Mercy would not return her breath.

Only devastation.

Yarin sighed. “They stabbed her in the belly. Surely your wife must now see their offense and carry a hint of hatred?”

“A hint will not do.”

“A hint is all I require for my whispers to go unnoticed. As always, my powers are at your disposal. Interest free.”

“Now I know you’re up to no good.” Eager to twist my wife’s head where I wanted our love to be true, and not tainted by illusions of any kind. “I do not want you anywhere near her thoughts. Unless she leaves me no choice.”

“Such jealousy is unbecoming of a god,” he tsked. “I presume you could try to… make her see sense.”

Make her see sense.

My heart burned, and for once, not at the feverish mercy of shame and guilt. No, it was the searing edge I would have to balance, whetted with the choices of saving our child or gain my wife’s love.

Could I achieve both?

Perhaps one with the other?

But something else burned inside me, too—a sudden realization that made me curl around Ada’s still body. Death was her eternal prison, tethering her to me if I ensured she remained in my presence. In life, she’d slipped me once, and she might slip again.

Yes, Eilam could give her life.

And life meant freedom.

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Chapter 15

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Ada

I awoke to the sensation of my head being lifted, only to sink seconds later. Up again. Down. Something brushed over my back in caressing swirls, with deviations of serpentines up along my spine. A finger?

Blinking my eyes open, I caught familiar glimpses of the few black hairs scattered across Enosh’s bare chest. I rested against him, naked, blissfully absorbing the all-engulfing heat of his body. How long had I been like this?

“I feel you rousing.” Enosh pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “Are you well?”

Was I?

I assessed the ease of my inhales, the laxness in my muscles, the gentle hum beneath my skin at this wash of warmth. In truth, I felt better than I had in a long time—my sorrows not gone but somehow, not as suffocating.

Which could only mean one thing…

“Yarin did something to my head, didn’t he?”

“Your soul was suffering, shattering right before my eyes.” Enosh’s fingers trailed along the side of my head, scraping over my scalp until it tingled, making me lean into it. “My brother merely calmed your thoughts, allowing you to… come to terms with things in a dream-like state.”

Come to terms.

My teeth wanted to clench, but I forced my jaws to shift. From the moment I’d learned the truth, I knew that convincing Enosh of my innocence would not give me back my child, only his trust and goodwill. A sense of normalcy between us—whatever that meant.

It was enough.

It had to be.

I took a deep breath, pulling a lungful of ash sprinkled over snow down into my chest. Enosh smelled like a thousand sins and salvations, like my lover and my husband. My captor, whose scent swaddled me in the comfort of familiarity.

Comfort I’d told myself I no longer wanted from him, the man who had twisted my bones but mended my dignity, who had put me in the collar of a prisoner and the cruel crown of a queen. What a lie.

I needed it.

I needed him.

Had wanted nothing more for the past month but to curl into his broad chest, to hide away from the world and what it had done to me. Wanted to escape the coldness of death, and instead, soak my bruised flesh in his heat.

As though he felt it in my bones, Enosh wrapped his leg around mine, continuing to draw symbols along my back. “You are safe. Nothing and nobody will ever harm you again.” Shoulders curling, legs angling, I made myself so very small, rolling myself up like a cat.

Beyond us stretched a circular room, its walls engraved with motifs of oak trees surrounded by long bushels of grass that swayed in the breeze.

His room.

Enosh had shaped it the day he opened the Pale Court, appointed with elaborately tooled furniture made of tusk and bone. Thin braids of hair hung from the high ceiling, each decorated with teeth, fangs, and nails. They reflected the magical glimmer coming from the bone and clanked together in a monotone symphony.

Realization seeped into me when his nails parted my hair with ease, letting a mumble roll from my lips. “My crown’s gone.”

He cupped my cheek and gingerly brought my gaze to meet the calm gray of his eyes, set into a face dusted with several days’ worth of black stubble. “And the two boys and the girl are at rest.”

I ran my thumbnail over his thick, stubborn whiskers, loving the way they scraped at my skin with quiet hrk-hrk-hrks. “Heavens, how long was I dreaming?”

“I’ve held you like this for nearly three days.”

He’d held me.

For days.

“Adelaide.” His lips pressed into a thin line for a moment as though my name had left cuts on his tongue. “I came into existence knowing my duty, my powers, and how to wield them. I know the world, its people, and all the languages they speak. Yet I do not know how to apologize in a single one.” A deep exhale. “However, I shall try.”

I lifted myself up a bit because I damn well deserved to hear it. “Go ahead.”

He took a deep breath, twirling a strand of my hair around his finger like he’d used to before he tucked it behind my ear. “I have not protected you, letting you fall prey to chaos borne of my own mistakes. I have wronged you, accusing you of betrayal when your character has never given me cause to doubt your honesty. I have given you pain, such pain, emotionally abandoning you in your time of need. For all this, I apologize.”

Seconds ticked into a silent minute, only for time to trap me in the echo of his words, touching my dead, cold core and breathing a warm spark of life into it.

I wasn’t sure what I’d expected him to say.

But not this.

Not with such candor, where he exposed his failures without a single attempt at justifying them, causing a flutter in my heart that grew awash in the heat between our bodies.

I couldn’t say how long I stared at him, but he eventually lifted a brow, adopting an almost sheepish look. “I did it wrong.”

“No.” He did it too well for a man, letting his cruelties of the last month fade too quickly into the darkest cranny of my stunned mind. “You practiced, didn’t you?”

“For nearly three days.” The corners of his mouth hiked and fell, as though uncertain if he should dare the hint of a smile. “I want us to start anew. Do you forgive me?”

Against the remnants of rage in my muscles, I allowed them to slacken, lowering my head onto his chest. I was only a mortal… a dead one. Neither resistant to this wash of heat Enosh provided after endless weeks of cold, nor immune to the rather poignant apology of a god.

“I’ll consider it.”

He scoffed, “Stubborn woman.”

“Arrogant god, thinking that a handful of pretty sentences would make a woman forgive so easily.”

“Nothing about you is easy, Ada, but you are worth all of my troubles ten times over,” he rasped against my ear, providing me this sense of value only he could, in all its retched glory. “I realized my many mistakes when Yarin… confirmed it.”

My chest heaved with an unexpected sob, but I swallowed it down, letting it rot among shattered dreams and broken wishes. This is enough, my mind chanted like a prayer. This is as good as it gets.

And yet the sob hiccupped straight back up, parting my lips as I said, “I wanted this child.”

“As did I.” Hushing me, Enosh wrapped his arms around me, likely expecting me to cry where I fought not to. “Among my many regrets, the way I failed you both weighs on me the heaviest. I do not know how to be a husband, understand even less about how to be a father. Yet I understand I have failed at both.”