I led her along the hallway toward the Æfen bridge as Orlaigh’s whimpers faded behind us. “It is time for us to confront my brother. After that, we will ride for the village where I found you. From there, to the high temple.”

When the hallway opened to the bridge, her legs froze. “Where did they come from?”

With a slow wave of my hand, I beckoned her gaze to pass over the corpses that lined the bridge, each armed with swords, pikes, and daggers of bone. “From the piles beyond the gates, sworn to defend us.”

“I thought no mortal other than the children would ever enter your court again.”

So much surprise in her voice over something she’d begged of me for an entire month, as though she’d all but forgotten her former goals.

Perhaps she had.

“Even gods make mistakes.” Why hold on to a vow given over the death of a woman who had betrayed me three times over, and deprive my wife and our child of the protection they deserved? “From what I sense, the Æfen Gate is blocked by a significant force of soldiers. How kind of High Priest Dekalon to supply me with an army and deliver it to my doorstep. Still, never again will I allow harm to come to you.”

She turned to lift a brow at me. “Enosh, I can’t die.”

“But you can suffer, and you had enough of that.” I let a dapple-gray horse shape in front of us, lifted her onto its back like I had done a dozen times before, then swung up behind her. “Suffering the pain of flesh is my duty; protecting you from it is my vow.”

I willed our horse into a walk toward the gate, calling upon the dead to follow. Groans and stomps resonated in the Pale Court, and the bridge shook beneath the thunder of two hundred fleshbare heels marching toward the Æfen Gate.

“Do your master’s bidding!” My shout joined the beat of hooves in my requiem of ruin, carrying it up the incline before it scattered into the wintery winds. “Seven men you shall bring me, alive and bound. Kill the others. Kill them all!”

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Chapter 18

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Ada

Kill them all.

Those three words spun inside my skull as my mind scrambled to comprehend what was happening right before my eyes.

A swell of corpses flooded the encampment outside the Æfen Gate, drowning soldiers beneath bone-shivering moans and the stomps of their feet. Whichever mortals survived the wave of death fought to its surface with their mouths agape, their faces distorted in pain, their screams tainted with panic.

To my left, a young man struggled up a sword. He severed the head off a dead woman. It was of no use.

The headless corpse gripped his face between the clasp of her fingers, letting bony digits dive into his eye sockets. A soft flurry of snow scattered around them, some flakes tainting red from the splatters of his eyes even before they landed on the battlefield.

No, not battlefield.

This was no battle.

It was a slaughter.

When a gag pushed past my esophagus without consent, Enosh placed his hand over my eyes. He shielded me from the viciousness of his vengeance as though the heart-rending screams and pitiful pleas didn’t paint bloody pictures in the blackness before my eyes.

God confound me, my diaphragm convulsed as though I could still be bothered by such a sight after living through my own death. As though something inside me wanted to take pity on these men.

No, I wouldn’t.

They deserved it.

This needed to be done.

“It’s already over, little one,” Enosh whispered into my ear as he lifted his hand from my face no more than five breaths later, sending black and white floaters through my vision.

Impossible. “What?”

“They can no longer harm us.”

Because they were all dead.

An unwelcome quiver raked through my stomach. In five breaths, Enosh had decimated the entire encampment, butchering everyone.

Aside from a few soldiers who screamed here and there.

One stumbled over his dead comrades while frantically shoving his guts back into a hole in his stomach before he sunk to the ground. Another hung from a bone pike where it had gone through his shoulder, pinning him against a naked oak. He screamed the loudest as he tried to struggle himself free.

“You took what was not yours to take…” Enosh said too calmly for comfort, letting our horse climb over the carpet of slain under blood-curdling screams from those not quite dead yet. “Oh, brother… show yourself.”

And there, beside a pile of twitching corpses, appeared his brother.

The wrong one.

Enosh groaned. “When I call upon him, he won’t come. When I ask him to stay away, he sticks like shit on a rock.”

Yarin hopped over a half-dead priest and strolled toward us, his forest-green frock lined with red fox pelt that matched his boots. Of course, the God of Whispers wouldn’t be far from such… madness.

Madness that made sense.

“And here I feared it would be another dull day,” Yarin said, weaving around a corpse with chewed off arms. “There I lay at my court, in a tangle of limbs, nearly—” Frowning, Yarin glanced over his shoulder at the soldier pinned to the tree who wailed in agony. “You know how loud noises ache my head.”

At Enosh’s dismissive wave, a bone spike drove through the man’s throat, finally relieving him of pain and suffering. “The same cannot be said about the constant noise coming from your mouth.”

“Wonderful, how you’re trying yourself at humor. Married life seems to have loosened you up. Anyway, I was nodding off when a barrage of the most atrocious thoughts reached me. Oh no! The King of Flesh and Bone! He will kill us all!” He glanced around, tapping a finger against his smooth-shaven cheek before he shrugged. “And so you have, brother.”

“Not all.” Enosh jutted his chin toward seven men with their arms bound behind their backs—three soldiers, two priests, and two squires—led to us by corpses. “Why are you here?”

“Believe it or not, I realized I have a personal interest in your success.”

Enosh dismounted, letting someone’s skull shatter beneath the impact of his boot before he pulled me down. “In case you are here for more holes to fuck, just know I require the bone and muscle of every soldier.”

“You’re making me sound debauched, Enosh. No, my interest is inspired by this new title I shall acquire in… let’s say nine months, plus however long Eilam remains stubborn.”

“And whatever might this title be?”

“It is really quite simple.” Yarin straightened his spine, letting a lopsided grin form a dimple beneath his cheek. “Am I not to be Uncle Yarin? Ada, is this not what you mortals call it?”

Enosh and I sighed before I said, “Yes. Uncle.”

“I shall watch the little god or goddess while you two… kill priests or… otherwise enjoy yourselves in town every now and then,” he mused. “Uncle Yarin. I quite like the sound of that.”

Well, I did not, but it couldn’t be helped now, could it? “With a madman for an uncle, what could possibly go wrong?”

“Precisely. Now that we are speaking on madness… Oh, how fine you look, Ada, with your hair decorated with feathers instead of loam.” Yarin took my hand, guiding me around the dead soldier toward an area not littered by death, and let his lips hover over my knuckles in an almost-kiss. “Mmm, undeniably my brother’s wife. But black…? Truly, there’s no life in that color. If you were my woman, I would dress you in the finest brocade, embroidered with the richest threads of gold.”

Enosh slapped his brother’s hand away and pulled me against him. “If she were your woman, which she is not, she would be dead at her own hand.”