Текст книги "Queen of rot and pain"
Автор книги: Liv Zander
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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 15 страниц)
Oh, how he screamed, and squealed, and shrieked, but the ear-stabbing sound soon muffled behind a gag of skin that wrapped around his face—a sight that brought another rotten smile to my face, just as my title commanded.
“The sun is nearly coming up. We shall spend the day here so you may warm yourself by the fire.” Enosh rubbed his palms up and down my arm. “Traveling by day will only get us seen and cause surrounding villages to flee. This woman who knows of your father might get away, so we shall ride there tomorrow night and find her in the morning.”
Yes, we would find her.
Then, I would kill her.
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Chapter 22
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Ada
“The one with the fish cages stacked beside the door.” Sitting astride our horse upon a hill, I pointed at the house in the valley before us near the forge, the wattle and daub freshly whitewashed, the roof neatly thatched. Pretty. “She should be in there.”
As requested, Enosh had once again dressed me for the occasion. This time, my husband had outdone himself with a dress of feathers, the bodice swan-white, then turning grayer and grayer down along the train, only to end in black plumes and a fringe of soot-covered fingers.
Courtesy of Henry and Arne.
The house we’d stayed at had been low on wood, and my husband proved quite incapable of finding more in the forest. His solution? Let their parched bodies climb into the hearth, feeding the flames as he continuously restored their bodies.
Enosh cast his gray eyes over the powdery-white village, his cape of crow feathers matching the train of my dress. “Unless the farmer lied.”
“You’d be surprised how merrily people turn against strangers.” As Rose had done with me, and as I would do with her. “What if I want her in your throne like the others? Will you do that for me?”
“I will not.”
My gaze shot over my shoulder at him, finding a lopsided grin that tugged on the corner of his mouth, playful in a way I’d never witnessed before. Was he… trying himself at humor?
I stretched my arm out, warming my black-gloved fingers on the seven-foot flame a soulbound and gagged Arne so kindly provided beside us with his remaining body parts as I tried to decipher my husband. Enosh looked younger like this, carefree, lending him an air of mortality.
I arched a brow, twisting further in the saddle to ensure he saw it. “How was that? Your goal to gain my heart remains unchanged?”
A single, breathy laugh burst from his throat. “Negotiating with a god once more, that mortal woman who has neither patience nor a shred of obedience?”
“You prefer me that way.” My cheeks bunched at the playfulness between us, the familiarity we’d grown around each other. “Rose in your throne in exchange for an inkling of love.”
“As though your chest is not full of it already, fluttering so nicely between the beats of your heart for me to sense and revel in.” For a moment, he lifted his chin by a haughty inch the way he’d used to, but I saw the twitch on his cheek, the teasing twinkle in his eyes. “My throne is rather crowded at the moment, but are you not my Queen of Rot and Pain?” He stroked a strand of my hair back, twirling it around a joint on my jawbone tiara, letting the veil of teeth strung on threads of skin at the back clank at the motion. “Once we return home, I shall fashion you a throne beside mine… right after I have made a cradle. Decorate it as you please.”
“Her head in my throne, and her legs, drumsticks for my child to play with.”
He dipped down, letting his lips warm mine in a gentle kiss, followed by a quick nuzzle of my nose. “What my wife wants, my wife shall get.”
Willing our horse into an unhurried walk, he followed a narrow trample path that led into Hogsbottom. Smoke lingered between the quiet homes, mingling with the wet fog of the early morning. How strangely narrow all this seemed, walls creeping toward me as though I no longer fit into such a place.
Somewhere, a creek prattled underneath a thin sheet of ice, coming together with the ca-lops of hooves hitting the cobblestone cleared of snow. Until we came to a halt by the fish cages.
An old man leaned against a stable with a pipe hanging from his mouth, puffing into the air as he squinted at us. If he were smart, he would stay just like that.
Enosh dismounted, glancing around and assessing our surroundings as he helped me down. “You are still determined?”
My gaze went from the snow gently rolling from the roof, to the breeze tugging on the naked twigs of a shrub, to the gentle flutter of the feathers on my dress. Was Eilam watching?
“More than ever before.”
Arne might have driven the blade into my belly, but who had taken my help only to betray me? Who had chased her brother and cousin after me like hounds? Who had sold out Pa? Who had set this entire mess into motion?
Rose.
Beneath the unholy hate quivering in my core and the determination to end this once and for all, I had neither capacity for doubt nor pity. I wanted her dead with an urgency, and I might just kill her like I’d done with Henry.
Fast. Simple.
Get on with my life.
Literally.
At my gesture, Enosh kicked the door in, letting out a swath of heat that lured me toward the crackle of flames and the screeching of chair legs over wood.
With unbending resolve, I stepped inside the home, only for shock to paralyze every single muscle in my body. My joints locked. My mouth gaped open. My temples throbbed with the echo of my foolishness.
There she stood, peachy-cheeked Rose, scrambling back like the rat she was until her back hit the wall so hard the baby gave a warning cry.
The one in her arms.
I swallowed air, my eyes so fixed on the bundled-up babe that I barely registered how her husband lifted a chair before his chest as though it would offer protection. Curse me, I’d forgotten all about the fact that she’d been pregnant back in Elderfalls.
No, not exactly forgotten.
I’d simply worried so much about my own child and it hadn’t occurred to me once that I might find her with a baby in her arms, its dimpled cheeks red from the generous heat in the hearth.
Should that deter me?
Enosh must have worried so, because he kicked the door shut, then placed his heavy hand on my shoulder, giving a sobering squeeze. “Is this the mortal woman responsible for your death?”
Lips trembling, tears streamed down her cheeks as Rose’s eyes flicked to her useless, cowering husband, who mumbled prayers, then back to Enosh. “I… It was my brother’s idea, my cousin who held the knife. I swear, I—”
“Mortals swear a great many things, though few of them prove true.” Enosh gave the onsets of trembles on my fingers a concerned side glance, then straightened and jutted his chin toward Rose’s husband. “Give him the child, for I shall remain true to my vow and punish those who have brought misery to my wife.”
“No, please!” Rose clutched the baby to her chest, letting it startle and flex its chubby arms from the woolen blanket with another warning cry. “Please, I… ask of me whatever you wish but… please, my baby needs me.”
Enosh smacked his lips. “Yet another conundrum, for my baby, too, needs its mother. I shall not place yours above mine.”
When Enosh extended his arms to take the child and shifted forward, I stepped in front of him. “No, I need to be the one.”
I had to do this.
On my own.
“Very well.” Enosh let the same blade I had used to kill Henry shape there in his open palm, my husband’s forehead wrinkling with a dozen justified doubts. “The wind picked up when we arrived.”
“I know,” I said when I took the knife, the handle somehow going slick and damp in my grip as I looked at Rose. “Give your baby to your husband.”
“No…” Rose whimpered, holding it tighter as she sniffled and cried until snot drooled onto her upper lip. “Oh my god, Helfa, I just wanted a better life for me and my baby instead of fish stew every damn day.”
My stupid stomach clenched as though recognizing the hunger pains any fisherman’s wife or daughter experienced whenever the damn beasts wouldn’t bite. But only until I looked around the house.
Fragrant, golden straw poked from the linen on the mattress, a fire that burned away throwing barely any smoke into the room, and a fat cured ham hanging from a rafter. Oh, she’d made herself a nice little home, indeed.
With the coin from the priests.
I took a strong step toward her, gripping the handle of the blade tighter. “You sold out my father. Where is he? What happened to him?”
At my questioning, Rose’s feet slowly slipped out from underneath her, and she sunk along the wall until she pooled into a puddle of cries on the floor. “They t-took him. Said he’d be useful to the high priest, paid me a handful of c-coins, then put him on a mule. Elisa… Adelaide, please… look at my baby.” Before I managed to focus my gaze elsewhere, she turned the little thing, showing me its stubby nose and flakes of white on its chin from when it must have spit some milk. “Look at my… my baby.”
I did look.
God help me, I stared down at the baby, its eyes hazel-brown. A handsome thing, with chubby cheeks, full lips that rooted for a nipple, and a thatch of brown hair poking out from the blanket draped over its head.
A heavy weight came over my chest, so overwhelming I squatted before them. If I killed Rose now, this child would never know its mother—just like I had never known mine.
That ached me.
For a moment, I might have contemplated to spare her. There were plenty of other wicked souls out there I could kill to show Eilam that I had meant what I’d said. Maybe.
Until the god took shape right beside Rose, ripping a startled yelp from her but leaving her no direction to flee. Trapped between walls on two sides, the bare god to her left, and me in front of her, she simply folded her arms over her baby.
‘Ada. His voice filtered not into my head like his brothers, but rather, into my very core. Will you truly rob a babe of its mother? Condemn it to grow up without ever knowing her embrace when it scraped a knee, or the sound of her voice when she sings it to sleep?’
“Shut up,” I mumbled, probably sounding like a madwoman, rambling to myself like this, and perhaps I was because the weight of the knife tripled as though I truly wanted to spare that bitch. “You think this will hold me back?”
It couldn’t.
Not with how Eilam sat there with that smug smile all the brothers seemed to have inherited from whatever hellhole birthed them. All this killing would continue if I succumbed to doubt now. All those corpses out there…? They would have died for nothing.
Was this not better?
To kill one, yes, but spare the rest?
Did that not make me a hero?
Besides, what if I failed now, and Eilam would go back on his offer? What if he didn’t? I couldn’t bring myself to kill someone less deserving of punishment than this woman. What if Enosh would wipe these lands like he’d done before? What if—
‘Ada.’ Eilam’s voice had my nostrils flare and my molars grind together. ‘Think of the baby. The innocent boy—’
“Quiet!”
Rose startled so hard at my shout that the baby shook in her arms. One warning wail, and another, then the boy started to cry with vigor. Tiny red veins popped up all over his wrinkled face, chunky fingers clenching and unclenching.
“Shh…” On instinct, I reached my hand forward, hushing him, wanting to pick up this boy and hold him against me.
Rose pulled him away from me.
Did what I had wanted to do instead.
She lifted the boy’s head to rest in the crook of her neck, rocking him, swaying him, comforting him, hushing him. All the things I wanted to do with my baby, she did right before my eyes… The woman who had cost me the opportunity to do so.
For eternity.
Hot and biting, anger carved itself into my beating but dead heart, letting my fingers tighten around the blade. Why did she deserve to hold her baby and I did not? What had I ever done to anybody to be denied hushing my child? Why would I deny myself, when all this could end with a single stab?
I’d done it before.
I could do it again.
Just one more time.
For my baby.
For the world.
Eilam cocked his head, brows furrowing. ‘Have you no heart, murdering—’
“I told you to shut up.” With a swipe of my hand, I lashed out at him. The blade cut across his collarbone before tearing open his neck, letting rivulets of blood run down his bare chest no matter how he pressed a hand to the wound, staring at me in shock. “Take the baby!”
I’d only shouted it into the room, but Enosh immediately stepped up beside me. He leaned over with hushing sounds, plucking the screaming boy from Rose’s arms.
Perhaps she would have gone after Enosh, if it wasn’t for the ropes of skin wrapping around her, disabling all fight. Still, she tossed on her arse and screeched frantically, her face a mess of tears and auburn strands clinging to damp cheeks.
I leaned closer to Eilam while readjusting my grip on the blade. “I might rob the boy of its mother, but I’ll also make sure that many other boys will get to keep their fathers.”
Or at least, that was what I told myself when I brought the blade to Rose’s throat with one hand and let the palm of the other touch down on the butt of the handle.
Fast. Simple.
My eyes flicked to her belly.
Throat. Belly.
Throat again.
The next time my gaze dropped to her upper belly, a bone knife protruded from it, close to her lungs, its handle resting in the fist of my hand. How it had slipped so low, I couldn’t say. Maybe the weight, maybe not.
I watched my hand turn, driving it in deeper until a wet cough called my attention back to Rose. Red-cheeked Rose, whose lips parted like that of a fish out of water, unable to take a breath under the flow of blood that gargled from her mouth.
“I am the Queen of Rot and Pain, beautiful and kind, terrible and cruel,” I murmured to myself and Rose, then stared down at Eilam, who still held his hand pressed to a wound already closed. “Now give me my baby.”
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Chapter 23
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Enosh
I was ruined.
For eternity.
There she stood—my woman, my wife, my queen—with a wicked mortal bleeding out by her left foot and a stunned god sitting by her right. Yes, my little one had ruined me, for there could never be a woman beside me ever again but my Ada.
That made the premise of her resurrection as frightening as the thought of her renewed mortality.
“Her breath for mine.” Leaning over, she brought the blade close to Eilam once more, then let the bone clank to the floor. “Or I swear I’ll not just be a speck on your memory, but a lesson on what those strange creatures called women are capable of once they have nothing left to lose.”
I rocked the crying boy in my arms like I had witnessed mortals do, loving the monotony of the motion, but I must have been doing it wrong for he kept screaming. “If you want her soul bound, we ought to call upon the God of Whispers.”
“I changed my mind.” Ada turned toward me while forming a cradle with her arms, her features warm as she blinked down at the baby, yet a stoic, almost resigned strain came to her jawline. “Let me see if I can calm him. Shh…”
Tugging on the woolen blanket, I covered the child and lowered him into her arms, watching how she hushed him. How she gingerly stroked from his forehead down along the bridge of his nose, again and again, until… yes, it calmed him.
I committed the sight to memory.
So much to learn about babies…
Once his cries faded, Ada carried him over to a nearby cradle, like she would soon do with our child… if my brother proved true to his word.
The trembling, uttering mortal who swore he had no involvement posed no threat, so I strolled over to my brother. Oh, he looked positively shaken, unaccustomed to the pains of the flesh and taken by surprise by who had inflicted it.
Eilam rose, still bare, snarling down at his bloody hand. “Your wife dared to cut me.”
“And if you refuse her once more, she will cut you again in places far more painful.” I let breeches form around him, along with a plain leather jacket. “It is over. Stand by your word and give her your breath, or on my vow, I shall turn these lands into a boneyard and dance with my wife upon a carpet of skulls.”
His lips twitched with renewed anger, so unlike his usual apathy. “At what cost?”
My stomach tightened.
I glanced at Ada where she stood by the cradle, rocking it with her knee while her bloodied hand rubbed over her dress. Desperate to wipe it off. But it were the abrupt movements that caught my attention. Was she resolved? Shaken? Were her muscles twitching from unbridled energy? I could not determine one or the other.
If the latter and my brother still refused, how would she continue? What if my little one had fulfilled my brother’s demand out of desperation? How much more death could Ada witness before she would distance herself from me once more?
I bit the inside of my cheek if only to keep myself from slamming Eilam against the wall for forcing me to yield some. “What else is it you want?”
A pout played around his lips. “Will you not guess?”
His damn balance. “Very good. Villages, towns, peasants… I shall spare it all until High Priest Dekalon is dead, the temples are destroyed, and the priests strung to Ada’s tree. After that, we shall return home and be peaceful.”
“I do not think so, Enosh.” Eilam straightened, making him stand taller than me, if only by half a hand. “I demand you open your gates and return to your duty of spreading rot, cleansing the earth of all that once lived.”
A small concession, considering that I had given this promise to my wife already and would see it fulfilled as agreed upon. “You shall have my promise.”
“Not only that, but you will end your crusade against the temples and priests now, and your quarrels with them shall not cost another mortal life.”
“Impossible!” Daub rilled from the walls, and the wooden planks beneath my boots creaked with how old bone in the ground writhed with my anger. “Each time I step foot into these lands praying to a false god, I will be hunted, captured, and burned, returning home to my wife and child eventually, yes, but charred to nothing more than cartilage and bone.”
“Had you done your duty, it would not have come to this,” he said in all his glorious ignorance, so oblivious to the hardships of being the only god bound to his form. “Time shall restore their beliefs and—”
“I vowed to have the high priest’s head in my throne, and you will not take that from me. Brother, you will not. I have suffered pains you cannot possibly imagine, and I will have my vengeance on this mortal.”
In no hurry, he stepped toward a wicker basket that stood on a stool, and pulled an onion from it, which he examined with utter fascination. “Choose, Enosh. Your revenge or your wife. Now, before you question the value of my word once more, hear this.” Onion tossed back into the basket, he turned to face me. “She shall have her breath regardless of your choice… but for how long can she keep it this time? Mortality is nothing but a sickness. She suffers it like all her kind, making this nothing more than one quarrel between brothers… of many more to come.”
Bone shivered across the lands, ready to shape into a spiked rod to shove up his prick sideways. And while nothing would delight me more than to see him bleed out from his genitals, I willed it all to settle in the ground once more.
Oh, I hated him so.
Righteous, dull, celibate Eilam.
Unfortunately, his words made sense.
Decades, centuries, eons… As old as time, I had witnessed a great many crossroads, yet none had felt as significant as this one. I ought to think on this for a moment.
My Ada called me ill-tempered, and she was correct, for I was tempted to turn around, take my wife, and keep on killing. Eilam would be forced to return her breath eventually. Oh yes, he would restore my wife’s life… after I’d either killed her feelings for me or eradicated the part of her I loved dearly.
And if we demanded her breath now while I refused to bow to his demands…? He would chase after her breath for eternity, and then I would chase after him to return it. Armies of corpses, beheadings, bloodshed, gods at each other’s throats…
There would be no peace.
Only hatred and revenge, both of which I had sworn off for it had cost me my wife and child once before. I could not let it affect my family a second time.
“Give her the breath of life and, on my word, I shall do as you ask. I will revoke my vow of vengeance to the high priest.” For my wife and child, I would do this, so they would be alive and well within our home. “However… you will promise not to take her breath again should anything ever happen to her.”
Eilam shrugged. “It leaves her soul fragile just the same.”
“Her soul shall be of no concern to you, so as long as you leave her breath alone,” I said. “Do you promise me this?”
His eerie black eyes took me in for another moment before he gave a curt nod. “We are agreed.”
I turned away and walked over to my little one, stepping up behind her with a kiss on her shoulder. “My love, are you ready to receive the breath of life?”
She stared at the sleeping boy for a moment longer, then turned just as her lips struggled up a weak smile with the oddest answer. “We need to ensure he’s taken care of.”
“Gold coins take care of mortals, I have learned.” I clasped her chin, bringing those bright blue eyes up to meet mine. “Are you well?”
“No,” she said in all her painful honesty, yet a nod followed. “But I will be. Once this is finally over. I need this to be over, Enosh.”
“Then come.”
With my hand on the small of her back, I guided her toward my brother. At the same time, I extended my mind, commanding the dead to spread out and secure a path to the Pale Court. I had to protect her better from now on.
“Ada…” Eilam walked up to us, assessed my little one for another moment, then took a deep breath. “Cure her of any rot and decay, or she will come back to life ridden with foul sickness, and I refuse to take the blame.”
Removing even the tiniest specks of corrosion from her form, I stroked her cheek, willing her muscles to ease and give where her shoulders wanted to stiffen. “Shh… it is almost over now. Take two deep breaths. One for you. One for our baby.”
“Our baby,” she said, then inhaled.
Inhaled again.
Nodded.
“Wait,” I said when Eilam stepped closer, letting my arm clasp around Ada’s waist while I cupped her face. “Any moment now, you will leave the prison of your death. I will be neither guard nor master, neither punishment nor absolution. Only your husband who loves you very much. The question is, what will you be? I need to hear it.”
Say that you love me.
For a couple of breaths, Ada only stared at me, but understanding soon dawned on her as she mirrored my gesture and cupped my face. “And if I don’t answer, will you keep me trapped in death?”
I forced a smile. “Facing the premise of losing you this very moment, I just might.”
Ada smiled back and patted my cheek, thumbing the emerging stubble on my chin the way she did often and seemed to enjoy. “If that is true, then you don’t deserve the answer until after.”
That made me grin with its painful truth. No, I had botched our relationship once by wearing it down with old distrust, and I would not risk it again. Would trust she had found some love for me. That my little one would return to me. Always and forever return to me.
If not… well…
…I could always collar her again.
I gave her a nod. “Stubborn, obstinate, beautiful woman.”
“Arrogant, cruel, annoyingly handsome god.”
I placed a kiss to her lips, trying to taste the remnants of the vows she had given, the devotion with which she had once spoken them. “I shall ask you again once your heart beats on its own.”
Eilam leaned slightly forward, bringing his lips close enough to hers that my jaws clenched, leaving but a sliver of air between them. Air which turned frigid, letting even my little one’s breath billow. Eilam’s eyes blackened further, seemingly turning into liquid tar.
I watched with sheer wonder, having never witnessed my brother’s power of giving and taking life.
But only until all strength was sucked from Ada’s form, as though she was nothing but a puppet with its strings cut unexpectedly, and I could not keep her upright.
Heart hammering in my chest, I caught her in my arms and pulled her against me. “Ada! Ada, what is it?” No reaction. Not even a blink. “What have you done to her?”
“This has never been attempted before, Enosh.” Eilam frowned at my wife, observing her, and I could find no malice on his face so unaccustomed to hiding its emotions. “I presume she requires more life than I usually give, its force so strong that her form cannot endure as it enters her. You ought to… do it for her somehow.”
“If it is strong enough to threaten her form, the same might be true for her soul, and we ought to call upon the God of Whispers,” I said, then spoke into the room for Ada and the other mortal to hear. “Yarin, brother, you are needed.”
Nothing.
No Yarin.
I mumbled a dozen curses before I tried again with more vigor. “Uncle Yarin, you are needed.”
“Anything for my little niece or nephew. Ada, is that not what you mortals—” He stiffened while he still came into his form beside us, wearing nothing but breeches and one boot. “My, my, my… it seems as though I have missed all the fun. Whyever is your wife’s soul spinning?”
“You ought to ensure that its chains remain intact while Eilam gifts his breath. It was strong enough that even I failed to keep her standing.” When my little one shifted in my arms, I cupped her cheek. “Nothing but a fainting spell of some sort. We will try again now, yes?”
A heavy gulp tugged on her throat, but she nodded. “I’m ready.”
Yarin stepped closer, bringing his palm to her sternum as his eyes narrowed with focus. “Let’s get this on with. There is something I need to… finish.”
When the air turned frigid and Eilam’s eyes blackened once more, I braced against the violent force of his breath. It swirled around us, cold and biting, leeching all strength from my muscles, unleashing havoc on my focus as it tousled through my hair. Until, with a beat of entire stillness, as though time suspended itself for one breath, we all froze.
Ada sucked in a deep breath and stared at us as color flushed into her face, eyes frantically bouncing from Eilam to Yarin and from there to me. “Have you done it?”
I swallowed, extending my mind toward her as shock paralyzed my extremities. “I cannot say.”
We had certainly done something.
Because I no longer sensed her bone.
No longer felt her flesh.
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