Текст книги "Queen of rot and pain"
Автор книги: Liv Zander
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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 15 страниц)
I shivered. “This is awful.”
“Awful? No. This is what you wanted, is it not? I am opening the Pale Court to those children you love so dearly. Their skulls shall stack into columns, their skins span a canopy above them, and their ribs shall encase the beauty of my court.”
One after another, the children dissolved into the white powder of bone. It swirled into all directions at once, shaping pillars carved with motifs of forests, walls that rose toward the arched ceiling, and wide staircases of bone, polished to a shine. A palace formed around me, furnished with alabaster tables, life-sized statues of beasts, and elaborately carved chairs, padded with what had to be woven hair.
It was beautiful.
It was terrifying.
More horrid was how five children limped toward me, their eyes veiled in white, their bodies torn to shreds for they must have laid in the piles for years. Decades. Their groans echoed from the wall of bone that rounded the dais, battering straight into my heart with its odd resonance.
“Kneel.”
My knees hit the ground. “What are you doing?”
“Your coronation, my love.” Enosh hooked his pointer beneath my chin and lifted my gaze to his. “Are you not the wife of the King of Flesh and Bone? You have the kingdom you wanted… and now, its queen shall have her crown.”
My thighs gave out as the children reached toward me, and my arse sunk onto the heels of my feet. I clenched my eyes shut, but I felt it—their tiny hands squeezing my head, their spindly fingers digging into my hair.
“Rise,” Enosh commanded.
So I did, opening my eyes only to watch the children dissolve. The pressure around my head, however, remained.
I reached my shaky hands upward, sensing the smooth bone spreading out and thinning like a circular nest of branches. My fingertips glided over bumps here and there. Knuckles.
“Your crown, my queen,” Enosh whispered into my ear. “The Queen of Rot and Lies? No… not quite regal enough. Ah! Now I know. The Queen of Rot and Pain. Your rot, my pain.”
No matter how I yanked on it, the crown of little hands and fingers wouldn’t lift an inch. “You melded it to my head!”
He twirled a strand of my hair around his finger, then seemingly weaved it around my crown of bone. “There, you have achieved your goal. Take your victory, Ada. Take your victory, but spare me your deceptions.”
He turned and climbed a staircase that spiraled above his throne, leaving me behind shaken, devastated, and defeated. Yes, I’d gotten the god to stand by his vow and open the Pale Court to some of the children, but it didn’t feel like a victory at all.
It felt like loss.
Bitter. Aching. Loss.
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Chapter 8
OceanofPDF.com
Ada
The Pale Court had turned into a maze of corridors, bridges, and staircases—a tangled labyrinth that knew no bounds and seemed to swell with each child who shuffled through the gate.
Its inhabitants?
The god, who sequestered himself away in the highest room above his throne; old Orlaigh, who cursed all the stairs she had to climb; and me, its rotting queen.
Oh, and my entourage of corpses.
They followed me everywhere—two boys who reached no higher than my hip, and a girl with one arm—serving no other purpose than to punish me. Clack-clack-clack made their fleshbare heels as they tottered behind me down the southern staircase, making sneaking about the court impossible.
Not that it mattered.
Once again, Enosh had seen to my appropriate attire. Thin braids of white and gray hair lined my bodice. From my waist down, it fanned out into small, translucent circlets which shaped the train of my dress—quite possibly made of nails, though I couldn’t be certain. A fringe of bony fingers ran along the train’s seam, joining in the clattering, brain-grinding, macabre symphony of decay as I rushed about court.
I turned toward the throne room with purpose in my steps. With Enosh once more asleep, as though my failed ruse had exhausted him about as much as a fortnight of fire, Orlaigh remained the only potential obstacle between me and the truth. Something I’d prepared for, and…
And this was not the throne room.
“Curse these corridors!” I came to an abrupt halt inside the archway of what I called the great hall, appointed with a large table—where nobody ever ate—and chairs with backrests of carved antlers. The dome-shaped ceiling was decorated with thousands of white feathers, which hung from strings of skin. “Whatever did he do to the stairs toward– Ah!”
The children followed me up one short set of stairs and down another. At the next turn, we followed a narrow corridor toward the throne room, its walls shaped from the brightest bone and tooled with vines of roses and birds’ nests.
As expected, I found Orlaigh sitting on the painted dais with a book in her lap and promptly handed her two of Enosh’s shirts. “Before he fell asleep, he requested you wash these.”
“Ach lass, me bones start squeaking halfway to the spring with how vast the Pale Court has grown.” She struggled herself up, sighing as she took the shirts and frowned at the small spots of blood. “That deamhan, making such a mess of it. Where did these even come from?”
From my toe, where the bit of blood I had left pooled each day, until Enosh sent it rushing through my veins with a startling beat of my heart. “As if he’d tell me.”
“Curse the man, this will take forever to wash out.”
Good. “Best get to it. I don’t think he’ll sleep much longer.”
She stared at the children and furrowed her brows before her gaze met mine. “Ach, lass… ye were good for me Master’s head up to the point where ye got yerself killed. Now he’s stuck in such a rage and as mad as ever. Ach, he’ll keep me in his service for another eternity, never setting me soul free.”
“Is that why you ratted me out? Not letting me escape so I may replace you? So you might find rest?”
Fine wrinkles formed around her pursed lips. “Can ye blame me?”
“No.” Not anymore. “Death is rather boring state whenever Enosh isn’t busy punishing me.”
“It could be worse.”
“Yes, I presume he could have weighted down the train of my dress with little skulls.” My husband knew exactly how the sight of these children ached me, no matter their lack of awareness over this morbid display. “Whatever affection he might have held for me, if any, has all turned into endless hate.”
“Hate? Ha! Those he hates become a crown upon his head.” Book clasped beneath her arm and shirts bunched against her chest, she walked down the dais. “Those he loves get to wear one.”
“That’s not love, Orlaigh.” My sarcastic laugh echoed from the walls. “He melded children’s hands to my skull. Enosh is worse than ever before.”
“Aye, he is.” She lifted a scolding finger in the air as she turned toward a corridor. “Worse than a god in rage…”
… is a god in love.
My throat constricted, and my mind wandered back to the day I’d died. How Enosh had placed my hand upon his cheek, right where tears had washed off the soot from his marred skin.
Had he wept for me? Cried over my death?
Maybe a god’s love wasn’t gentle or kind… Maybe it was all-consuming, devastatingly painful, and destructive in its lack of moral restraints. Maybe he had given me his heart after all—the one he’d claimed he didn’t possess—immediately broken by my doubts, delay, and death.
When Orlaigh’s unhurried steps finally faded away, I turned toward the throne.
As always, Lord Tarnem watched me through the dull veil clouding his eyes where his face protruded from between intertwined roots of bone. The rest of him wove around the backrest of the throne in a tangle of limbs, making it impossible to say which arm or leg belonged to which corpse.
The claw I’d stashed away between the bone was gone, likely consumed in the construction of the palace. It was of no consequence, thanks to Enosh’s generous disdain.
Leaning over, I reached for one of the digits that strung along the seam of my train. With a sharp pull, I ripped the finger off, then broke the brittle thing in two. A tap against the splintered edge confirmed its pointed sharpness.
Yes, this would do quite nicely.
I lowered myself onto the throne and, with a determined thrust, punctured the patch of skin that covered Joah’s mouth. “You first.”
A cloud of rancid breath hit me in the face, making me nauseous. It intensified with each tearing inch of progress as I cut the leather, making me gag as though my stomach had anything left to relieve itself of.
Joah’s green-speckled eyes squelched as they focused on me, as though the liquids of decay had collected in their sockets. Still, he was handsome as far as two-centuries-old corpses went, with tattered long brown hair and full lips, now cracked and dry. Enosh had restored the corpses some before he’d bedded down, but if they had retained their ability of speech remained to be seen.
When I’d assured myself of the presence of an actual mouth, I leaned back so he wouldn’t have to strain his eyes so much. “Were you and Njala lovers?”
There was a crackle at the back of his throat—like brittle leather stretching much too thin—before the black tip of his tongue pushed against the back of his gray incisors. “N-nj…”
“Yes, Njala. Were you lovers?”
“Uh-waysh.”
I sensed my facial muscles pull into a frown. Uh-waysh? “Always?”
Whatever did that mean?
His mouth gaped open, letting the remnants of leather at the corners of it tear like old parchment. “Fre-hever… love Nj—”
When a pop resonated from the black cavity of his mouth as though a sinew or muscle had torn, I quickly pressed my hand against his sinking jaws before the entire thing would come loose and rip off. “If you loved her, then why did you slit her throat? Because she wanted you to?”
“Yesh.”
Goosebumps sprouted along my arms. “And condemn her baby to death?”
His face vibrated in my clasp as he tried to shake his head where it sat embedded into bone, letting stiff vertebrae crack-crack-crackle at the base of his neck. “No. To save—”
Pop.
The weight of his lower jaws dropped into my palm and I frantically shoved at his limp face. “No, no, no…”
“Hrk-hmm… nhh…”
“Save how?”
“Gkrrr…”
A heavy swallow bobbed down my throat as his skin tore beneath his ear. Heavens, there was no use. His lower jaws would separate soon enough, and no holding it in place would give me any intelligible answer.
At least not from him.
I gingerly removed my hand from Joah’s face, then turned my attention to Lord Tarnem. As always, he grunted and heaved, pressing the tip of his tongue against the leather covering his mouth, which I made quick work of.
The gray-haired man opened and closed his mouth several times, wafts of decay souring the air between us. “Ada.”
I shuddered.
He knew my name.
Should that surprise me? Because it shouldn’t. After all, he also knew the size of my breasts and the lewd sounds of my pleasure, considering I’d groaned into his face on several occasions.
I pulled my knees against my chest as I draped the heavy train of my dress over the armrest of the throne. “I have questions.”
Another stretch of his mouth revealed a tongue still moist enough to slither and curl as though it relished the rare taste of freedom. “And y-you shall… shall have your answers.”
“Why did Joah—”
“After you pledged me… your he… help.”
Internally, I groaned. “Or I might just peel your face off in layers until you talk.”
“Child, I have been at your husband’s mercy for… oh, for two centuries. Such threats mean nothing to me.”
Neither did I have the patience to wait this out with how Orlaigh often guarded the throne room like a dog its bone. Literally. “What do you want?”
“You will convince the god of my… my innocence, so he may grant me rest.”
A sad little laugh vibrated in my chest. “I can’t even convince him of my own innocence. Besides, why would I bother to help an old man rotting in this throne over something that is little more but a mystery to me and something to relieve me of eternal boredom?”
“Old, rotting man…” I sat at his eye level, yet he managed to stare down at me with all the arrogance of nobility, even in his state of decay. “I am a lord.”
“And I am a queen.” A tap against my crown vibrated all the way into my skull. “As it so happens, I’ve recently grown sick of helping others only for myself to end up worse than before. Like dead, for example. Now that I gave you your mouth back, you can convince him yourself when he wakes.”
“She will make certain he won’t believe me, as she always has.”
“Who?” When he tilted his head as much as the throne let him, giving me the weight of his stiff, milky stare, I sighed. “Orlaigh.”
“Yes, Orlaigh,” he said. “Dear child, my success stands and falls with yours. If you convince our Master of your innocence, my own might follow. In part...”
That piqued my interest. “What’s all this got to do with me?”
“Your pledge.”
“Fine, I give you my promise, for whatever it’s worth these days.”
“A great many things if I am correct in my suspicion. Now listen, and listen well.” He cleared his throat, sending me back half a foot with another puff of sour air. “It is true, the god and I had a disagreement over the amount of corpses he promised me for an army.”
“Enosh told me Njala came to talk sense into you.”
He laughed hard enough that the expanse of his chest let ribs crack against the ungiving cage of bone that trapped his body. “Yes, she came. And then she vanished, spirited away by the commander of my own forces.”
My guts constricted, and for once, I was certain it was neither hunger nor maggots churning my stomach. “So, Joah took her away of his own account?”
“Hmm, yes.”
I choked on a spike of shock as imaginary puzzle pieces reshaped before my mind. One after another, the echo of many accounts from different people distorted, only to rearrange into a grotesque picture that left me reeling for its meaning.
Yes, Joah and Njala had been lovers.
Always.
Forever.
Even before Enosh?
The shocking intensity of this possibility left me stunned and feeling rather stupid because the hints had all been there. Had Orlaigh not once mentioned how Njala had been found in the stables with a man? Had it been Joah? Why else would he have stolen her away?
I blinked myself out of my daze. “They had an affair, and you broke them apart when you gave her to Enosh.”
“As a lord with no son, no heir, a daughter’s reputation can carry the weight of alliances for generations to come,” Lord Tarnem said. “Stained as it was, no other man of nobility from neighboring parts would have her, but the god does not care about such things. Before Joah could put a bastard in her belly and render her worthless, I promised her to Enosh, silencing the damaging gossip while securing a powerful ally.”
“Worthless.” That word stung deep enough it poked a sense of solidarity toward Njala and how she’d shared in a woman’s plight same as I had. “Why keep Joah on as the commander?”
“Dismissing him would only have given credibility to rumors.”
“So Enosh didn’t believe that you had no part in her disappearance, which prompted him to accuse you of keeping Njala away from him so he would bend to your demand.”
“When he marched his corpses to my castle, I had no other choice but to capture him. To keep him my prisoner and my lands safe until I retrieved my daughter, contained the proof of her disloyalty, blamed Mertok, and returned her to the god as a sign of my goodwill. As you can see, child, gods make poor prisoners. He freed himself, and his corpses flooded my lands with the fury of their master without one more word spoken between us.”
“But when Enosh closed in on Njala, she refused to return to him and instead, chose death.” My palm glided to my bodice, pressing against the braids of hair to soothe the sudden itch beneath. “And because she’d never wanted Enosh’s child to begin with, she chose death for the both of them?”
“Did she?”
A moment of brittle silence stretched between us, filled with the phantom beat of my heart and a dull ringing at the back of my mind that begged for my attention. Joah had shaken his head as vehemently as one might expect of a corpse this old, telling me they’d meant to save the child? From what?
I gulped.
Or from whom?
I pressed my hand against my parched throat. It started as a tremble in my chin, that moment when a startling question ripped the world out from underneath me, sending me stumbling off the throne.
Had Enosh even been the father of this child, or had Joah—
“No, this can’t be…” My mumbling faded into silence as I lifted my gaze to Lord Tarnem. “Njala was already pregnant when she left the Pale Court and ran off with Joah, is it not true?”
“Yes, she was.”
Njala came and left as she pleased, Enosh’s voice resonated in my mind before it shaped into Orlaigh’s odd lilt as it whispered, Chaperoning her was like herding a bunch of flea-ridden cats. Foolish, foolish girl.
The question pounded louder inside my skull, making me choke on a wave of dread. “Who was the father of this baby?”
The corners of Lord Tarnem’s lips twitched. “Child, you might very well be the only one capable of answering this question.”
“She saw him. All this time, she secretly met with Joah.” I wrapped my arms around myself. “If she continued her affair with Joah, he might have been the father of the child.”
A self-satisfied smile came over the lord’s face. “The mortal child.”
The one Enosh had sensed.
My mind wobbled somewhere between wary suspicion and wicked sanguinity as all strength left my corroding muscles. Pain stabbed me in the belly, sharp and cold. I looked down at myself, halfway expecting my bodice to stain red from wounds bleeding anew.
I sunk to the ground, trembling. Fought the heart-wrenching hope spreading through my core and how it might set me up for harrowing disappointment. No, I could not go through this again. But how could I avoid the impact and potential meaning of this revelation?
Enosh sensed all the dead.
All the living.
But not his brothers.
I pressed a hand to the wounds on my belly and circled them as overwhelming sorrow dulled my senses. Again. If Enosh could not feel his divine brothers, then what were the chances that he could feel our divine baby?
OceanofPDF.com
Chapter 9
OceanofPDF.com
Ada
Orlaigh squatted over a wooden tub beside the spring, running one of Enosh’s white cotton shirts down the washboard. She hadn’t noticed my approach since I’d outran the children while lifting the weight of my bony train. Her cheery caroling resonated in the cave, a song about a dragon who guarded a secret.
My breath shook.
How fitting...
I’d known she was hiding something, but never had I expected that it might affect me to a degree that my entire body vibrated with fury and fear alike.
Fury that I’d died pregnant.
Fear that I had not.
Or the other way around?
My stomach plunged to my knees. No, I was doomed either way, for the truth—either truth, really—would shatter my soul. If my theory proved true and I had died with a child in my belly—
I pressed a hand to my mouth, muffling a sob as agony, sharp and digging, spread around my heart. No, I could not possibly survive it. Might die a second time.
Same if my theory proved wrong.
My hand circled my belly again, every go round like a caress to a hope I could not afford, either. What if Lord Tarnem’s goal to get himself out of the throne had taken advantage of my situation? My desperation? What if I fell for a lie?
What if there was still no child?
My stomach clenched, shifting around the gases of decay once more. Mercy god, I would descend into a hysteria that would make Enosh look reasonable.
What was true? What was not?
Only one woman knew.
Taking a steadying breath, I opened the clasps of my hands and let the fringe of fingers clank to the ground where I stood beside the dark rock. “Foolish, foolish, Ada.”
Orlaigh spun around so fast, her soles squeaked on the stone floor, hands hovering wet and dripping over the ground. “What?”
My lungs hardened against the pressure of unease that expanded within my chest. “Who fathered Njala’s child?”
Face going still, shaky fingers disappearing into the checkered fabric of her dress, mouth a hard line, she glared at me in shock. “Whatever do ye mean?”
I took a step toward her. “Who was the father? Enosh or Joah?”
“Ach, lass.” Sliding one leg forward, she struggled up to stand. “Yer mind’s muddled.”
The roots of my teeth ached with how I clenched them. Of course, she would deny it all. Might even try to twist things around, unleashing doubt and confusion.
I would not let her.
“Oh, quite the opposite,” I said. “I feel as if I’m seeing things clearly for the first time.”
“It’s the grief talking.” A grandmotherly smile crossed her face—one I didn’t trust a bit. “Let me help ye out of this dress so ye can soak in the water and forget.”
“No doubt it would serve you well if I did.” And hadn’t she eagerly tried to convince me to let go of my grief? “I spoke to Lord Tarnem. He told me everything.”
“Dinnae go listening to lies, lass.” Her smile wavered around the edges. “Ach, the man will say whatever he can to get me Master to release his bones from the throne.”
“Just like you will say whatever you can to keep yours out of it.” Even if it came at the cost of my heart, not to mention my sanity. “Oh, if me Master ever finds out the truth. Foolish, foolish, girl. Do you think I forgot how I found you arguing with Lord Tarnem that day? You accompanied Njala when she left the Pale Court. Will you deny that she met with Joah?”
Her hands balled into fists. “Ye dinnae ken what the little lady was like—”
“I know that she chose death for herself and the child, likely because she feared what Enosh would do if he ever found out the truth.” My words triggered a spread of gooseflesh along my skin. “Do you deny it?”
“Lass—”
“Who fathered her child?”
“Ada—”
“Who?”
“I dinnae ken!” Her shout echoed off the stone, and deep furrows carved along her forehead as she fumbled with the cotton of her dress. “What was I but the old wet nurse to be shushed about as though I’ve never lived a day in me life? So many times, I warned the little lady…Oh, how I scolded her.”
“Yes, nobody listens to old Orlaigh,” I said. “Njala loved the commander, didn’t she? Never stopped loving him.”
“Ach, we women cannae afford to love. I told her so. Many times. But she would not listen! What could I do? Tattle to the god? See the little lady punished?” She pressed a hand against her sternum and swallowed. “I’ve nursed the lass from me own breast since she was a wee thing, as though she was me own. Only days after I lost me own child.”
My guts knotted up at the familiarity of her pain, but I couldn’t let that soften me in my determination to uncover the truth. Would not continue to care more about everyone else’s sorrows than my own.
And mine were dire, indeed.
“It’s true then.” My legs turned brittle underneath me, and I pressed a palm against the rock for support. “All this time, she secretly met with Joah. Was he the father?”
Orlaigh tsked, “Lass—”
“Was he?”
“Who can ken such a thing? Ach, the world is full of bastards, raised by their unknowing fathers, be it a king or a kitchen drudge.”
“But you knew it was possible, plausible, even. Especially since the baby was mortal.” And that fact brought precious remnants of tears to my eyes, not enough to pearl down my cheek, though they blurred my vision. “What if Enosh cannot sense a godly child? What if I died pregnant, after all?”
“What of it?” Orlaigh shifted from one leg to the other, lifting her arms and letting them flap against her sides. “What does it matter now?”
“It matters a great deal to me!” I shouted, hating how this ordeal leeched away the self-worth I’d finally found for myself. “All my life, I’ve been called barren, an unwoman. One husband called me worthless; the other calls me a liar. I’m sick of being at the mercy of everyone’s false judgment!” Against the tremble in my hand, I dared another heart-shattering caress of my palm around my belly. “I might be carrying a divine child in my belly.”
“Or ye might not.” The bite in her tone clawed at my narrowing throat. “Even if the babe was the commander’s...”
Sharp and harrowing, the potential truth of her words punctured straight into a heart that still hadn’t fully mended from the agony of losing a child twice. Oh, I was so stupid, it hurt.
There was a third option I hadn’t even considered.
What if all my assumptions about Joah and the baby were true, but not how it related to me? None of it made me any more likely of carrying a child in my belly, divine or otherwise.
My hand slipped off the rock.
The ground shook.
Or maybe not, but my legs snapped like twigs underneath me anyway, letting me sink to the damp, harsh ground. No, there would be no comfort in this mess, no liberating discovery.
Only agony.
Only suffering.
“Lass, it hurts me to see ye so.” Drying off her hands some more, Orlaigh walked over, squatted down, and stroked my arms. “Who says that gods can even sire children?”
“Who says they can’t?”
“Lass, three gods as old as time.” She arched a bushy brow. “Not one has a child, and the world is better for it.”
My stomach knotted into a hard ball beneath the pressure of my hand. I thought back to Eilam’s kiss, stiff and unskilled, as though his lips had never touched a woman’s before. Perhaps they hadn’t, but Yarin was a scoundrel who likely spent most of eternity beneath the skirts of women, dead and alive.
What if Orlaigh was right?
My stomach hardened.
But what if she was wrong?
“I had all the symptoms…” I whispered, clinging to the thinnest thread of faith. “I might be a poor fisher, but I’m a decent midwife.”
“Even if ye’re right, lass, it doesn’t make ye any less dead.” The slow shake of her head carried all the weight of a thousand bitter truths. “Even if its father is a god, does that make the child undying? Able to grow between bloat and maggots?”
My teeth ground together until a molar shifted under the strain, threatening to pop from my gums.
Dead or alive.
Divine or imagined.
How would I even prove any of this? Was I to cut myself open and rummage through my innards? That sounded crazy even to me, once again making me wonder if I’d simply lost my wits along with my life. What if I was a liar, even to myself?
My pride reared in my chest.
No, I was no liar.
Morning sickness. Achy breasts. The grains. I died pregnant. Call it instinct, but I sensed it deep inside me with each caressing circle of palm around belly.
But if I went to Enosh with talk of a child, he might very well make good on his threats, for he could not feel it. Neither could his brothers—
Realization smacked me in the face, painting me as foolish as everyone else involved in this mess. Hadn’t Yarin mentioned something about some of my soul resisting when he’d bound it? What if not mine had resisted, but that of my child?
My lips parted on a gasp, only for an unexpected name to tumble from my lips. “Eilam.”
Orlaigh frowned at me. “What’s with him now?”
“He said something when I died about, um…” Devil be damned, what had he said? Something about life? Too much life? “I don’t remember, but I feel like it’s important. Maybe they can’t feel the baby, but they can feel that something is amiss. At least two of them. I need to talk to Enosh. He has to notice it, too.”
“Ye are dead, Ada.” Orlaigh’s voice was soft, yet my hackles rose at the nape of my neck as though not even my skin trusted her anymore. “Ach, the little lady was too young. The foolish thing never thought of consequences. For two hundred years, I’ve paid for me mistake of giving in to her plea to see her lord father. Aye, she betrayed me as much as anyone, running off with that… bastard.”
My muscles stiffened. “What are you saying?”
“If ye tell me Master now… if what ye think is true… Ah diah, he’ll weave me into his throne, all over a child in yer rotting belly.” A pleading look. “Have ye no mercy?”
“Mercy?” I shook my head and shifted back. “And who has mercy on me, huh? Not you, that’s for certain, for you have known this all along. I’ve dragged guilt with me for years, and I won’t drag misery with me for eternity because of the mistakes others made some two hundred damn years ago.”
The moment I scrambled to my feet, she grabbed my arm, her grip too strong to suggest grandmotherly care anymore. “Two centuries, lass. I cannae let ye send me into his throne now.”
My ears pricked at the nip in her undertone. A warning?
She will make certain that he won’t believe me, Lord Tarnem’s words floated through my head, as she always has.
As she would now?
I looked back at her. “Will you throw me to the wolf once more?”
“Before it bites me in me howlin’ arse, aye, I will. Does that make me the villain? Did Njala not betray me the same as everyone else, leaving me behind for the god’s wrath to chew me up when I’d only shown her leniency?”
“Perhaps you were too kind, same as me.” I rose, shaking off her hold. “Something I’m trying to rectify.”
Her lips pressed into a thin line for a moment before she smacked her tongue. “Not at the cost of me bones.”
A chill shot up my spine, cooling my raveled mind enough for my brain to recognize the threat. Enosh might think me a liar, but I was nowhere as skilled as Orlaigh—a woman who held enough of his trust to keep the truth from him for two centuries where I held none.
“Not at the cost of mine, either,” I said. “You said it yourself; he loves me.”
“Aye, loves ye to death.”
I shuddered.
Stepping away from her, I turned, then fled toward the clack-clack-clacking that resonated the passage back into the Pale Court. My mind spun and my heart ached, but I couldn’t allow myself to succumb to either. How could I approach this without sending myself straight into the throne?
If I hadn’t gone to Orlaigh in anger, I could have avoided pitting her against me. Could have conjured up a way to tell Enosh the truth. Preferably one that didn’t contain me blurting, I am maybe carrying your child, after all. Njala ran away with Joah of her own choosing. Or, the worst option yet, The baby was probably never yours.
Well, it was too late now.
Devil be damned, my skull ached under the pressure of my crown and how my brain frantically tried to compose a plan. More so when the corpse children huddled up to me with their grinding clanks and clonks. What to do?
