Shaken and scared, I pulled my buried legs from the dirt, rose, and staggered toward the edge. Once I stood on the pile, I let my foot find purchase right above a root. Another was in easy reach just above me, which I gripped to struggle myself out of the grave.

The children parted as I dangled at the edge, kicking my legs and pulling on bushels of grass. Once I had enough solid surface beneath my chest, I swung one leg up, then the other.

I stood and stepped away from the hole, shivering, clutching my arms to ward off the biting cold of night. Where was I?

Glancing around, I recognized the line of hills that cut through the landscape and the many boulders scattered here and there along the windy pastures beyond the Soltren Gate.

A heavy breath.

Not mine.

I shuddered. He hadn’t left.

Enosh sat only a few feet away from me on a boulder, his silhouette shrouded in darkness. Knees pulled against his bare chest, he held his head with a clutching grip to his tousled hair. Why had he stopped? Why was he… like this?

On instinct, my throat tied up and my foot lifted toward the grave, trembling at the coldness it promised. Maybe I should get back in there?

Enosh turned his head and looked straight at me, his cold, cruel mask gone, revealing a face contorted in pain. “Why can I not do it?”

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Chapter 13

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Ada

My bones chilled.

I hugged myself and took a step away from this man… this stranger who looked nothing like Enosh.

The branches of a nearby willow warped his features as they shifted in the biting breeze, casting shadows across the valleys of his sunken cheeks. From this angle, the moonlight reflected off his glistening eyes, leeching all color from his face to pale anguish.

My throat narrowed. A trick?

He rose and turned toward me.

My right heel lifted from the ground.

He stopped himself. “You are scared of me.”

“S-scared of y-you?” Equal parts of fury and fear shifted in my core, volatile and erratic, putting me on edge. “You to-ossed me into a hole, let me rot, and commanded child corpses to b-bury me alive. I’m terrified of you!”

His lips parted as though to justify his actions, only to press into a thin line as he lowered his head and raked a hand through his raven hair. He gripped the roots and yanked, mumbling beneath his ragged breath. He shifted from one leg to the other, not like him at all.

Who was this man?

He lifted his gaze to me once more, his expression so unguarded it showed every distressed crease between his brows, every agonized distortion along his twitching jawline. What was I supposed to do with that?

The next time his lips parted, an audible gulp resonated the night before he stepped toward me. “Forgive me… please.”

Hackles rising, I stumbled back until the skeletal remains of a child’s foot crunched beneath my heel. Enosh never asked for forgiveness, and certainly not with a please, making this stranger terrify me more than the god ever had.

Because I didn’t know him.

Didn’t know what to do, what to expect, or why he kept shifting his balance without pouncing.

I dug my dirt-caked fingers into my bodice, quivering under the stranger’s pleading stare. He paled with each passing second, as though Enosh’s mask of cruel indifference bled right off a face that looked ages old, wrinkled by the hardships of a hundred lifetimes.

He took another step toward me. “Little one—”

“Do not come near me!” I shifted my torso against the wall of little skulls and bony chests. “Leave me alone.”

His brows drew together, closely framing the pained look in his eyes. “I cannot.”

He took another step.

Slow. Deliberate.

And another.

Panic clogged my throat anew, and every instinct in my body told me to run. Run! Where? Anywhere that wasn’t here; anywhere that wasn’t with him.

“Come to me. Not to your master, but… to me.” Stalling his advance, he opened his arms, beckoning me into his embrace. “I only wish to hold and warm you.”

I fought the ghostly tug beneath my breastbone—how it pulled me toward the arms of a monster, with the warmth emanating from his fingers as a lure.

A trap.

No, I would not fall for it. Would rather drown than succumb to his promise of comfort. Comfort I’d wanted. Needed. Had begged for, only to be denied over and over again!

I didn’t want it anymore.

Not from him.

Refused to need it still.

I raised my hand as though it might ward off the devil. “I would find more warmth in the embrace of a corpse!”

He flinched. “Ada—”

“Don’t call me that!”

A dozen hairline cracks veined across my quiet heart, bleeding liquid anguish into my rib cage. Little one. Mortal. Wife. I could handle all those things, but not my name.

Not from his lips.

Not after… this.

Sidestepping along the line of children, I advanced toward the gate. “Do not come closer.”

He didn’t.

Nor did he allow more distance to grow between us, mirroring my steps up the slight incline.

I understood I couldn’t escape him, for each of my steps existed only at his permission. All I wanted was to run from this traitorous tug in my chest, this ache to throw myself into his arms—if only for long enough to prove that I could.

Another sidestep.

My foot caught on a rock.

I stumbled forward, paddling the air. By the time I regained my balance, Enosh had crept up on me, keeping less than a foot’s distance between us that quickly filled with warmth.

My eyes flicked to the gate.

I bolted.

Even before my foot left the ground, Enosh slung his arm around my middle and pulled me against the all-engulfing heat of his body. “Calm yourself.”

“No!” Anger flared to life at my core, and I shoved at his chest. “Let me go!”

“Never.” His other arm came around my waist, anchoring my hips against his body, submerging me in the scent of ash sprinkled over snow. “Call it obsession or call cruelty. I am close to calling it something else entirely.”

A scream dislodged from the back of my throat as I shifted and wiggled, fighting against his tight grip and its glorious heat with everything I had. But no matter how I squirmed, he only held me tighter.

“Shh…” he whispered against my ear. “Please forgive me.”

The way he hushed me and dared to ask for forgiveness fueled my anger into rampant rage. I squirmed, elbowed, kicked. My hands balled into fists, hammering his chest like a woman possessed while my mind tumbled into a frenzy.

It was too much.

Too fucking much.

The shock of my death, the child in by belly, the bitter loneliness of my miserable existence fraught with everyone’s scorn… I deserved none of this. Was tired of everyone pushing me around like chattel!

“I reacted in anger, for little terrifies me more than the thought of losing you.” Enosh’s voice turned rough and shaky. “But I ought not to have done this. Forgive me.”

“You buried me!”

Slap.

Enosh’s face jerked back, the imprint of four fingers rapidly shading the bottom of his right cheek where I’d struck him.

I froze for only a second before I lifted my chin. “Go ahead. Throw me right back in. Make it twenty days… make it a month!”

He swallowed.

He cupped the back of my head and pulled my face against his pounding heart, letting his lips brush over the shell of my ear. “I love you.”

His words fractured something inside me, pulling my legs out from underneath me. I didn’t want his love—it was too painful, too unpredictable, too damn destructive.