Enosh cupped the back of the soldier’s helmet. One push, and the man’s face slammed against the furrowed trunk with a clank. There was a loud crack, and the trickle of piss first quickened, then suddenly stopped. The soldier collapsed onto patches of ghost moss with a muffled thud, his face a malformed mess of blood and smothered cartilage.

I yelped, but the sound died against my gag.

My husband gripped the torn sleeve of my dress and pulled me behind him toward the open field, my steps as disorganized as my thoughts. He let bone form into dozens of sharp spikes and volleyed them toward the small group of soldiers.

Enosh clasped my waist and bodily swung me into the saddle on a chestnut horse as the soldiers thud-thud-thudded to the ground around us. He mounted wordlessly behind me and willed the horse into a canter, leaving the soldiers behind to clasp the holes in their throats as they bled out onto the brittle grass.

I dug my fingers into the hollow between pommel and withers on the moaning leather of the saddle, clasping for balance and the loosest thread of rational thought. There was only so much I could take, and I’d reached my limit even before my death. With Pa likely gone, I was all alone in this crooked world, carrying my grief in harrowing silence.

Denying any and all comfort, Enosh had nothing for me but threats and scorn. The weight of his indifference scrambled my senses, but I needed to reassemble my thoughts. In the back of my mind, I understood where Enosh’s sense of betrayal stemmed from. Once I found a way to lose my gag, I had to set my grief aside and explain.

The ride to the Pale Court took a bone-chilling eternity, forcing me to relive my death within my memories, bringing me face to face with my mistakes. How I’d helped Rose with her pain, feeding her suspicion. The damn stone that now likely lay somewhere in the mud, for I didn’t sense its weight in my pocket. How I’d wanted to prolong Pa’s life only for both of us to end up dead. Probably.

By the time we reached the Æfen Gate, my teeth chattered from the late afternoon chill. Still, it had nothing, nothing, on the biting coldness as we descended. It cracked through my bones, permeating me to the shushed organ in my chest until I leaned back into Enosh.

He shifted away.

Another crack to my soul.

Or my heart?

The stench of rot climbed into my nostrils as we entered the Pale Court. Hundreds, if not thousands of animals from varying species—some of which I’d never encountered—lay scattered across the bridges, hung crooked from the banisters, and piled around the dais in different states of decay.

Without a word, Enosh dismounted, not offering me a single glance as he made his way toward a creature that slumped on his throne like a checkered sack of moldy potatoes. “Hush yourself! The last thing I need now is your constant bewailing to echo inside my head.”

I slipped off the horse and carefully tiptoed toward the throne. The faces in it had gone moldy and cracked, crumbling away in chunks and peeling off in blackish layers. With each ascending step to the dais, weaving around the dead animals, the fine hairs on my arms rose straighter. God’s bones! No!

Orlaigh lay curled up on Enosh’s throne, her face grayish-blue and sunken in, her gray braids thin and brittle. The secretions of her decay had pooled underneath her, staining the white bone of the throne green and black. Maggots oozed from her nostrils, churned on the corners of her milky green eyes, and clung to the teeth of a mouth that gaped wider than it ought to.

My breaths quickened, pulling the poisonous air of decay down my throat and into my hardening stomach. Was this what awaited me? Drying skin and wilting flesh? Maggots eating me from the inside? Had Enosh not threatened a grave?

A scathing gasp lodged in my throat.

All my life, I’d wanted rot for the people. Now that it was upon me, my fear of it was so pressing, I expected my bladder to fail me—if it hadn’t already. I noticed no moisture between my legs. Did that mean my baby was still in my belly?

Enosh let Orlaigh’s putrefactions fade away, quickly restoring the woman to her former state, and even the dark discolorations vanished from her green-checkered dress. “Quiet now.”

“Master, oh me Master. Ye cannae reckon how I worried. All this time, I waited, driven mad with—” She flung two shaky fingers to her lips, sat up, and reached them to Enosh’s face. “Malaichte bas! What have they done to ye?”

“I am weary and tired. So tired. Do not dare to disturb me while I recover, unless your souls have no flesh left to cling to.”

When Enosh straightened and walked away, I chased after him down the dais and toward the corridor. Before he managed to turn into my room, I grabbed his leather-clad arm and gave a tug. Unable to speak, I clawed at the skin covering my mouth, begging him to remove it.

An invisible power forced me to let go of him, and a sob built at the back of my throat as I watched him head for the bed. I couldn’t stay like this, driven to the edge of hysteria by a million things that needed said and with the picture of loss stitched into my belly. I needed to explain, but how?

Anxiousness had me shift from one foot to another as I watched Enosh cross the room. I glanced around for a knife, a fang, anything to cut through— There!

I ripped a claw from skeletal remnants I couldn’t identify and brought it to my mouth. Even in the looming threat of a wet grave or wiggling maggots, the potential punishments paled compared to giving my sorrows voice along with my sobs. What could Enosh do to me that was worse than dying with my baby in my belly?

Nothing.

One steadying breath, then I punctured the thick patch, giving my whimpers of pain more resonance with each crawling inch of progress. I tore along the gap between my lips, tasting iron whenever I accidentally nicked my lips.

“What have ye done, lass? I haven’t seen me Master this— Ah, dia…” Orlaigh watched me from where she stood in the corridor, palms pressed to her mouth as she shook her head, warning me not to do it. “Nay, lass, leave it be.”

Not until Enosh had heard me out. He accused me of betrayal. And while I might not be entirely innocent of it, I wasn’t nearly as guilty as he claimed.

When the last shred of skin tore, I let the claw thud to the ground. “I understand why you’re angry with me, but I had reasons for my delay.”

Enosh came to an abrupt halt, and after a moment of silence, he slowly shifted his head my way by a single degree, letting a bone crack in his neck. “Reasons…”

I inched toward him on numb feet, letting my palms brush over the cotton on my hips to keep my nerves under control. “After you sent me away on the horse, I fell. The animal just kept going without me. What was I supposed to do, Enosh? I was scared, injured. Look at the wound on my cheek. I didn’t know what to do, how to reach the Pale Court. I went to Hemdale, but I knew I wasn’t safe there, so Pa and I went higher north.”

He sighed as though bored. “Higher north…”

His clipped answers and apathetic demeanor terrified me more than any roar ever could, because I knew that Enosh was his worst self when he hid his feelings behind a bulwark of disdain. And if he turned now to face me, who would I see?

The hurt man?

Or the haughty god?

“Pa was… is terribly sick.” A thick lump of dread built at the back of my throat. “I had no horse. No coin. When I finally went to get a mule to leave for the Pale Court, priests came to the village, offering a fortune for my capture. People recognized me.”

“No horse. No coin. A sick father. Chased by priests. Such dreadful circumstances they almost lend your words an air of truth, but ah… somewhere in your plight, you found pure happiness.” He finally turned, his cold mask locked in place, as sleek and rigid as a glacier. “I felt it, little one. I felt the lightness in your chest, the flutter in your stomach, the joy that tingled the nerve endings beneath your skin.”