My mind wandered back to how I’d held her draped over my lap, resonating through the Pale Court with the loud smacks of my palm meeting her reddened backside. It had aroused me, yes, but the pain I’d instilled on her body had ached me more. So much so, I had stopped at seven.

What was wrong with me?

I was a man of my word, never false in my threats and promises, be it suffering or death. Yet where my wife was concerned, I could not seem to uphold a single one. No matter how she angered me—as though intent on unleashing my wrath—something always stopped me.

Something that soothed.

Something that hurt.

Ah, now she placed a kiss atop the girl’s head, sending a sense of nervous reluctance to burn along my veins. Ada’s care for children knew no bounds, extending beyond death where she offered their bodies dignity and love.

It did nothing to cure me of how uncertainty crept in, and the relentless confusion about this entire ordeal.

Orlaigh walked up beside me, frowning at the way Ada placed a makeshift shoe onto the girl’s foot. “What’s the lass doing now?”

“Caring for the children entrusted into her keep.” This… something shifted beneath my ribs, a sensation as unwelcome as it was persistent, no matter how hard I had tried to deny its existence. “Would such a woman truly use a child as a lie to hide her deceit?”

My age-old servant cocked a brow, giving me the whole weight of her concerned stare. “Are ye growing doubts about her betrayal, Master?”

I bit down on the tip of my tongue.

Was I?

My mind had been… unwell after I’d escaped the priests, exhausted from a fortnight of the most horrendous torture. Shaped after mankind, I suffered its shortcomings, its flaws. I made mistakes. Might have reacted rashly, overwhelmed by thousands of memories of past betrayals and shocked by my wife’s disappearance.

“Has she not proven her upright character more times than she has strayed from it?” I countered. “Did she not look convinced of her own lie?”

Ada was no fool, but she was a woman scorned, having wanted nothing more than a child. A mortal’s form was capable of doing wondrous things in conjunction with a soul’s desires—even wrench food from a stomach. What if she had truly thought of herself with child?

Orlaigh’s gaze lowered to the ground as she fingered a faded ribbon on her dress. “The looks of mankind are deceiving. Yer own words.”

My breathing altered. “Indeed.”

Was I a fool for a liar once more?

I observed my wife’s rounded spine, and how she let her palm glide from sternum to belly where she circled once, twice. Why would she display such mannerisms if not for grief? False, yes, but no less painful.

Had I wronged her?

My chest tightened. How utterly strange that she could suppress the reflex to breathe, yet not the urge to caress something that was not there. Oh, she’d wanted it so dearly.

As had I.

Had wanted nothing more than a woman and a child… many children. To make a family. A desire that had grown over centuries of watching them in their glorious innocence, pure and untouched by mortal’s depravity.

Now, it would never be.

This, the mortals beyond the Æfen Gate, had ensured in their stupidity. Oh, look what they’d done to my Ada, her body so cold, her heart so terribly quiet, robbed of its odd cadence.

Look what they’d done to us.

Wicked, wayward mortals.

“I shall ride beyond the Æfen Gate and assemble my army.” And bring justice to those who’d dared to touch my wife, then to those who’d dared to touch me. “Ah, death will walk the lands once more until the soil trembles in fear.”

Orlaigh shifted beside me, stroking over the faded ribbon with more fervor. “Will ye fix the corpses in the throne before ye leave? Aye, their constant bewailing is grating on me poor nerves.”

That took me aback. “How so? They have been blessedly quiet for decades.”

She swatted her hand at the air. “Ach, reckon ye haven’t seen them yet since ye woke, and how the lass cut their mouths open.”

Cut their mouths open.

Their lying mouths.

An itch started beneath the skin along my arms, bringing my attention to the stench of ash and how I wanted to scratch myself bloody for it. My wife had dared yet another transgression. Why?

“She spoke to them?”

“Aye, I saw her sitting on the throne, whispering as quietly as a wood mouse in a bucket of corn.” Orlaigh shrugged. “Maybe hushing secrets, maybe hushing lies. Who can say?”

Lies.

On instinct, every single muscle on my face stiffened with wariness, a reaction forged in the endless lick of flames and hardened in the chill of heartbreak. Was there no end to women’s fickleness? My wife’s scheming?

“Aye, the lass said ye’re worse than ever before,” Orlaigh went on. “Ach… the disgust in her eyes when she speaks of me Master. The hate.”

Hate.

The blood heated my veins with a new ripple of suspicion. “Nothing good ever comes when traitors put their heads together, whispering between them under the cover of their master’s sleep.”

“I told ye…” Orlaigh said. “From the beginning, I told ye that this one has her wits about her.”

And that she would run from me.

Was she trying to?

My fingers curled into my palms. Mmm, the dead had little interest in escaping me for I was their master, yet even in death, my wife proved obstinate.

She conspired with those who’d wronged me, had inquired about my brother, and even drowned herself to throttle her desire for my warmth—the latter being particularly impressive.

A muscle twitched near my temple. What if she tried to find refuge with my brother? Was she that desperate? Or was she trying to find a way to rid herself of Yarin’s shackles on her soul? Escape me into eternal death?

It was possible.

Such a frail thing, a soul, requiring a form to cling to. No soul-bound corpse had ever achieved breaking the shackles, for it required a great deal of self-mutilation. An act utterly against a mortal’s sense of self-preservation.

But then again, no corpse had ever managed to drown itself at the bottom of my spring, suppressing the innate reflex to breathe.

Only my wife.

My wicked wife.

Dread tensed my muscles at the premise of losing her. Losing her for eternity. Ought I to make her a new collar? A new chain? Five chains?

A brutal surge of anger scalded my veins, burning me from the inside. More painful was the rise of an entirely different compulsion—a possessive urge to put my little one into a cage of bone.

Better yet, my throne.

An unforgivable act.

Ada would forever hate me.

No, she already hated me.

Did it matter then?

Had the feelings between us not wilted away past the point of forgiveness? Of saving? Was she not mine to do with as I pleased, unconcerned of her judgment? Or was I once more too harsh? Too quick to judge?

I took a deep breath, trying to calm a heart that was fraught with pain and distrust. “I ought to think on this.”

“Think on this?” Orlaigh’s fingers gathered more checkered fabric from her dress, kneading it. “Well… while ye do, I best keep an eye on her.”

It wasn’t so much her words that gave me halt, but the way a toe curled in her shoe. “Why so restless over something that does not concern you?”

“Ach, Master, it’s been two hundred years, but not a day goes by where I dinnae regret the part I played in the little lady’s disappearance.” Orlaigh’s pale lips thinned into a fine line. “The least I can do is watch out for yer heart and warn ye. Aye, it would break me own to see ye betrayed yet again.”

The creases on her forehead supported her words, so why this hardness in my stomach, why the heightened senses where my ears pricked at each of her inhales? Aside from her… misstep, had she not served me for two centuries? Had kept me company in all those decades of isolation?