“Even if ye’re right, lass, it doesn’t make ye any less dead.” The slow shake of her head carried all the weight of a thousand bitter truths. “Even if its father is a god, does that make the child undying? Able to grow between bloat and maggots?”

My teeth ground together until a molar shifted under the strain, threatening to pop from my gums.

Dead or alive.

Divine or imagined.

How would I even prove any of this? Was I to cut myself open and rummage through my innards? That sounded crazy even to me, once again making me wonder if I’d simply lost my wits along with my life. What if I was a liar, even to myself?

My pride reared in my chest.

No, I was no liar.

Morning sickness. Achy breasts. The grains. I died pregnant. Call it instinct, but I sensed it deep inside me with each caressing circle of palm around belly.

But if I went to Enosh with talk of a child, he might very well make good on his threats, for he could not feel it. Neither could his brothers—

Realization smacked me in the face, painting me as foolish as everyone else involved in this mess. Hadn’t Yarin mentioned something about some of my soul resisting when he’d bound it? What if not mine had resisted, but that of my child?

My lips parted on a gasp, only for an unexpected name to tumble from my lips. “Eilam.”

Orlaigh frowned at me. “What’s with him now?”

“He said something when I died about, um…” Devil be damned, what had he said? Something about life? Too much life? “I don’t remember, but I feel like it’s important. Maybe they can’t feel the baby, but they can feel that something is amiss. At least two of them. I need to talk to Enosh. He has to notice it, too.”

“Ye are dead, Ada.” Orlaigh’s voice was soft, yet my hackles rose at the nape of my neck as though not even my skin trusted her anymore. “Ach, the little lady was too young. The foolish thing never thought of consequences. For two hundred years, I’ve paid for me mistake of giving in to her plea to see her lord father. Aye, she betrayed me as much as anyone, running off with that… bastard.”

My muscles stiffened. “What are you saying?”

“If ye tell me Master now… if what ye think is true… Ah diah, he’ll weave me into his throne, all over a child in yer rotting belly.” A pleading look. “Have ye no mercy?”

“Mercy?” I shook my head and shifted back. “And who has mercy on me, huh? Not you, that’s for certain, for you have known this all along. I’ve dragged guilt with me for years, and I won’t drag misery with me for eternity because of the mistakes others made some two hundred damn years ago.”

The moment I scrambled to my feet, she grabbed my arm, her grip too strong to suggest grandmotherly care anymore. “Two centuries, lass. I cannae let ye send me into his throne now.”

My ears pricked at the nip in her undertone. A warning?

She will make certain that he won’t believe me, Lord Tarnem’s words floated through my head, as she always has.

As she would now?

I looked back at her. “Will you throw me to the wolf once more?”

“Before it bites me in me howlin’ arse, aye, I will. Does that make me the villain? Did Njala not betray me the same as everyone else, leaving me behind for the god’s wrath to chew me up when I’d only shown her leniency?”

“Perhaps you were too kind, same as me.” I rose, shaking off her hold. “Something I’m trying to rectify.”

Her lips pressed into a thin line for a moment before she smacked her tongue. “Not at the cost of me bones.”

A chill shot up my spine, cooling my raveled mind enough for my brain to recognize the threat. Enosh might think me a liar, but I was nowhere as skilled as Orlaigh—a woman who held enough of his trust to keep the truth from him for two centuries where I held none.

“Not at the cost of mine, either,” I said. “You said it yourself; he loves me.”

“Aye, loves ye to death.”

I shuddered.

Stepping away from her, I turned, then fled toward the clack-clack-clacking that resonated the passage back into the Pale Court. My mind spun and my heart ached, but I couldn’t allow myself to succumb to either. How could I approach this without sending myself straight into the throne?

If I hadn’t gone to Orlaigh in anger, I could have avoided pitting her against me. Could have conjured up a way to tell Enosh the truth. Preferably one that didn’t contain me blurting, I am maybe carrying your child, after all. Njala ran away with Joah of her own choosing. Or, the worst option yet, The baby was probably never yours.

Well, it was too late now.

Devil be damned, my skull ached under the pressure of my crown and how my brain frantically tried to compose a plan. More so when the corpse children huddled up to me with their grinding clanks and clonks. What to do?

I pondered that question for what felt like an eternity as I combed through their tousled strands until an idea struck. What if I avoided Enosh’s suspicion and Orlaigh’s deceitfulness altogether and went straight to one of the other gods?

I frowned.

Not Eilam.

Aside from the fact that I trusted him the least—not that Yarin could be called trustworthy by any means—his court was the world. That was a pretty big place to go looking for a god.

But what about the Court Between Thoughts? I’d been there before. Could I somehow go there again? Would Yarin notice the potential of a divine child and convince his brother of it?

It was an option.

My only one.

I just needed to find out how I could get there, given that it was no physical place. At least, I didn’t think it was. If I remembered correctly, then it was between my thoughts… wherever that was.

In her wariness, Orlaigh would be of no help with this, leaving me no other choice but to pry hints from Enosh. And while I was at it, I could contemplate how to explain to a god that he’d been made a cuckold…

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Chapter 10

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Enosh

I observed my wife from the concealing shadows of a horse statue, my mind well-rested from days of sleep, yet no less confounded. Perhaps even more so.

Ada sat on a daybed I’d created at the center of a pavilion… eight pillars carved from bone, with triangular sheets of skin stretched between them for a roof. A gentle breeze from the Æfen Gate weaved through braids of hair where they created sheer curtains around the structure, each strand decorated with white feathers.

What was I to make of this?

In my anger, I’d given her a crown shaped from the little fingers of children—a punishment for her ruse of feigned affection, her talk of how she’d chosen to come to me, and a stolen kiss that had wrecked my defenses. And what did she do?

She made it look stunning.

My ribs shrank around my organs as though I had only punished myself. There she sat on a pile of gray furs, plaiting the mousy brown strands of a girl—one of three child corpses I had commanded to follow her, offering her yet another reminder of how she’d tormented me with the most hideous lie.

Ah, what a mistake.

These children had neither soul nor awareness, yet Ada must have washed the filth off their emaciated bodies. They sat on the ground by her feet, their tatters replaced with clean tunics and the two boys’ lackluster hair neatly combed.

If anything, my punishment served as a reminder of why I had come to admire this woman. Had come to love her?

My breath stuttered at the premise of having allowed myself to love once more. Such a terrible emotion, love; perhaps the only emotion capable of soothing a heart one moment, only the rip it in half the next. What else explained this… this shift in me?