A brutal force gripped my thoughts like a vise, digging, clawing, scraping. One sharp pull, and I dropped into a freefall toward my body, crashing into it. Something pinned me down, like a death weight on my chest, shackling me beneath unseen chains.

A sudden chill wrapped around me, seeped into my flesh, and planted an ice-cold inkling into the marrow of my bones. The blood I’d seen on my dress, my pale features, how my lungs wouldn’t expand. Was I…?

No. I wasn’t dead.

“Strange.” Yarin’s green eyes came into view, and a pout played around his lips. “It seems as though a part of her soul is evading me, sheltering itself in a blind void of nothingness at her very core. Her death came sudden, I presume?”

Pressure expanded behind my ribs until it ached and panic needled my insides. No, I wasn’t dead. How could I be if I was right here? My head spun. Delirium crept up on me. Retreated. I’m not dead, my mind screamed, not dead, not dead, not—

“Shh, you’re making my temples throb.” Yarin’s hush sent a caress of calm across my tortured soul. “Enosh, remember the mortal who kept the fire burning after Lord Tarnem captured you? The one you buried? Seeing your wife’s mind crumble, I can’t help but wonder about him. It must be dreadful, having your soul chained to your body, only to spend eternity in the ground with no company other than your own mind.”

“Mm-hmm, I remember.” Bemusement rose into the upturned corners of Enosh’s lips, and an inky strand of his hair slowly grew and lengthened where it swept along his forehead. “Ah, my wicked, faithless wife, ought I lower you into a grave and cover you with dirt? Leave you there in your helpless state for as many days as I have suffered for your sake?”

Fear crept into my veins, chilling my blood. Was this truly the man who’d brought rot to the children, rousing a true flicker of affection in me? The gray of his eyes diminished as they narrowed, letting terrifying shadows lower over them as though he imagined me jailed in the wet ground…

…and enjoyed it.

I’m not dead!

“Oh, I heard that one loud and clear.” Yarin chuckled. “She thinks she’s not dead. Don’t they all? Just how did it happen?”

“Mortals stabbed her in the belly,” Enosh said, sending my mind into a nauseating spin. “They… might have thought she carried my child. No doubt High Priest Dekalon would have preferred her alive to gain leverage over me.”

Mortals stabbed her in the belly.

Thought she carried my child.

Darkness fell over my petrified mind, spinning black shadows into distorted memories. How I’d retched up countless meals. The bowl of sprouted grains. Rose, that wretched bitch. And a blade sinking into my flesh to the echo of a man’s voice, “Who wants to take chances when she might as well have the devil’s babe in her belly?”

Shock overwhelmed me.

My lungs burned.

My vision speckled.

I was dead.

My core filled with anguish, and loss carved itself a home inside my chest, suffocating me with grief. Oh god, I was dead, and so was my unborn baby. They’d killed me. They’d taken my baby from me, the only… the only thing I’d ever—

Oh! I couldn’t breathe! I was suffocating, choking on too much pain and not enough air.

Breathe!

My body ignored the command.

Muscles refused to stretch and expand, leaving my chest collapsed around a ball of terror. It burned along my breastbone, searing into my core, burning toward my spine.

Choking me.

Suffocating me.

“Your wife’s mind is such a noisy, incoherent place right this moment, it’s driving me insane,” Yarin ground out. “Keep her like this, brother, and her soul will fall into such despair that not even I can fix it.”

Enosh’s eyes clenched shut, and three loud heaves wheezed through the hole in his cheek before he growled, “Rise!”

I filled my lungs with a deep inhale, immediately regretting it when the sickening stench of charred flesh and singed hair choked the back of my throat as I wailed, “My ba—”

Enosh gripped my throat as he roughly lowered me onto my swaying legs. “I believed you. I trusted you. I sacrificed myself so you may escape, only for you to abandon me. To break your vow as quickly and easily as any of your abhorrent kind.” His hand slipped off my face, the loss of its warmth harrowing as he brought one step of painful distance between us. “My wicked, faithless wife… I adored you like no other.”

I shivered, the empty space between us like a wall of frigid ice, chilling the still blood in my deathly quiet heart. He’d gone mad with rage. Why else would he talk about betrayal without even a mention of my baby?

Our baby!

Driven toward him by desperation and lured closer by his body heat, I reached my hand for his chest. “I can explain everything, but I need to know—”

“Shh…” He pressed his hand to my mouth, offering a precious glow that tingled along my lips. “I will hear no more of your lies, little one. Your flesh and bone are growing anxious, longing for the Pale Court. It is where you belong, after all, among the remnants of the dead, my cold, cold wife.”

“Mm-hmm—”

Horror filled my chest as I swung my hand toward my mouth. I let my fingertips dig beneath his, brushing over the rough patch of skin covering the area, like leathery parchment glued to my lips. I doubled over and sunk to the ground, surrounded by the yaps and snickers of Yarin’s corpses.

My soul died a thousand deaths as I reached my arms up to Enosh, begging for comfort as my mind chanted, Master, master.

“Yes, I am your master, and death is your true eternal prison.” Nothing but the dismissive swat of his hand hauled me onto my shaky legs before he curled his fingers around my chin, lifting my gaze to meet his lopsided smirk. “I shall be your guard, your judge, your punishment, but— Ah… never your absolution.”

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter 2

OceanofPDF.com

Ada

Weakness curled my spine, and my ribs caved in. Enosh’s biting malice shook me to the core, turning me into a trembling, devastated mess. Did he not feel the child? Or did he not care in all his rage? Was it dead? Still in my belly? Had my womb expelled it?

Each time I pried my lips open to give my sorrows voice, the tension of the skin melded to my mouth ached all the way into my nostrils.

I needed to know!

I scratched at the patch of leather, but my fingers quivered too much, my body ransacked by this unholy cold. Why was it so cold?

“Will you not stay a while longer, brother?” Yarin let the stem of a goblet adorned with hundreds of sparkling stones form between his fingers, then sunk his naked body into the ocean of pillows before he brushed his auburn strands back. “Witnessing your marital issues is such a riveting delight, I have half a mind to look for a woman to wed.”

Enosh scoffed, “Send us to the Pale Court or my horse, whichever mortal thought is nearest.”

“As you wish,” Yarin said just as his court faded into a gray fog that wafted over frost-covered bushels of brown grass, his voice a faraway echo. “Watch your boots.”

Humid air settled onto my cheeks, woven with traces of wood rot and mildew. Where were we?

My gaze wandered over the misty meadow before they snapped to the trickle of water. A soldier in chain mail stood in front of a tree, stance wide, pressing one hand to the trunk while the other held his prick.

“We found his dead horse wandering toward the Blighted Fields!”

When the soldier turned his attention to the shout, he spotted Enosh standing beside him, albeit too late. “In the name of Helfa—”