Yes, she had.

“Watch her,” I commanded, then turned toward the spring. “Inform me if she speaks to the corpses again, or if she steps even a toe outside this court.”

“Yes, Master.”

I crossed the Pale Court and its many bridges, finding no joy in my creation for how my veins throbbed with anger. Oh, my resourceful wife, likely searching for a way to escape me among the memories of those who had failed to do so.

When I reached the spring, I undressed and slipped into the water. Its heat ripped a moan from me as I waded along the outline of rock. Until steam climbed into the back of my throat, rancid and biting, ripping a gag from me.

Ash.

Bitter, bitter ash.

It drove me mad, the disgusting stench that refused to abate, no matter how often I bathed, scrubbed, oiled myself. Why would it not lessen?

Because it was trapped.

Under. My. Skin.

Calling upon the generous amounts of bone stored across the Pale Court, I let a knife form in my palm, its tooled handle rough against the pad of my fingers. One steadying breath, then I brought it to my arm.

Sharp and burning, the bone blade carved itself beneath my skin, letting rivers of blood vein down along my arm. They collected around my elbow, drip-drip-dripping onto the water where they formed circlets of crimson, seasoning the thick air with iron.

I pressed down on the flap of skin, trapping it between thumb and blade. With one swift motion, I peeled off my flesh, laying my embedded veins bare.

Shred after shred, I relieved myself of the bitter reek for a long while, peeling it off me wherever my hands reached. Whenever a new tatter of pink-tainted membrane flapped onto the damp rock, I submerged the body part, letting the salt burn away the foul putrefactions.

“Not again.” No other but my wife emerged from the dark corridor and walked up to the edge of the spring, one of her arms pressed against a boy’s chest to keep him from falling into the water. “How many times will you shed yourself like a snake?”

I was a god shaped to perfection, yet I turned my face away, hiding my temporary disfigurement with how I’d peeled myself down to meat. “As many times as it takes.”

My little one remained utterly still where she stood and stared down at me, her golden tresses woven through the spindly nest of fingers that crowned her head. How beautiful she was. The prettiest, most dangerous corpse. Why had she come?

A heavy gulp went down her throat. “Need help with your back?”

Her unexpected offer instilled as much surprise as suspicion. “Are you jesting?”

“You fused children’s fingers to my skull and gave me an entourage of corpses. Clack. Clack. Clack. All day long, they clatter behind me with their bony heels,” she said, which explained the meticulously tied shoes on their little feet. “It’s driving me to the edge of madness. No, Enosh, I’m not jesting… I just feel like skinning you alive.”

“Ah, a wife peeling the skin off her husband, what can this be if not true love?” Either that, or yet another ploy. Likely the latter, but I was curious to see what she had planned now, so I reached her the knife. “Indulge yourself.”

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter 11

OceanofPDF.com

Ada

Enosh stared up at me from a face flayed to weeping flesh, turning my stomach upside down and my guts inside out. If this compulsive urge to skin himself had anything to do with my remark on his smell, I couldn’t say, but I regretted mentioning it.

I took the bone knife from him, then jutted over my shoulder back at the children. “Can you tell them to sit down? Or at least stand back? I’m in no mood to fish them out of the water again.”

Their bony little bottoms thudded as they hit the stone, where they folded their legs and stared up at me. Beside me, bone dust shaped into a deep bowl.

“Taking the skin off alone will do little,” Enosh said, the ends of his dark brows tainted red where they regrew above his unmarred lids. “You ought to pour water over the exposed flesh before my skin mends, which will happen quickly.”

I squatted by the edge of the spring, taking in a whiff of rusty metal as I watched tiny strings of fresh skin web across his face. “I can tell.”

He observed me from his silver eyes, the bridge between them already fully restored to flawless skin, not a single scar in sight. “Does it appall you? The blood? The inflamed flesh? The throbbing veins? My ruined face?”

“I’ve seen worse on you.” Heavens, his handsome face was the source of at least half my problems. “Turn around.”

To my surprise, he did so without fuss or reprimand. “Why go through the trouble of washing the corpses, little one? Surely, you have noticed the progression of their decay?”

I sat down, gathered the train of my dress, and let my legs dive calf-deep into the spring on either side of his body. “The way the skin on their bellies lifts and shifts makes it pretty clear that you’re not… maintaining them.”

“Answer my question.”

The severe undertone in his voice put a tremble into my stiff fingers as I set the blade down to the left of his spine. “You know full well why I’m doing it. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have given them to me in the first place.”

“Yet more evidence for how much love you hold for children,” he said with a sigh. “Never will my wife cease to confound me, even in the expected.”

“Take a deep breath.”

Sharp as it was, the blade sunk into his skin easily against the expanse of his inhale, then cut downward. Angling it almost parallel to the sway of his muscles, I ensured I took mostly skin off.

Mostly.

Blood welled from the spots where I used too much pressure, carving into his flesh as nausea bubbled at the back of my throat. I’d skinned plenty of rabbits in my life, but none had ever grunted as Enosh did, the god quivering against the bite of the blade. Devil be damned, why had I offered this?

Because I needed answers, even if I had to cut them out of him.

When the blade severed the skin at the height of his waist, I quickly reached for the bowl and dunked it into the spring.

Splash.

Water hit wound.

Enosh groaned, pulling his shoulder blades together and arching his back. “Continue.”

I set the blade down beside where tiny droplets of blood wept from the exposed flesh, only for new growth of thin skin to encapsulate it. “It only takes seconds to mend. Is it like this for all of them?”

The shifting of muscles on Enosh’s back came to an abrupt halt. “All of them?”

“Your brothers.”

There was a pause that lasted a second too long for comfort before he said, “Yes.”

One word.

It carried an edge of caution.

A whole-body shiver wracked through me, and the silence of the cave echoed. I’d searched for him the moment I’d noticed how the black veins on my hands had disappeared, but what if Orlaigh had gotten to Enosh before me? What had she told him?

I ran the blade down with one hand and used the other to press on the loose skin so it wouldn’t fold over and get in the way. “You once told me that the Pale Court shaped around you when you… came into existence. How did you learn of your duty? Who taught you what to do?”

“Who taught you how to breathe?”

I flinched when I severed the second strip and let it slip off the blade, where it hit the ground with an awful slap. “So you’re saying that you just knew? All three of you?”

Splash.

He once again pulled his shoulder blades together against the impact of the steaming water, letting a pink river form along his spine. “Such curiosity about my brothers.”