She slipped off my arm and spun, letting the train fan out until the fine hairs of the pelts bristled. “Beautiful, like everything you create.”

“It is still unfinished.”

She startled when I let her strands weave themselves into a nest of golden braids, bringing a look of sheer wonder to her face. Oh, how little she’d seen of the powers bestowed upon me. Raven feathers fanned out at the back of her head, giving her a black halo for a crown.

Reaching her gloved fingers up, she let them tap it as realization widened her eyes. “Feathers.”

“Behold, the Queen of Rot and Pain.” I let black beetle shells compress into a crown upon my head—almost shaped like thick antlers—along with swirls which I imagined coming together by my forehead. “What say you?”

“Behold, the King of Flesh and Bone.” She rose onto her toes, running her assessing stare over my crown as she brushed strands of my hair back over my shoulder. “Out to break hearts.”

Among other organs. “Now we are ready to ask the world to bend its knee.”

A tug on my senses.

Had she just flinched?

Unable to find any traces of it in her muscles, I disregarded it as no more but an odd tremor and opened the gates of my kingdom. The ground shook, letting the beads of bone and nail above our heads clank together.

Ada reached for my arm. “What was that?”

I intertwined my leather-clad fingers with hers and guided her toward the stairs for the throne room. “Allow me to show you.”

I led her downstairs, into the familiar reek of death and decay barely dulled, for I had not bothered to do so.

Orlaigh slouched on the dais—as she had for days—her face puckered and grayish-green, painting her as the traitor she was. Her betrayal should not have come as such a surprise. She was mortal, after all, wicked and dishonest.

“Orlaigh.” I stared down at my gloves, tugging on one finger where they refused to sit right. “I have wasted two centuries trapped in the past, and I shall give it my mind no longer. Let us keep this brief. Will you climb into my throne, or shall I make you?”

The old woman slowly shook her head in acceptance of my judgment and struggled herself onto her legs. “Nay, Master. Ye dinnae have to make me. Aye, I’ll go.”

And yet she gave my wife an apologetic look, preying on my little one’s goodness.

With success.

A small cluster of tension around Ada’s shoulders. A set of muscles that contracted along her arms. A toe that curled slightly in her boot. My little one’s flesh and bone betrayed the kind of unease that sharpened the edge I thought I had already crossed…

… only to find myself still balancing.

Ah, my love had told me she could be anything I needed her to be. I needed her to be cold, detached, and out for revenge—needed her to be all those things she’d accused me of. If only for a little while…

What if she could never be that?

A shadow fell over my chest.

Here I stood, a god shaped to perfection, powerful in so many ways, yet it bought me no reprieve from gravity and how it made me sway on this line with a deep crater to each side. One held the loss of my wife’s warmth and child. The other, the loss of my cold wife’s love.

Where would I rather fall?

The answer came easily.

I would rather embrace the cold body of the woman who loved me than desperately clasp to the warm body of the woman who grew our child in a core of chilling hate.

But alas, I was a god.

Gods ought to be above choices.

There was always my brother and his whispers—a last resort should I fail at making my little one embrace the sad truth about mortals’ corruption.

Until then, I would balance.

“I sense the tension in your muscles, unaware of how deep Orlaigh’s betrayal might have reached.” I cupped the back of Ada’s head, pulled her in for a kiss, then placed my lips by her ear. “Have you ever asked yourself why we’ve been overwhelmed by such a large force in the forest? Curious, do you not agree? As though they had only waited for us to emerge that day?”

Her stomach clenched as her gaze dropped to my chest, and she ran a finger over the soft pelt of her sleeve. Thinking. Judging. Trying to find excuses for mortal’s wickedness.

Her blue eyes sought out mine. “Pa told me how High Priest Dekalon had every town and village form a militia. You might be mistaken.”

Yes, I might be, but that made Orlaigh no less a traitor. At least now, the old woman could serve a greater role in restoring my wife, helping me to stand by my word for I had promised Ada a child.

A traitor would make me no oathbreaker.

“Has she not left the Pale Court many times?” I asked, letting my fingers stroke over Ada’s belly. “Knew her way around the markets and taverns?”

A rush of blood warmed Ada’s veins—courtesy of my command—then her gaze shot to Orlaigh. “You informed people of our plan to ride out? And cost me my baby?”

Orlaigh shook her head so rapidly, it matched the tremble in her voice as she whimpered, “Nay, lass. Never.”

“Perhaps you have… perhaps you have not.” I rested my hand on the small of Ada’s back, where I tugged her into motion before her anger could ebb away. “Such is the plight of the liar, never to be believed again. Go ahead. Feed your body to my throne.”

Ada braced against my urging. “No.”

No?

A muscle twitched in my jaw, and my lips parted as though eager to call upon the God of Whispers. If my little one could not watch the woman who betrayed her get her due punishment, then how could she possibly sit back and watch the slaughter of—

“I want to see how the throne swallows her.” Ada’s words cut through my thoughts and worries alike. “She knew I had signs of pregnancy. Oh, I’ll never forget that look she gave me that day.”

My heart stumbled over one beat, then another, only to quicken into a faster pace that set my arteries awash with relief. Perhaps this blade I balanced was still there, yes, but welded thicker than first assumed.

“And has Orlaigh not asked me to remove the rot from her before we left?” I circled her belly, reminding her of what this woman may or may not have cost us. “As though she knew we might not return for a while.”

“Yes.” The word fell from Ada’s lips, a mere mumble before her voice took on the gust of an encroaching storm. “Three times she betrayed me. Threatened me with the throne. Now, I want to see her in it.”

“And what my wife wants, my wife shall get.” I whispered a kiss against Ada’s temple before I said, “Orlaigh, you heard my queen…”

Trembling like leaves in the autumn breeze, the old woman stepped around the throne. She poked her head through the opening I shaped in the backrest, right between Lord Tarnem and Commander Mertok. It was getting rather crowded.

The bone closed but a second later, swelling around Orlaigh’s neck like white quicksand as she gasped. “Aaah… Ghrrr—”

The bone strangled her scream into a choking gargle while my throne reshaped. It swallowed her limbs beneath waves of thickening bonedust, weaving them into the backrest to the symphony of cracking femurs and joints that dislodged with several pop-pop-pops.

Ah, how satisfying.

The gruesome sight robbed Ada of breath, filling her empty ribcage with… something. Something I couldn’t quite name, but it had her spine straighten and her shoulders square.

“Do you wish me to stretch her limbs, hmm?” I dove my face into the crook of Ada’s neck, taking in the scent of salt and minerals from how I’d washed her hair in the spring last night. “Shall we needle her organs with bone, letting it spread through her like those roots of mortal’s corruption? All you have to do is say it.”

A swallow visibly ran down her throat, but she shook her head. “No, this is… this is punishment enough.”

Perhaps another time.