Текст книги "Queen of rot and pain"
Автор книги: Liv Zander
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Queen of Rot and Pain
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THE PALE COURT BOOK TWO
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LIV ZANDER
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INK HEART PUBLISHING
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Contents
For Mature Audiences
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1. Ada
2. Ada
3. Ada
4. Ada
5. Enosh
6. Ada
7. Ada
8. Ada
9. Ada
10. Enosh
11. Ada
12. Ada
13. Ada
14. Enosh
15. Ada
16. Ada
17. Enosh
18. Ada
19. Ada
20. Ada
21. Ada
22. Ada
23. Enosh
24. Ada
25. Ada
26. Ada
27. Enosh
28. Ada
Afterword
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Copyright © 2022 by Liv Zander
ISBN-13: 978-1-955871-03-7
www.livzander.com
info@livzander.com
Cover Art: Darling Cover Design
Editing: Silvia’s Reading Corner
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, events, locations, or any other element is entirely coincidental.
Warning: This book is intended for mature audiences.
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A REFRESHER FOR KOFAB
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In book one, Enosh—the god responsible for the bodily remnants of everything that once lived—had abandoned his divine duty because of mortals’ betrayal. Enraged over the loss of the woman he had once loved and their unborn daughter, he no longer spread rot, refused the dead entry to his kingdom, and sequestered himself away in the Pale Court.
Over the course of two centuries of the god’s absence, the world had fallen into chaos. Forced to weigh down graves—lest the dead would escape and wander—the people across the Æfen lands conjured up their own god, Helfa—letting Enosh be all but forgotten, only spoken about as a wayward creature responsible for their plight.
Without enough bone to sustain his kingdom, the Pale Court slowly crumbled around its distraught master and his soul-bound servant, Orlaigh. Until a woman accidentally stumbled into his kingdom, bringing new life to Enosh’s cold, dead court.
Unaware of Enosh’s divinity and disgusted by the cruelty he cast upon the world, Ada’s only goal was to escape him, so she may weigh her late husband’s grave down. After all, she had disappointed him in life with her barren state—had never given him a child as a woman ought to.
Enosh, however, decided to keep Ada, rousing her flesh, trembling her bone, and turning her snarls to moans with uninvited pleasure. So delighted was he by the entertainment Ada’s impudence offered, he shaped her a collar of bone so she may never escape him.
Chained to his throne, Enosh was certain his little one would remain by his side for eternity. Until his brother, Yarin, showed up uninvited, demanding an age-old debt be fulfilled, which required Enosh to leave his kingdom for the first time in two centuries.
Uneasy about leaving Ada unsupervised in the Pale Court, he decided to take her with him—right after he… twisted her legs.
When Enosh learned about Ada’s guilt over her late husband’s death, he was as much confused about her eagerness to stand by a marriage vow once given as he was impressed by it. So much so, he asked Ada to become his wife, so she may give him the same vow and stand by it with eternal resolve. In exchange, Enosh agreed to spread rot to the children and bring rest to her late husband.
With eternal loneliness banished, certain that his little one would forever return to him, Enosh showed Ada a kinder, more loving side of him. He told her she was never barren, and in time, he had every intention of putting a child in her belly.
Strangely taken by the idea of finally having a child of her own, and encouraged by the change she brought about in Enosh, Ada started to see beyond the mask of the cruel god and found hints of the gentle man beneath. Could she return Enosh to his duty and save the world?
On the day Enosh decided to ride out to stand by his word given, Ada came across Orlaigh acting suspicious with one of the soul-bound corpses the god kept trapped in his throne. Hushed whispers, secrets, perhaps even lies, went between the age-old servant and the father of the woman Enosh had once loved.
When Ada confronted Orlaigh about it, the old woman merely shrugged it off. And so, Ada left the Pale Court with Enosh, who had offered to take her with him so she may see her father.
However, a large force of soldiers came upon them in the forest, separating them. While Enosh was captured and held for torture by High Priest Dekalon, Ada had escaped.
Injured and shaken, Ada decided to hide in a small fisher village with her father until she found a way to return to the Pale Court safely—as she had promised she would. With her father sick and coin sparse, Ada found herself torn. More so when she was late on her bleeding. Convinced that she carried Enosh’s child and overjoyed by it, Ada decided to do whatever she could to return to the Pale Court.
In the meantime, Enosh freed himself from captivity and torture, only to find the Pale Court empty. Ada had not returned as promised. Worse yet, she had gone the opposite way; her flesh and bone filled with joy he could find no justification for, sparking a rage and jealousy in Enosh that shook the earth.
When priests visited the fisher village in search of the woman rumored to have wed and fornicated with the devil responsible for the world’s misery, Ada decided to flee. Her attempt died at the blade of a villager, which he stabbed into Ada’s belly.
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Chapter 1
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Ada
“Little one.” Dark and gutting, a voice broke against my earlobe, its sinister undertone promising a thousand agonies. “Do not believe I will let you escape me.” A grinding scoff, followed by an odd wheeze of air. “You are shackled to me forevermore, and death shall be your collar.”
Body benumbed, paralyzed, only my mind reeled at the threatening words as I gaped unblinking at whatever came into view. Soft light bathed my surroundings in glimmers of orange. They caught on the golden threads embroidered onto hundreds of pillows in a pile before me, all draped in rich dark red and forest green damask. Tangled limbs and grinning faces poked out from between them, where naked people lounged, chuckling as they stared at me.
All but one.
A bare woman dangled by a noose from a rafter. She twitched and tossed at the end of a rope between the stone frame of a tall, arched window. A line of them overlooked some sort of sprawling garden, where red and yellow birds as big as ravens squawked and whistled in oddly-shaped trees. Heavens, what kind of place was this? A madhouse?
“Quite so,” a man whispered into my thoughts, the gentle resonance in his voice like a lure promising salvation. “Madness shapes the pillars of my court, and insanity its walls. Excuse Leandra and her poor manners… hanging herself in front of my visitors without even greeting you first. So tiresome, this woman’s fondness for dramatics, as though she couldn’t just quietly slit her wrists. But I ought to be grateful for the hanging. Not as messy, easier on my rugs to be certain.”
Court? What court?
“The Court Between Thoughts.”
No, that couldn’t be.
The last thing I remembered was… a dark felt hat. Pa standing in the frame of our hut. Light reflecting on something. Metal, perhaps? And then… nothing.
What had happened?
I was shifted, and my eyes landed on lush carpets that covered yellow stone, the rich tan fabric stained red in large puddles here and there, with smaller specks around it. Blood?
How did I get here?
I tried to glance around, but cold apathy froze my entire body into stillness. Why couldn’t I move?
“Dreadful, is it not, little one?” A menacing whisper tickled around my temple, its familiarity distorted by a noisy heave, like air sucking into a broken bellow. “This twilight state of half-existence, aware enough for your soul to agonize over it but… Ah! Too detached from your form to escape it.”
I didn’t so much recognize the voice as I did the smooth cadence it held, and how it sustained its fine composure while slithers of dread burrowed through my unmoving body. It belonged to the kind of man whose roar scared you, but the true terror lay in his unfazed silence.
Enosh.
My God.
My husband.
My… master?
Coldness dug its claws deeper into my flesh. Why did this word resonate in my core like the echo of a persistent prayer? Did it even matter? Shaken and disoriented, I just wanted him to put me in a nest of pelts and feathers, curl himself around me like armor, and stroke the shell of my ear.
I wanted to say his name.
Lips remained stiff.
A strange voice, so unlike my own, resonated from deep within me instead.
Master!
“Yes, I am your master.” Enosh clasped my chin, bringing my stiff, dry gaze to meet the cold silver of his stunning eyes set into a ghastly face, one half torn by gaping wounds. “You shall long for me, obey me, and serve me for eternity. And you shall worship me, for I am your god, the keeper of your flesh and bone.”
His voice barely registered as nausea clung to the back of my throat. What had happened to him?
Nothing but white bone remained where the wing of his left nostril should be, along with cartilage that clung to a string of flesh. Soot covered much of this half of his face, hiding the pestilent, blistered skin beneath. Something had stripped his jaws to bone and teeth at the far back of one joint, leaving a hole for his breath to wheeze through with each inhalation.
“What to do with my faithless wife, hmm? Ought I to weave you into my throne one joint at a time?” He took my heavy hand and placed it onto the only remaining trace of his humanity, his warm cheek, and the cleaner trails where something must have washed the soot off the unmarred side of his face. Tears? “Shall I shatter your bones into hundreds of pieces as I had to do with mine, so your treacherous beauty will grace it right alongside your terrible betrayal?”
Betrayal?
Cold dread burrowed between my ribs and black fog smothered my thoughts, provoking memories of utter savagery. The rrk of cotton ripping, the shk of metal sinking into flesh, the rust-stained handle of a knife. Smoky tendrils eclipsed any coherent thought. I understood none of this. What was going on here?
“Shall I tell you, wife, of the many atrocities they have imposed upon me in captivity while you pondered stew? Will knowing burden your conscience with guilt the way your disloyalty wears me down with the urge to punish you?” He lowered his monstrous face to mine, nuzzling my cheekbone with the hard, crusty remnants of his nose. “I spent nearly a fortnight in the ceaseless lick of flames, my face burned away by priests in never-ending agony, safe for the three times they decapitated me. Once to note just how my head would return; twice for the mere entertainment of it. And where were you, dear wife? Where. Were. You?”
Captivity. Flames. Priests.
Fear trickled across my scalp, pooling inside my head until my thoughts drowned in another blur of memories, only to emerge painfully clear—the attack in the forest, Enosh’s capture, how I’d fled to Elderfalls, Pa’s sickness, and… and my delay. After weeks of captivity—while the god was undoubtedly contained by fire—he must have escaped the high priest.
Only to find me gone.
Enosh stared down at me, the accusation of treachery edged into his cold, glaring mask of bitterness and disdain. He thought I’d broken my vow, but hadn’t I tried to return to him?
Some memories came back to me now, but more remained a tangled mess. I understood where I was, but I couldn’t recall how I’d ended up in Enosh’s arms in the first place. Had he come for me? But if so, why had he brought me here of all places?
“Because he just can’t let you go,” Yarin whispered into my thoughts before he gave his true voice resonance. “Her mind is such a racing mess, I can barely distinguish one thought from another as her soul clings to my voice, shifting into my kingdom.”
And what a beautiful voice he had.
It called to me with its soothing intonation and calm undertone. “Let go,” it beckoned, lulling my mind into a state of peacefulness. So I did, allowing myself to drift and float away.
Beneath me, the body of a woman came into view, battered and beaten. She rested on trembling arms that lifted her as though offering herself to the heavens. I… I knew this woman.
Yes, it was me.
How strange I looked.
How little I cared.
Mud streaked my face and a wet, brown leaf clung to my black strands. A pink wound cut across my cheek, barely healed. Even against the warm light from the candles flickering in the chandeliers above, deep shadows cast across my otherwise pale features. Red stained the cotton of my blue dress around the belly, the fabric shredded. I didn’t move. Not even my chest lifted as though… as though—
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Where do you think you’re going? Unfortunately, I traded your soul away,” Yarin whispered before he resonated the room with his airy lilt. “One soul in exchange for ten corpses, as promised. And what a poor deal this suddenly turned out to be, for we both know I could have demanded thousands over the course of eons for this one.”
A brutal force gripped my thoughts like a vise, digging, clawing, scraping. One sharp pull, and I dropped into a freefall toward my body, crashing into it. Something pinned me down, like a death weight on my chest, shackling me beneath unseen chains.
A sudden chill wrapped around me, seeped into my flesh, and planted an ice-cold inkling into the marrow of my bones. The blood I’d seen on my dress, my pale features, how my lungs wouldn’t expand. Was I…?
No. I wasn’t dead.
“Strange.” Yarin’s green eyes came into view, and a pout played around his lips. “It seems as though a part of her soul is evading me, sheltering itself in a blind void of nothingness at her very core. Her death came sudden, I presume?”
Pressure expanded behind my ribs until it ached and panic needled my insides. No, I wasn’t dead. How could I be if I was right here? My head spun. Delirium crept up on me. Retreated. I’m not dead, my mind screamed, not dead, not dead, not—
“Shh, you’re making my temples throb.” Yarin’s hush sent a caress of calm across my tortured soul. “Enosh, remember the mortal who kept the fire burning after Lord Tarnem captured you? The one you buried? Seeing your wife’s mind crumble, I can’t help but wonder about him. It must be dreadful, having your soul chained to your body, only to spend eternity in the ground with no company other than your own mind.”
“Mm-hmm, I remember.” Bemusement rose into the upturned corners of Enosh’s lips, and an inky strand of his hair slowly grew and lengthened where it swept along his forehead. “Ah, my wicked, faithless wife, ought I lower you into a grave and cover you with dirt? Leave you there in your helpless state for as many days as I have suffered for your sake?”
Fear crept into my veins, chilling my blood. Was this truly the man who’d brought rot to the children, rousing a true flicker of affection in me? The gray of his eyes diminished as they narrowed, letting terrifying shadows lower over them as though he imagined me jailed in the wet ground…
…and enjoyed it.
I’m not dead!
“Oh, I heard that one loud and clear.” Yarin chuckled. “She thinks she’s not dead. Don’t they all? Just how did it happen?”
“Mortals stabbed her in the belly,” Enosh said, sending my mind into a nauseating spin. “They… might have thought she carried my child. No doubt High Priest Dekalon would have preferred her alive to gain leverage over me.”
Mortals stabbed her in the belly.
Thought she carried my child.
Darkness fell over my petrified mind, spinning black shadows into distorted memories. How I’d retched up countless meals. The bowl of sprouted grains. Rose, that wretched bitch. And a blade sinking into my flesh to the echo of a man’s voice, “Who wants to take chances when she might as well have the devil’s babe in her belly?”
Shock overwhelmed me.
My lungs burned.
My vision speckled.
I was dead.
My core filled with anguish, and loss carved itself a home inside my chest, suffocating me with grief. Oh god, I was dead, and so was my unborn baby. They’d killed me. They’d taken my baby from me, the only… the only thing I’d ever—
Oh! I couldn’t breathe! I was suffocating, choking on too much pain and not enough air.
Breathe!
My body ignored the command.
Muscles refused to stretch and expand, leaving my chest collapsed around a ball of terror. It burned along my breastbone, searing into my core, burning toward my spine.
Choking me.
Suffocating me.
“Your wife’s mind is such a noisy, incoherent place right this moment, it’s driving me insane,” Yarin ground out. “Keep her like this, brother, and her soul will fall into such despair that not even I can fix it.”
Enosh’s eyes clenched shut, and three loud heaves wheezed through the hole in his cheek before he growled, “Rise!”
I filled my lungs with a deep inhale, immediately regretting it when the sickening stench of charred flesh and singed hair choked the back of my throat as I wailed, “My ba—”
Enosh gripped my throat as he roughly lowered me onto my swaying legs. “I believed you. I trusted you. I sacrificed myself so you may escape, only for you to abandon me. To break your vow as quickly and easily as any of your abhorrent kind.” His hand slipped off my face, the loss of its warmth harrowing as he brought one step of painful distance between us. “My wicked, faithless wife… I adored you like no other.”
I shivered, the empty space between us like a wall of frigid ice, chilling the still blood in my deathly quiet heart. He’d gone mad with rage. Why else would he talk about betrayal without even a mention of my baby?
Our baby!
Driven toward him by desperation and lured closer by his body heat, I reached my hand for his chest. “I can explain everything, but I need to know—”
“Shh…” He pressed his hand to my mouth, offering a precious glow that tingled along my lips. “I will hear no more of your lies, little one. Your flesh and bone are growing anxious, longing for the Pale Court. It is where you belong, after all, among the remnants of the dead, my cold, cold wife.”
“Mm-hmm—”
Horror filled my chest as I swung my hand toward my mouth. I let my fingertips dig beneath his, brushing over the rough patch of skin covering the area, like leathery parchment glued to my lips. I doubled over and sunk to the ground, surrounded by the yaps and snickers of Yarin’s corpses.
My soul died a thousand deaths as I reached my arms up to Enosh, begging for comfort as my mind chanted, Master, master.
“Yes, I am your master, and death is your true eternal prison.” Nothing but the dismissive swat of his hand hauled me onto my shaky legs before he curled his fingers around my chin, lifting my gaze to meet his lopsided smirk. “I shall be your guard, your judge, your punishment, but– Ah… never your absolution.”
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Chapter 2
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Ada
Weakness curled my spine, and my ribs caved in. Enosh’s biting malice shook me to the core, turning me into a trembling, devastated mess. Did he not feel the child? Or did he not care in all his rage? Was it dead? Still in my belly? Had my womb expelled it?
Each time I pried my lips open to give my sorrows voice, the tension of the skin melded to my mouth ached all the way into my nostrils.
I needed to know!
I scratched at the patch of leather, but my fingers quivered too much, my body ransacked by this unholy cold. Why was it so cold?
“Will you not stay a while longer, brother?” Yarin let the stem of a goblet adorned with hundreds of sparkling stones form between his fingers, then sunk his naked body into the ocean of pillows before he brushed his auburn strands back. “Witnessing your marital issues is such a riveting delight, I have half a mind to look for a woman to wed.”
Enosh scoffed, “Send us to the Pale Court or my horse, whichever mortal thought is nearest.”
“As you wish,” Yarin said just as his court faded into a gray fog that wafted over frost-covered bushels of brown grass, his voice a faraway echo. “Watch your boots.”
Humid air settled onto my cheeks, woven with traces of wood rot and mildew. Where were we?
My gaze wandered over the misty meadow before they snapped to the trickle of water. A soldier in chain mail stood in front of a tree, stance wide, pressing one hand to the trunk while the other held his prick.
“We found his dead horse wandering toward the Blighted Fields!”
When the soldier turned his attention to the shout, he spotted Enosh standing beside him, albeit too late. “In the name of Helfa—”
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.”
I blinked in confusion. “I… I don’t understand.”
Two steps, and he tore down the wall of frigid distance between us, filling it with a heat I wanted to melt into. It consumed me, driving out the chill of death as I placed my hand on his leather cuirass. My head tipped back, and I stared up at his mangled face. Oh, his lips remained so perfectly curved. I licked my own at the sight.
He let his fingers sift through my hair, gently detangling the knots as his face lowered to mine, luring me deeper into him. His finger hooked beneath my chin, bringing my lips to hover inches from his, letting the back of my throat purr with anticipation.
I’d once told myself that I didn’t care about his love, but I was mistaken. Right now, I needed him to hold me and stroke the hair from my damp cheeks while I cried my heart out over the injustice of this all, the crimes committed to us.
Right this moment, I needed his love.
“Mmm, how twisted this has become, my little one. I sense how much you want my warmth, my touch, my heated skin against yours. And yet it holds no measure to how much I have wanted you. Have I not given you all my attention? My goodwill? My devotion?” His finger hooked deeper underneath my chin, lifting it until vertebras crackled in my neck. “Who… is… Elric?”
