My chest caved in.

Why had I interfered?

Enosh turned while gesturing the boy to halt, then walked up to me. He sunk his knees into the corpses, letting his concerned stare flit across my features as though checking me for bruises.

“I sensed the mounting tension in your muscles.” Kneeling at eye-height, he clasped my chin, then leaned in to nuzzle my temple before he placed a kiss on my lips. “Is it the cold? Do you wish me to fashion you a blanket?”

I was terribly cold, shivering at the white mercy of winter and pity alike. “It’s not that.”

“The carnage?”

“Your wife has an onslaught of morals and compassion,” Yarin said, followed by a sigh. “I get those sometimes. Once a century, or so. At least every other.”

“It’s just… I’ve never seen so many dead people.” In a world where they didn’t rot, that meant something. “This has to be at least a hundred, maybe more.”

Enosh frowned at me. “These are three hundred and two soldiers joining our forces.”

Three hundred and two.

In five breaths.

My guts shifted at such high a number that escaped my counting and imagination alike. “Enosh this… this squire, he… he’s an innocent boy. He probably doesn’t even know why he’s here.”

Enosh’s gaze drifted to Yarin. The brothers exchanged a silent stare, though it seemed to say a great many things for Enosh shook his head as though in answer.

My husband glanced over his shoulder at the boy, then turned his attention back to me. “Are these not the kind of mortals who have attacked us, standing under the banners of houses that support the high priest? Who have… tortured me and brought about your death?”

My throat turned parched with thirst—a sensation I hadn’t felt for nearly two months. “Yes, but—”

I swallowed.

But what? Had we not discussed this? After all, they’d waited for us out here, armed with swords and ill intentions. Had I stepped a foot out here, I would be the one cowering before these men.

Maybe even before a squire.

Three hundred and two.

In five breaths.

I expected Enosh to lift a brow at me, asking if he was not merciful. Cutting one’s veins was worse than a quick death, sure, but still preferable over hanging upside down from a giant tree as a crows feast.

Instead, he rose, sat beside me on the daybed, and pulled me onto his lap. He palmed my cheek, stroked along my earlobe, and took his time to dote on me as the lined-up men cowered in fear. The boy started sobbing, of all things.

Three hundred and two.

In five breaths.

Enosh placed his hand on my stomach. “Are these not the kind of mortals responsible for the loss of our child?”

My chest curled toward my belly in a protective reflex, all while Enosh circled my stomach like I had done a dozen times. “Yes.”

“Yes,” he echoed, clenching his eyes shut as he rubbed the tip of his nose over my forehead, inhaling me. “My throne shall have the high priest’s head in it before the snow grows by another foot, this I have vowed.” When he opened his eyes again, he let them lock with mine. “This, you shall not hold against me, Ada.”

“I won’t.” Understood his urge for revenge, our need for corpses, and the urgency to destroy those who meant us harm, but… “I’m just not sure if my vision of this matches yours anymore. What of the people between here and Elderfalls? Here and the high temple? Innocent people? The farmers along the road, the women finding kindle, the… the children playing in the snow? You will spare them, right?”

“Innocent people…” There was a moment’s hesitation. “Tell me this, little one, who chased you?”

“The priests.”

“Who gave the command?”

I swallowed. “High Priest Dekalon?”

“Yes,” he said. “Tell me, who killed you? Who drove in the blade? A priest? A soldier?”

I shook my head, sensing my stomach hollowing as the point of his questions dawned on me. “People.”

“People…” he echoed once more, thumbing my cheek as though rewarding me for a terrible lesson finally learned. “Innocent one moment, wicked the next. Men, women… even the sick, old, weak, and boys mounting their sisters. Mortals are wayward creatures.”

So he would spare none.

A strange ringing came to my ears as my mind spun, letting innocence and guilt blur into one obscure tangle. “But if I stand by this, idly watching how corpses bite the face off an old man limping down the street half-blind, am I not wicked, too?”

“How can you be?” He took my face between his hands as though to keep my thoughts from spiraling out of control. “Have you not fought me for a month to get me to rest the wicked? Ada, have you not tried to save them all?”

“Yes.”

And paid for it with my life.

My baby.

The one I’d promised to protect.

The one I’d failed so miserably.

“You, too, have a choice to make, little one. Tell me, my love, who gets to live? The mortals, or you? The mortals, or our baby?” A second’s pause, and then, “For you cannot have both.”

My lungs collapsed.

I cannot have both.

All that made so much sense again, in all its terrifying truth, because we needed Eilam to save this baby trapped alive in my belly. “Are you even certain your brother will come like this? Three hundred dead… in five breaths. I don’t see him anywhere.”

“Little one, he is already here, drifting on every final breath expelled. I know my brother and what aggravates him. Mortals ending their own lives…? Oh, it provokes Eilam like nothing else, no matter its… inspiration.”

“Oh, what a fuss he made at the brothel, all because of the one I had… inspired to slit her throat at Airensty,” Yarin added. “And what a bore that one turned out to be. Always crying. Boo-hoo, my poor dead boy. Boo-hoo.”

Amid the expectant silence, time moved slower, one second for each caressing circle of my cold palm around my belly.

Cold because of people.

“Then why stop at all?” I asked Enosh. “You don’t need my permission.”

With a deep exhale, Enosh let his forehead drift against mine. “You know why.”

Because he wanted my love.

The lack of one might threaten the other.

Dread slid down my spine, wanting to curve with the knowledge that there wasn’t even a choice to be had. Nothing would give me what I wanted while sparing me the weight of what might become many gruesome deaths—innocent deaths—on what was left of my tattering conscience.

Not truly.

Because while Enosh seemingly needed my sincere love like air, the same was not true for my blessing. All it took was one of Yarin’s whispers, and I might merrily giggle at the sight of a bone blade hacking into a wrist. Why else had they exchanged that look?

One deep breath to clear my mind.

Enosh had forced a great many things on me—and had robbed me of twice as much with neither blessing nor permission. That he now tried for my understanding instead of simply stripping me of this hindering compassion running riot in my chest…?

It meant a lot to me.

And if I sat back and watched it all unfold, would that truly make me culpable? Evil? What mother wouldn’t do everything in her power to see her child returned? Why not at the cost of those who took it?

Besides, what if those seven men were all we required to convince Eilam? We could be at the high temple in two days, maybe three, kill those who defend the high priest, then kill him, then go back home.

Alive. Pregnant.

It would all be over.

I took a deep breath, letting my chest expand so wide there was no room left for pity. “Alright.”

“I love you so,” Enosh rasped. “Mmm, Ada, I know a great many things but not how to raise a child. You shall teach me, yes?”

“Yes,” I said with a weak smile, amused by the thought of a god changing soiled clouts. Enosh barely ever ate; no doubt he had little experience with shit, if any. “Are you certain Eilam will appear like this?”