tightly. So tightly.

I let my fingers map the familiar arch of his brows, the sharpness of his cheekbones, the way his jaws shifted with our breathless kiss, only to trail down his cuirass. And what if I took his heavy cock out and mounted him? Would he let me?

Agonized by his skillful fingers and deprived of any release, I made quick work of untying his breeches. My plan hadn’t included to fuck him, but what would it hurt to show him my want?

I shoved his breeches down, released his fully erect length, gathered my chemise, and sent my cunt searching. When his crown nudged at my entrance, I slid down, impaling myself on him.

I moaned.

 “Ada…” Enosh groaned.

My skin pebbled at the guttural sound around my name, and a second time when his hard flesh filled me with pressure and warmth. Heavens, I’d forgotten how thick and how impossibly long he was.

I rubbed against him, spreading my legs as wide as the throne would allow to take him deeper. God, he felt so good, pushing me down on him, shifting his hips so perfectly in rhythm with mine.

“Ada,” he groaned once more, with his hands tightly pressed against my body. “I ought not to—”

I pressed my mouth to his, clawing at his cuirass in search of the strong chest on which I’d slept many times. Oh, I’d missed this so much. I had missed him so much, and I didn’t want to consider why.

Little moans and whimpers tumbled from my mouth as I fucked him harder, faster. Tingles swarmed my clit each time the needy nub pressed against the base of his cock.

“I’m so close,” I whispered against his lips before they melded against his in another fiery kiss. “Mmm, Master, please make me feel good.”

Enosh stilled so fully, so absolutely, it rendered my blood into chilled slush. “Stop.”

“What?” My hips only slowed their rhythm, and my lips suckled his unmoving bottom lip, trying to rekindle what little warmth remained. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

“Exactly. Now get off me before I make you.”

My stomach convulsed.

My hips stilled.

I slowly shifted back and lifted my eyes to his, expecting a grin, a smirk, an arched brow… anything that would indicate he’d once more toyed with me.

But what I found instead was worse.

So much worse…

Enosh stared into the nothingness of the Pale Court, the focus of his eyes as detached as his mind seemed to be. And then it happened. Something I’d thought impossible with this virile, lusty god.

He softened inside me.

“So ambitious indeed.” His voice was as void of anger as it was of arrogance, and I didn’t know what to do with that at all. “Even in death, my wife won’t stop pestering me, feeding me the sweetest kisses and words to achieve her goal. If only death had not betrayed deception.”

My core hollowed. “No. Enosh, I—”

“Nobody ought to accuse me of breaking my vows.” Rising, he slipped me off him and tucked himself away. “However, I shall choose the manner in which I fulfill my oath to you, for when I ride beyond the Æfen Gate, it will not be to spread rot… but death.”

I clasped my arms around myself at the sudden draft whistling from beyond the Æfen bridge. Groans and shuffling resonated in the tunnel and the nipping stench of rot filled the throne room. What was happening?

When my eyes caught on a figure emerging from the shadows across the bridge, I stopped breathing, filtering out the reek of death, but not its grizzly sight.

Oh, my god…

Dozens, no, hundreds of children entered the Pale Court, from boys near fighting-age who dragged their smashed limbs toward us to pox-speckled toddlers who scooted across the bridge. A young girl, half her head amiss, carried an infant in the cradle of her arms, stripped down to bone and sinew.

I shivered. “This is awful.”

“Awful? No. This is what you wanted, is it not? I am opening the Pale Court to those children you love so dearly. Their skulls shall stack into columns, their skins span a canopy above them, and their ribs shall encase the beauty of my court.”

One after another, the children dissolved into the white powder of bone. It swirled into all directions at once, shaping pillars carved with motifs of forests, walls that rose toward the arched ceiling, and wide staircases of bone, polished to a shine. A palace formed around me, furnished with alabaster tables, life-sized statues of beasts, and elaborately carved chairs, padded with what had to be woven hair.

It was beautiful.

It was terrifying.

More horrid was how five children limped toward me, their eyes veiled in white, their bodies torn to shreds for they must have laid in the piles for years. Decades. Their groans echoed from the wall of bone that rounded the dais, battering straight into my heart with its odd resonance.

“Kneel.”

My knees hit the ground. “What are you doing?”

“Your coronation, my love.” Enosh hooked his pointer beneath my chin and lifted my gaze to his. “Are you not the wife of the King of Flesh and Bone? You have the kingdom you wanted… and now, its queen shall have her crown.”

My thighs gave out as the children reached toward me, and my arse sunk onto the heels of my feet. I clenched my eyes shut, but I felt it—their tiny hands squeezing my head, their spindly fingers digging into my hair.

“Rise,” Enosh commanded.

So I did, opening my eyes only to watch the children dissolve. The pressure around my head, however, remained.

I reached my shaky hands upward, sensing the smooth bone spreading out and thinning like a circular nest of branches. My fingertips glided over bumps here and there. Knuckles.

“Your crown, my queen,” Enosh whispered into my ear. “The Queen of Rot and Lies? No… not quite regal enough. Ah! Now I know. The Queen of Rot and Pain. Your rot, my pain.”

No matter how I yanked on it, the crown of little hands and fingers wouldn’t lift an inch. “You melded it to my head!”

He twirled a strand of my hair around his finger, then seemingly weaved it around my crown of bone. “There, you have achieved your goal. Take your victory, Ada. Take your victory, but spare me your deceptions.”

He turned and climbed a staircase that spiraled above his throne, leaving me behind shaken, devastated, and defeated. Yes, I’d gotten the god to stand by his vow and open the Pale Court to some of the children, but it didn’t feel like a victory at all.

It felt like loss.

Bitter. Aching. Loss.

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Chapter 8

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Ada

The Pale Court had turned into a maze of corridors, bridges, and staircases—a tangled labyrinth that knew no bounds and seemed to swell with each child who shuffled through the gate.