Текст книги "Queen of rot and pain"

Автор книги: Liv Zander

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

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.”

 “Yes, yes, yes, but much better dressed on her funeral.” Yarin flung himself toward a pile of still twitching corpses, only to land on a tufted daybed that had appeared out of nowhere atop them, shifting in their final struggles as the legs sunk into their flesh. “Between us, Enosh, I shall never bed a warm woman again. No, I have sworn them all off. Since this renders Eilam’s threat to kill all whores before I even touch them quite irrelevant—well, I might as well partake in this, um… divine vengeance, crusade, soiree… whatever you wish to call it.”

Enosh clenched his jaw. “If you insist, brother. But at the very least, make yourself useful and watch my wife while I call upon the third.” He lifted me over the carpet of corpses, put me on the daybed beside his brother, then leaned in for a menacing growl. “Watch. Not touch.”

“I would never. If only because your possessiveness over her might be potent enough to get an immortal killed.” The moment Enosh turned away with a sigh, Yarin let a golden platter of fruits shape in his palm and reached it to me. “Hungry? Oh, I forgot.” He tossed it away, letting apples thud against skulls and grapes scatter across limp bodies. “Dead. No good with food. My apologies.”

Enosh walked over to the bound men. “Kneel.”

At the command, the seven fell to their knees in front of the corpses, lining up before us less than ten steps from the daybed. Fear flitted across their features, eyes wide and chins trembling. One of them—a squire who probably hadn’t seen his fifteenth summer yet—soaked his breeches, letting them darken around his crotch.

“Still so young.” The sight of his rosy cheeks, red pimples, and patchy blond facial hair brought an unwelcome hollowness to my guts that I couldn’t afford. “What will Enosh do with him?”

“Something that will vex Eilam like nothing else,” Yarin said with a devious grin lining his lips. “Never got along, those two. See, Ada, Eilam gets rather flustered when we cut a mortal life short before its due time, since it affects him in a way we cannot quite grasp. And there truly is only one thing that upsets him even more…”

My throat tightened. What could possibly anger the god of life more than such a slaughter, where hundreds died in seconds?

My husband slowly walked along the men lined up for death, letting the snow crunch beneath his boots before he squatted before the youngest one—the one who’d pissed himself.

“Mortal, you have a choice to make.” A bone knife formed in my husband’s palm, of which he brought the sharp end to the squire’s eye. “Deny what I ask of you, and I shall carve your eyeballs out with this, slowly. They will dangle on a string of cartilage as I hang you upside down from a tree.”

No sooner had Enosh spoken that last word, did the earth tremble. Corpses tossed on the ground about half a furlong ahead of us as a flare of wind whirled up snow, blowing it toward them.

My breathing stumbled to a halt.

No, not snow.

Bonedust wafted from the copse of trees lining this valley, the old piles of corpses around the Æfen Gate, and the open meadows behind us. It came together in an avalanche, burying slain soldiers beneath a dusting of it as it roared toward us. The dead scrambled, crawling away from…

From what?

“As it so happens, my wife is fond of trees,” Enosh said, letting his dark voice loom over the squire’s whimpers like a foreboding shadow. “So I shall grow a magnificent tree right in front of our home for the world to behold, decorated with the twitching, wailing bodies of those who betrayed their god. Starting with you, mortal.”

Raw, numbing shock looped around my organs as the waves of bone collided, sending a puff into the dreary sky. The impact alone shook the world hard enough that nearby twigs snapped and a few horses broke loose to take off in a flight, their hoofbeats a terrified substitute for my heart.

A massive tree shaped right in front of my eyes, big enough one would be able to see its crown from Hemdale and beyond. Thick branches sprouted from it, gnarled and grotesque, like the gout-ridden fingers of an old witch, left naked without a single leaf of skin.

Instead, strings of something, hair perhaps, braided themselves downward like the swamp vines on the sunken trees in the western wetlands. From there, they formed offshoots that slithered across the ground. Some of them came toward us, only to wrap around the men’s boots.

With a start, the squire glanced over his shoulder at the tree—as did the others—his mouth falling open wider the higher his gaze wandered—up toward the treetop scraping at the winter-gray clouds.

“From this tree, you shall eternally hang.” Enosh pressed the bone blade against the squire’s cheek, returning his gaze to meet the god’s with a bloody cut. “And the crows shall peck at the two holes in your face. Greedy as they are, they will peel the skin off and dig their beaks through your skull before you manage to die. Or…” He tossed the blade in the air, gripped it by its blade until blood dripped from his knuckles, then reached the handle over. “Each one of you shall take a blade and, one after another, open the veins along your arms.”

My survival instinct leapt in my chest, shoving a gasp past my lips. A whiff of iron and sweetness crept into my mouth, quickly tainting my gums with the stench of urine and guts, letting my stomach spin for reasons I didn’t want to explore.

 Had Enosh not warned me of his plan to bathe the lands in blood? Had it not made sense, terrible as it may be, for mortals had brought this day of reckoning onto themselves? If we wanted revenge on those who’d wronged us—to destroy all under the Sun of Helfa and gain life for me and our child—then these men needed to die.

But the squire was no man.

He was a boy.

Innocent.

Barely old enough to grow a damn beard, let alone lift a sword. Devil be damned, he’d probably spent all week watering the horses, filling cups of ale, and pouring the commander’s pisspots into the latrines.

“P-please, Your Highness,” the boy stammered, letting my gloved fingers curl into the mink of my dress no matter how I didn’t want them to. “I… I have a younger sister at home who… She’s carrying my babe.”

Well… maybe not innocent.

But not terribly guilty, either.

Yarin chuckled. “Tsk, tsk, tsk… not even I am depraved enough to rut my own sister.”

“If only because we do not have one,” Enosh clipped over his shoulder, then turned his attention back to the man. “Are you suggesting that you wish to feed the crows?”

“No!” the boy blurted, eyes nervously flitting from Enosh to the blade as he hesitantly nodded. “Unbind me, and I… I will do it.”

His arms fell forward right then.

I breathed.

Breathed again.

It was all I could do to keep down this desperation, this inkling that these lands I called home might soon resemble those beyond the Soltren Gate.

And if we found a young alemaid in some tavern, would she have to cut her wrists, too? What of the stable boys? What of the motherless babes screaming inside the temples? When Enosh had said bloodshed, whose blood had he been talking about, exactly?

Watching this boy pick up the blade… it shook me beyond comprehension.

As it shook him, for he dropped the blade into the snow with how his hand quivered. Nausea bit at my throat when he lifted it from the white powder. He shoved back the leather covering his arm, brought the blade to the pale skin, and—

“Stop,” someone said.

Me.

I’d said that.

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Chapter 19

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Ada

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?”

Another kiss to my temple, then his silver eyes found mine. “Oh, he will show himself. And then, we will demand your life breath back, hmm?”

That roused another flutter behind my ribs. “Yes.”

Enosh slipped me off his lap and returned to the line of men kneeling in the snow, who shivered from frost and fear, letting a new bone blade shape when he reached the squire.

Gulping, the boy took it, and brought it to his wrist.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk.” Enosh gripped his hand and guided the blade a smidge more to one side. “Right here, mortal, along this very vein, blueand oh-so swollen with dread. Cut.”

From ten feet away, it looked like no more than a nick, but I knew how sharp a bone blade was. It sunk into the vein easily, immediately staining red before rivulets of blood collected in the man’s palm. From there, crimson drip-drip-dripped into the white snow.

“Return what you stole from my wife,” Enosh mumbled as the boy’s head slowly drooped, chin sinking toward chest. “Or else I shall unbalance this world until it turns upside down. Show yourself!”

Enosh’s shout echoed across the silent field, letting a flock of birds take flight from a nearby tree. All the while, the young man’s arms slouched, pulling heavily on his shoulders until he tipped forward, slumping against the god.

Nothing.

No Eilam.

A tremor shook me, caused by equal parts of cold drifts from the north and despair. How many more needed to bleed out before that bastard finally showed up? I just wanted my baby.

When Enosh rose, letting the squire’s face fall into the snow, I averted my gaze. “This is upsetting…”

“Agreed,” Yarin said on a sigh. “Upsettingly boring.”

Enosh handed the blade to the next man in line, a priest. “How many priests with their soul still about?”

“Five,” Yarin said. “Seven with the two in this line.”

“Bind the dead ones. I shall trade you one for one.”

Offshoots of hair spread across the field of demise, slithering toward the sudden echoes of scattered wails and prayers. When they retreated toward the trunk, they pulled the corpses of priests with them.

Soulbound.

One after another, they rose toward the branches. They tossed and writhed until their robes slipped over their heads, letting the shit-stained underpants of some air out. They screamed and cried, praying to a god who would not help them.

“Wonderful,” Yarin said with a grin and an excited clap. “Oh, Enosh, I do love it when you lose your mind every couple of centuries. Such skill. Such creativity.”

The soldier who kneeled in front of my husband shot his hand forward, taking the bone blade from Enosh’s palm. With a slow cut, he opened his veins to the chill of winter and death.

“Good man,” Enosh whispered as the soldier slowly slumped into himself as he crawled toward death. “I can do this for the rest of my life. Tell me, brother, how long might that be?”

When Enosh picked up the blade where it had dropped in the snow, a sudden sense of despair settled onto me like thick tar poured over my very soul. It slithered into my chest, robbing me of air, leeching the little warmth I had left from me like he had done the day I’d died.

“Eilam,” I rasped, making Yarin scoot away from me and Enosh to rise to his full height.

‘Ada.’ My name whispered from an aura to my left, almost like the caress of light one felt when the sun poked through the windows in the morning. Not a sight; a sensation. ‘Still so much life in you, refusing my command. An atrocity.’

Eilam slowly came into his form beside me, his windswept hair as white as snow, his black eyes seemingly fixed on me, though it was hard to tell. Oh, and he was naked.

Yarin rolled his eyes. “I would have gladly waited another moment if only you would have found a rag to cover that white fur of yours.”

“By Helfa…” the other priest mumbled, rocking on his knees and swaying back and forth as he stared at Eilam. “Give me the blade so I can depart this unholy place of dark magic.”

Enosh let the man’s arms fall forward and handed him a fresh blade, but his eyes remained locked on Eilam. “As you wish.”

The daybed shook.

My gaze snapped to Eilam, who trembled beside me as he watched the priest slit his wrists. It truly upset him, didn’t it?

A flutter of hope.

Would he give in?

We had four more left…

“You knew she carried my child.” Enosh stepped up to us and, with a flick of his hand, let a leather shape on Eilam’s crotch. “Give her your breath.”

“I did not know what it was when she died, not that it would have mattered.” Eilam leaned into me, bringing his eerie eyes so close to mine, I stopped breathing, if only to remind myself that I no longer needed air. I was dead. He could take no more from me. “Her life was twice forfeited. Once stolen.”

I lifted my chin no matter how it trembled. “I just want my baby.”

Perhaps I imagined it, but his eyes appeared to slip to those lips he’d once kissed, letting the hairs rise along my arms.

“Enosh, did you know that our brother kissed your wife?” Yarin blurted, letting my husband’s jaws clench with such force his ears twitched. “Ada, how bad was it?”

I looked straight into Eilam’s pitch-black eyes. “Clearly so terrible, I died from it.”

Yarin laughed.

Enosh did not.

“Strange creatures,” Eilam said, seemingly unfazed by it all. “Women. So different from us.”

Yarin leaned back into the daybed. “At long last, you took notice.”

“Give her… your… breath.” At Enosh’s growl, all those soldiers who’d lost their lives stood and turned toward us, stares abandoned, sending a shudder across my chilled skin. “Or on my word, I shall kill every soul I come across until you restore her.”

“I do not think you will, Enosh.”

“You are not powerful enough to stop me.”

“From the moment you have claimed your first death of the day, I have been watching, listening.” A strand of Eilam’s hair fell forward, scenting the air between us with crisp breeze and lavender. “No, I am not powerful enough… but your wife is. And stopping you, she will. Already she has… doubts.”

“So certain, brother?” Yarin asked. “All it takes is one whisper.”

“As I recall, our brother has no want for your illusions. No, he longs for… unadulterated love grown from her uncolored inclination. Tell me, Enosh, how much will she love you once the first house collapses onto a child under the weight of corpses? How many whispers will it take to dull her hate once a wave of bonedust suffocates a girl in hiding? Come to think, have you ever told her how many children died in the Soltren lands?”

When my gaze flicked to Enosh, my husband sunk his head—if in regret or to escape my judgment, I couldn’t say.

“Children. So innocent. For a while.” Eilam cast his judging stare over me, lifting a smug brow. “All this ordeal over a mortal woman, little more than an insignificant speck on our memory. Here one day, gone the next.”

Insignificant.

A rush of hot blood itched beneath my skin, tossing me into the biting throes of rage and utter despair. He would not do it. Would leave me behind cold. All because he… expected me to protect the innocent?

And what of my trapped baby?

Was it not innocent?

It was, and I refused to fail it again.

“You think I’ll do you the favor and stop Enosh?” I leaned into Eilam, then a bit more when he shifted back, as though uneasy about my closeness. “Think again, Eilam, because right now, I’m very tempted to help.”

Why did Yarin sink his face into his palm? Why did Enosh hiss? What did I do? Wasn’t this what he’d wanted of me? To stand behind this?

“Will you truly help?” Eilam opened his palm, letting a wooden stake form there. “Show me how mistaken I am in my assumption, mortal. Of course, my brothers shall not interfere, guiding neither hand nor mind.”

“What?” Gaping in shock, I looked at Enosh, who’s eyes narrowed with concern, then back down at the stake. “If I… if I do this, you’ll give me my life back?”

“A mortal’s breath in exchange for yours sounds fair to me.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, I reached for the stake, letting my fingertips stutter over Eilam’s palm before I closed it around the smooth wood. He thought I would give up on my child? That I gave a rat’s ass about one measly soldier?

I rose and hurried toward the line of men. Positioning myself behind a gray-bearded soldier, I brought the stake to the man’s throat, scratching it bloody with how my entire arm tossed under the strain.

Yarin grinned.

Eilam narrowed his eyes.

Enosh, however… oh, he looked as though he was only waiting for me to stab the man’s throat so he could fuck me in the puddle of blood. Maybe I’d let him right after I did this. And I would; I could. For my baby, I could.

I gripped the man’s hair.

I pulled back on it.

I pressed the stake against his throat.

The man screamed.

Thud.

The stake suddenly lay in the snow, clean and innocent and unused, all while my empty hand shook uncontrollably. Tremors wandered up my arm from where they invaded my core, making me twitch so hard, the world around me distorted.

Eilam vanished where he sat, the only remnant left behind was the sound of his words. “Point proven.”

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