Текст книги "King of flesh and bone"

Автор книги: Liv Zander

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

Chapter 13

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Ada

I sat in the small tub Gretchen had brought, posture stiffening whenever Enosh rubbed a soaked rag over my back. Even though steam billowed on the surface, his touch brought chills to my skin. What sort of monster would stir up a child’s corpse? And let Anna’s little teeth cut into her mother’s neck, with the little ribbon bouncing—

I pressed my hand onto my mouth to stifle a sob, a sick feeling twisting my gut. “She was a little girl, Enosh… probably not even four when she died.”

Behind me, a low growl trembled his chest. “We will not speak of it.”

“Can you imagine the desperation of a mother if she offers her warm body to the god who cursed her only child with eternal cold? To let him fuck her in the most ungodly ways—”

“By nature, I fuck in godly ways,” he scoffed, tossing the rag into the tub with a splash. “Luring nothing but the sweetest moans and gasps from your skilled lips.”

Only trickery. “You’ll stir neither lust nor longing out here.”

Because there was none.

Because there never would be.

“My woman is particularly contentious this night.” He hauled me up by my arms until my face met his icy stare, water splashing around calves that wanted to snap. “Shall I tell you how many times you came apart with your quim tight around my cock at your own inclination? Will the rebellion of your mind ease or worsen for knowing?”

My pulse sped up.

Not true.

“However much of a god you might be at the Pale Court… out here, you can’t disguise loathing as lust or pain as pleasure.”

He lifted me out of the tub, his whisper against my ear like metal scraping over rock. “Oh, my little one, that suits me just fine, because neither can you disguise the opposite.”

Fragrant straw crunched beneath my shoulders as he lowered me onto the bed, the air perfumed with dried lavender hanging from the rafters. Standing at the end of the bed, Enosh peeled off his clothes, watching me like a predator might its prey.

When he climbed onto the bed, naked and hard, I kicked my useless legs, shifting back for distance. “Stay away from me.”

“Shh… remember?” His hand clasped around my foot, bringing it to his face before he placed a kiss on my ankle. “Never deny me your warmth or I shall withhold my touch.”

A gasp parted my lips as he trailed his tongue along the inside of my calf. “I don’t want your touch.”

“No? Your body doesn’t prickle when I do this?” The back of his hand stroked up along the inside of my thigh as he inched between my parted legs, letting my skin tingle. “Your bones tremble for my attention, little one. Your flesh screams for my touch. It speaks to me, its master, and I answer it fluently—a language perfected over the course of a month. Listen!” His fingertips ghosted over the curls between my legs, barely touching, driving up the anxious beat of my heart. “Mmm, your breathing becomes quicker as your veins swell with blood, urging me to touch right… here.” He pinned my nymph beneath his thumb, sending pulsations into it that morphed into heat rippling over my sex. “Yes, that is how my woman likes it best, the little gem restrained until… Ah, ah! Stop wiggling.”

He climbed over my crooked leg as he continued to torture my nymph. He lay down beside me, one arm angled to support his head as he whispered, “My poor woman came to me so deprived of touch, shunned by her husband, isn’t it true?”

Familiar pain announced itself in the cracks of my heart, amplified by the deafening beat of the organ as his finger rounded my opening. What if he was right? What if I’d been so starved of the strong set of a man’s arms that I’d taken refuge in the embrace of the devil?

His finger entered me. Pulled out. Pushed in again. “But I worship your body, can’t you feel it? How I circle, push, and dip… bringing you the sweetest pleasures?”

My breathing hitched.

No. Not true.

Not true, not true, not true.

I turned my head away, disgusted with myself over how his finger penetrated me easily, pressing my inner walls in that way of his that made my spine arch. “Try all night if you must, but you’ll achieve nothing.”

“Mmm, I am a flawed god, but nobody can accuse me of impatience.” His smile-hardened lips brushed along a tendon on the side of my neck, his breath warm against my earlobe. “Do I not stroke and pet and dote on you for hours, little one? Tease this little bud until it peeks from its hood, hard and needy? Like this. Mmm, yes. Slow. Gentle. That’s how my woman loves it.”

My lungs stalled, putting a crack in my voice. “I feel nothing.”

“Is that so?” My lie earned me a thrust of his finger before he curled it inside me, letting delicious pressure expand there. “You’re not holding your breath right now? You’re not clinging to that exhale as if it will help you ignore how my finger spreads you? Fills you? Almost makes you moan but– Ah… you need the thickness of my cock. Do you feel it?”

I shook my head.

“I do,” he whispered, twirling a blonde strand around his finger. “I feel the tingle on your scalp, the stiffness in your right toe as you arch it, the tension in this muscle right here.” His fingers slipped behind my neck, rubbing a sore knot at the left base of my skull while his other hand added a second finger inside me. “I feel every cell in your body and how it longs for me, aches for my touch after years of scorn and neglect. Oh, my little one, let me worship your body the way your man ought to.”

I simmered in a confusing mix of disgust and desire as I breathed into his touch. “It’s not real.”

It couldn’t be.

I wouldn’t let it!

But… oh, his skilled hand.

“Stop denying and give in to me.” His fingers abandoned me as he slowly brought them between our faces, before he stroked them into my mouth, hooking them behind my teeth, letting the cream of my arousal spread tart across my gums. “Mmm, my little one got herself all wet again, making such a needy mess between her legs that I shall tend to. Let me have a taste of my woman’s cunt.” Slanting his mouth over mine, he drove his tongue to part my lips, moaning at the taste he found there. “Oh, flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone, you desire this as much as I do. You crave the undivided attention of my touch, how I listen to your muscle’s every whim, answering your body’s every plea.”

My vision speckled.

“Little one,” he whispered, “you’re holding your breath again. Your lungs are burning. Breathe. Breathe! There… that’s my good mortal.”

Air rushed into my lungs, and I blamed it for how my nipples hardened. A sense of emptiness filled me where his fingers had been only moments ago, aching to be filled after years of abstention. It hurt, letting moisture gather on my forehead—and more between my legs in maddening waves of aching need.

“Shh, I know where you need me.” Two fingers trailed down between the valley of my breasts, along my belly, and through my curls until they thrust inside me. “Mmm, I left you wanting once, but never again, my precious woman.” A scoff. “How the blood buzzes around your heart whenever I say that word. Precious.” My chest turned weightless for a breath, and another as his lips brushed along the shell of my ear where he whispered, “Precious.”

The word crawled into my veins, spreading right through me with torturous heat. My body fevered, pelvis shifting toward the hypnotic rhythm of his fingers stroking me, the large palm that rested against my nymph, indulging it with constant pressure.

At the first cautioning tingle around my nymph, I sucked in a sharp breath. “I hate you.”

“Shh, do not disguise your lust as loathing,” he crooned inches from my ear, curling his fingers inside me, promising wicked pleasure with how he palmed my tender nub. “Give in to me. You know you want to. Want me to drown you in pleasure until you resurface and bloom. Ah, you are so close, my little one.” His breathing came faster, harsher, panting against my neck with each thrust of his fingers. “Mmm, such heat around your pulsing gem. Release it. Let go.”

I cried out at the torrential wave of pleasure as a riptide surged through me, lifting me to the highest high before it dropped me into the shameful gorge of defeat. Something fractured inside me with my next inhale—perhaps my sanity, though likelier, my self-respect.

“Good girl.” Enosh’s purr broke against my forehead, where he nuzzled the fine wisps along my hairline. “Mmm, do you believe it now, little one? That you long for my touch?”

My ragged breathing soon hiccupped into a pathetic sob. How many times had I succumbed to this man and how easily he weaved pleasure through me? Had I truly been so deprived of touch, of attention, of the feeling to be wanted that I enjoyed this depravity?

His finger stroked through the middle of my forehead and down to the tip of my nose. “Why would you want to escape such pleasure?”

Reality crept back into me one strained inhale at a time. Perhaps I was mad, or lonely, or debauched—God’s bones, maybe I was all three at once. Nothing but a mere mortal with a beating heart, pitted against the devastating whims of a virile god.

He could have my body.

But never my soul.

Never its surrender.

Braving his sly grin, I shifted away from his touch. “No pleasure in this world could make me want to stay around your corrupted character.”

Something cracked in the abyss of his gray eyes. For a grin-dropping second, it appeared as though his mask broke in too many places all at once. Unable to sustain his air of superiority, the age-old face behind the decaying veneer contorted in… yes, anger.

It screamed around a god enraged, barely contained by his mortal form. The room shook in much the same way the ground had earlier, and the glass in the window clattered. Did he do this? Because he was mad? Mercy god, what angered him so? Escape was but a dream already faded.

His hand went to my throat, right above my collar, not choking me but clasping hard enough as if to let me know that he could. “I hold you for hours after we coupled, feeding you from one hand while the other strokes your hair until all tension leaves your muscles. The little skin I have left at my disposal, I weave into the finest dresses, and the softest pelts line your bed.” His forehead lowered against mine, and his eyes closed as he shifted his mouth against my lips. “Kiss me.” He slammed his mouth to mine, kissing, suckling, and when my lips remained stiff and still, he nipped me. “Kiss me!”

His roar stilled my breathing, but I found a sliver of confidence in how his hand slipped off my throat to the sound of dust raining from the crossbeams. “Make me.”

A breath barreled out of him.

A second passed.

Two. Three.

At his next inhale, the room stilled, and his cold mask repaired itself with a new layer of ice that chilled the blood in my veins. “My little mortal is still disquieted over the girl I refused to rot, even though she’s begged and pleaded so nicely.”

No matter the disdain dripping from his voice, his eyes and the slight frown between them somehow didn’t match it. I didn’t know what to do with that—or how his lips curved into a new smile promising nothing good.

Carefully, so very carefully, I parted my lips. “Sometimes I told myself it was a good thing I never had a baby, especially when I heard of the ones still in their cradles the morning after a full moon. I don’t know. Maybe… maybe gods just don’t understand the agony of losing a child.”

“You don’t know the extent of my agony,” he said as a tremble hushed across his lips, but it was gone with my next blink, his mask solidly frozen in place. “If I rot this child for you, what will you give me in exchange?”

Internally, I scoffed. What a ridiculous question. What did I have left to give? What else did he want that he couldn’t simply take?

“What do you want?”

He cupped my cheek. “Become my wife. Give your vow before a priest and god—any fucking god—and take me as your husband.”

The shocking question stuttered my breath. “W-what?”

“I want your commitment, your devotion, your vow to remain by my side. To return to it, should anything ever separate us.”

I snapped my mouth shut and draped an arm over my breasts, the room suddenly cooler. What a piss-poor proposal was this? He wanted me as his wife? But… why?

“You’ve gone mad.”

His stare on me didn’t waver. “Do this, and I shall rot the girl.”

Brittle silence stretched between us.

My mind wandered to Anna. To the little boy born on a full moon. Every child I’d ever held, pressing them against me as if they were my own, even if only for the first seconds of their lives.

I was doomed to serve Enosh for eternity, no matter what. The god wanted my damn vow? What difference would it make to me? Was my pride worth more than gaining rest for even one child? No, but I couldn’t help but wonder just how much this vow was worth to a god.

Three deep breaths bought me the resemblance of the boldness it took to negotiate with one. “And if I agree to become your wife, will you also rot John?”

“However much your determination to see the vow to your husband fulfilled pleases me… I won’t.” Whatever firmness his voice had held at first, in the end, it frayed like threadbare cloth. “I made a vow.”

“So did I. Sounds like a predicament to me. An impasse.”

Where I expected another shout, the muscles in his jaws merely hardened. A strange energy coursed through me, one reserved for the women who held their husband’s attention, instead of being threatened with the whorehouse. The fact that Enosh thought on my words gave me a sense of… of value? What was this god willing to do to secure my vow? God’s bones, was it truly possible I held sway over him?

“It’s a terrible deal.” I held his stare. “One child for a vow until death do us part to a man undying?”

Enosh gave a weak scoff. “Are you negotiating with a god?”

“I’m negotiating my bride price with the man who wants to marry me.” A breath of courage. “No more collars and chains.”

“The chain goes, the collar stays. You look stunning with it.”

Oh, whatever. “No chains. You’ll never twist my legs again. I want a decent room.”

“You’ll have it. All of it.”

My heart stumbled over the next beat, upper body drawing away as I stared at him in mute shock. That… was easier than I’d anticipated.

Clearly, I hadn’t demanded enough.

“That’s not all,” I continued, emboldened by this reckless sense of having value to someone, even if it was the damn devil. “You’ll rot John. In addition, I want to leave the Pale Court once a day at least for a little—”

“Absolutely not.”

“The first or the latter?”

“Latter. Now that I’ve been sighted, people will gossip, plan, and scheme. That I have been demoted from god to king beyond one gate doesn’t bode well for the others.”

He had a point there. “Every other week—”

“Once every fortnight for a brief time, and only in my presence.”

“Fair enough.” I could give him that, but not without adjusting my own demand. “Also, you told me on our way here that you can distinguish between people when you spread rot. I want you to do it for the children. Any corpse under the age of twelve beyond the Æfen Gate.”

 “Out of the question!”

“But—”

“I do not rest the wicked!”

I flinched.

None of us spoke for long moments.

That was it.

That was where my sway ended.

Still, it reached further than I’d imagined.

“Children aren’t wicked,” I said and reached my hand to his, surprised by the way he immediately let them intertwine as though he feared I might otherwise slip away. “Even you have to know that.”

“Oh, little one, if you believe this will go unpunished, then you are mistaken.” He stared at our interwoven fingers. “Very well, I shall ride the lands and rot the children once gossip has calmed. I’ll rot John then, too, if only so I won’t have to hear his name from my wife’s lips ever again. But there is something else you will give me in exchange.” He shifted on the bed, flame of the candle driving out the gray coldness of his eyes, replacing it with something less cutting. “On a moment of my choosing, you will come to me. You will not be allowed to refuse me, and you shall kiss me until your lips are benumbed. You will commence the act we share as man and woman, and see it through until we are both spent, not once denying its pleasure. Deal?”

With a nod, I made a deal with the devil.

Because to him, I had value.

That realization cracked through years of condemnation. As much as I had been worthless to John, what if my value never lay with the man in the first place? What if my purpose had always been to bring rot to those children I’d never been blessed with?

And if the woman who rode with the King of Flesh and Bone had negotiated this much out of him, whatever else might his wife achieve?

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Chapter 14

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Ada

After a few hours of restless sleep, Enosh woke me by stroking a finger down the length of my nose as he whispered, “I sense how tired you still are, but we cannot stay much longer.”

Head still fogged, muscles weak with exhaustion, I nodded and sat up. “They formed a mob?”

“Nothing but a handful of fools rallied together by the town’s priest.”

“You saw them?”

He rose and extended his hand to help me to my feet and toward the chamber pot. “Through the eyes of the dead that I’ve posted around the area to keep word from spreading.”

“Good, or every follower of Helfa will be after you, trying to capture you and drag you before the high priest. Every king, every lord, every duke… High Priest Dekalon has their fealty.”

Something I’d once considered justice now proved quite the inconvenience. I couldn’t have others meddle in my plan to get the god to return to his duty. Something I’d considered laughable last night—until I remembered I had all of eternity to get it done.

“Mankind rebelling against a god…” Enosh thumbed the stubble on his chin. “A nasty habit of your kind that springs up every couple of centuries or so, doubting themselves, doubting their beliefs, doubting me.”

I limped over to the washbasin on a table in the corner. “We best avoid the roads.”

“We still need a priest to wed us. Quietly.”

“What does it matter? You have my vow.”

He slipped on his shirt and let his black jacket form around him. “I am indifferent either way—mortal customs or a promise given before a false god—as long as I receive the exact same vow you gave once before.”

I swallowed my sigh and turned to him. “I believe there’s a small temple hidden in the forest not far from here. My father once brought crates of salted fish there.”

“Very well.”

Not even a finger twitched on him as he let thin chips of bone form around me. Row upon alabaster row encapsulated me like fish scales, though matched the flow of fabric, its collar snug and high.

I lifted a brow at him. “Armor?”

Unable to walk down the stairs on my own, he once again picked me up. “A precaution. Such a terrible inconvenience at times, mortality.”

The mumbles grew louder with each descending step. Once downstairs, we faced a room where at least twenty people gathered. They stared at us from unwashed faces, but the scrutiny in their eyes landed heaviest on me.

“Your Grace,” the keeper said, hands nervously pinning graying hair back underneath her wimple. “They came unbidden, no matter how I told them to stay away.”

Pulling me tighter against him, Enosh stepped through the parting crowd. Whispers, pleas, wails, and promises—he ignored them all and walked outside.

Wax from the candlemaker scented the air, the sky above us still gray. A small group of men stood gathered beside our horse, all armed with daggers and the occasional sword. Except for the priest, who clutched the Tome of Helfa to his robed chest as though it would help him.

He made the sign of Helfa—two fingers tapping his forehead before he lifted them heavenward. “In the name of Helfa the Allfather, I hereby demand you surrender yourself to His holy judgment. High Priest Dekalon has long ordered your arrest, so you may stand trial for your crimes committed against this realm.”

Unimpressed, Enosh only lifted me onto the horse’s back. “Leave, and you shall escape with your life.”

Metal hissed when a man unsheathed his sword, giving pause to my next inhale. Clueless idiots, all of them, though I could hardly blame them for their ignorance.

My eyes flicked nervously to those few villagers hiding between merchant stands and hides stretched on frames. Being among this many people with the god was uncharted territory for me—there was just no telling if he would spare them… or kill them all.

Fearing the latter, I addressed the townsfolk, “Listen to his warning, or he’ll—”

“Capture him!” the priest shouted. “And take the woman.”

Fool!

While most men scattered to surround Enosh, one made the mistake of setting his eyes on me. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, wretch?”

With one quick leap, Enosh dug his fingers into the man’s greasy brown hair and yanked him before the gasping crowd. One moment, the god’s other hand was empty and the next, his fingers wrapped around the handle of an alabaster blade.

He stabbed it into the man’s throat.

Bile rose behind my tongue.

The man clasped his hands to his neck. Blood sprayed from the gaps between his fingers with each beat of his heart, forceful at first, but then quickly slowed into trickles. His knees hit the blood-splattered ground with a thud before he collapsed to the side and twitched.

Frozen in shock, everyone stared at Enosh as he held his hand over the corpse and said, “Watch. Watch and see what happens when you cross me.” When the man’s body had only just stilled, Enosh’s voice verged a dark growl. “Rise!”

The man stood in an instant and turned toward Enosh, struggling to lift his head where the blade must have injured sinew and muscle, yet he snarled, “What’ve y-you done?”

“Witchcraft…” the word mumbled from many mouths at once. “Dark magic!”

Enosh tossed the bone blade to the man—who caught it with ease—before he gazed over the crowd. “Seek me out, mortals, and you shall end like him.”

No sooner had Enosh spoken the words did the man thrust the blade into his belly. He stared down at himself, screaming frantically, stabbing himself so many times the air soon reeked of shit. His tattered cotton trews darkened as urine trickled down his legs, pooling by one foot.

Screams, prayers, curses… Chaos descended upon the town as its inhabitants fled into their homes—as did the remaining men, leaving the priest stammering a prayer.

I pressed a finger against my trembling lips as Enosh mounted behind me, my stomach convulsing in a never-ending cramp. I was no whimpering thing who fainted at the sight of blood, but I’d had about enough for one day.

At the horse’s first step, bone chips fell away from around me. They piled on the ground in a cacophony of clinks and clanks, like snow crystals hitting a frozen lake in the depth of winter. What remained was another dress of feathers, a soft yellow this time.

“I sense your unease,” Enosh said.

If he expected me to tell him that caging those men behind bone would have ensured our escape just the same, then he underestimated my resolve to see all people rot in the ground.

I wasn’t a fool.

Over time, more such incidents would follow once Enosh rode the lands again, undoubtedly running into religious fanatics and the soldiers sworn to defend their cause. I’d rather him kill them than see the god captured again, sparking such a rage inside him it would take another two centuries to abate, ruining all my efforts.

I might have all of eternity to get Enosh to do his damn job again, but I’d prefer another month, maybe two. Whoever he killed during that time would serve a higher purpose, right? He had warned them; Enosh didn’t kill indiscriminately.

No, he didn’t.

“Just tired,” I said when he left town and followed a prattling creek toward an old mill. “I know I should probably have asked this last night but… once you rot John, can you give my father a message? Only that I’m well and that I don’t want him to worry.”

“You are correct, little one. You should have negotiated it last night.”

My shoulders slouched, but I could hardly blame him for my own stupidity. “How powerful are you, truly?”

“How do you mean?”

“You can spread rot and remove it, dull pain, alter flesh, and command bone. Sometimes the ground shakes. It did last night, twice, and the windows clattered at the tavern.”

“You have not even seen a glimpse of my power, mortal.”

What a terrifying thought. “Have you ever altered anything on me?”

“I have mended you, have I not?”

“Beyond that.”

He glanced down at me. “You have ten and two scars on your body, and I trace them while you sleep. Your heart does not beat as it ought to—it’s like a symphony to my ears that I could single out over the span of towns.”

“My mother died giving birth to me because of her weak heart.” Or so Pa had told me. “Where are we going?”

“To Anna.”

My fingers clenched at the unexpected answer. He remembered her name?

The horse hadn’t come to a stop when Enosh dismounted near the mill and pulled me down. “This will be quick.”

He announced himself with a kick against the door. Rusty hinges howled as it swung open, the stench of filth behind it nauseating.

Shrouded in dimness, figures shuffled, wood moaned, and a woman shrieked. It took my eyes a while to adjust. Anna’s father stood leaning with his hands on the table, something unreadable coming over a face wrinkled by hardship.

His hand slowly wandered to a knife protruding from a chunk of dried meat. “What is it you want with us?”

Enosh glanced around, his fingers digging into the feathers of my dress as his eyes landed on the musty corner. There, on a mat of straw, cowered the man’s wife, one eye swollen to little more than a red slit, the wounds on her neck glinting red against the sparse light from the dying embers in the hearth.

Anna leaned with her back against the wall, still again, neck and torso tied to the brick with filthy ropes. They stood in stark contrast to the new bow she wore atop her immaculate braid, red like the ribbon on her fresh dress.

Something inside me broke at the sight.

Enosh must have noticed because his thumb brushed along my arm as he carried me over to them, lowering me between a corpse and a woman only slightly more alive. Her jaw, the side of her neck, her collarbone… God’s bones, she carried more bite marks than I wanted to count.

“How blessed man is in his ability to surround himself with family,” Enosh said, reaching for the woman’s face but pulled back as she flinched. “You didn’t lie when you threatened to beat her close to death.”

 “Turn her around if her ugly mug irks you,” the man sneered. “Sorn her arsehole all you want, then begone. We don’t want you here and that… black magic of—”

He choked on the rest at the sight of a corpse stepping into his home. Not just any corpse, but the man Enosh had killed earlier, his gaze now abandoned, his soul gone.

“Make a wrong move, mortal, and my servant will eat you alive.” Enosh broke the ropes around Anna with one finger and picked her up. “I’ll return for you in a moment.”

I dragged myself over the floor behind him, crooked legs kicking to propel me forward. “Where are you taking her?”

“What is he doing to my Anna?” Her mother helped me to my feet and, together, we left the musty home.

Shaky arms and unreliable legs carried me toward the ancient oak beside the creek, where Enosh stood with Anna lifeless on the ground beside him.

The woman wept, sinking to the ground, and tearing me down alongside her, but the noise faded under the shk-shk of a bone spade shoveling soil. My mouth turned dry.

Was he…?

Something moved beneath my sternum at how Enosh lifted out a grave, the very act of it going against everything I thought I’d known about this man. No grave was needed for him to rot Anna… but still, he dug it anyway.

Once the hole was deep enough, he lowered Anna into her grave and covered her with dirt. Then, a moment later, poof, the soil collapsed.

Beside me, her mother whimpered, “What happened?”

“It’s rot,” I explained from the little I’ve seen of it. “She’s at rest now.”

“Thank y-you,” the woman whispered, her filth-crusted face rubbing over my feathers, streaking them brown.

We left her by the grave and rode off, a whirlwind of emotions raging at my core as I glanced back at Enosh. “Why did you do this? Why make a grave?”

Seconds ticked into eternity as he remained silent until, after a heavy swallow, he said, “Because I do know the sorrow and agony of losing a child.”

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