Текст книги "Queen of rot and pain"

Автор книги: Liv Zander

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

Chapter 12

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Ada

Cold, freezing panic surged, locking my joints into place and numbing my fingertips. “What?”

“Are we not agreed that I am a man of my word?” Enosh let black breeches shape around his legs as he descended the dais. “I have threatened a grave, have I not? This time, little one, I shall not waver. I shall not.”

Shifting on his slippery shoulder from the sudden turn, I clasped at air. “No! You can’t do this! Enosh, please! Not a grave! No! Orlaigh is the liar! Njala’s baby was nev-ghh… mmh—”

My lips refused to part.

Mumbles died against leather.

He’d gagged me.

Sharp and piercing, dread stabbed into my belly and deeper, as though my bladder wanted to give. Panic pounded inside my chest like a heart shaped of fear, jumping with each step Enosh walked toward… Where was he taking me? Outside?

I blinked against the white and black floaters in my vision as I bounced, shook with each of his quickening steps, and shifted around until the stab wounds on my belly burned beneath the motion. My focus melted with my never-ending surroundings.

Bone. Stairs. Bone. Bridge. Bone.

Corpses.

Behind me, children funneled in from the hallways. They ran after us, their little bodies in different states of decay, but they all had one thing in common.

Shovels.

The children dragged the white bone spades over the ground, the crrr-sh-crrr louder as they passed us. No, this could not be happening. Not a grave!

“Have I not been a lenient husband, keeping the rot from you? Containing my anger, regardless of your many transgressions?” Enosh carried me through a corridor of darkness and out into the chilling lick of the night. “Oh, little one, I have warned you. So many times, I have warned you, but my wife does not listen.”

My body stiffened into stone as my senses sharpened. The sweetness of spring flowers wafted around my nose in all its mockery. Moisture settled on my exposed calves, right beneath the tight clasp of Enosh’s arm. Where was I? Oh my god, what was that noise?

My ears pricked at the hrk of shovels digging into dirt. Close. Closer. When Enosh suddenly stopped and turned slightly, I saw it.

Numb panic soaked into my muscles, disabling my lungs, drowning me in a sea of righteous fear. Beside me loomed a deep black grave, empty aside from the few children who still climbed out to line beside the others along the gaping hole.

“Ghmmm!” I hammered my fists against Enosh’s back and waist, tossing and thrashing until the wounds on my belly screamed. “Mhmm… mmm…”

Enosh jumped into the grave, making me toss on his shoulder with such force, I barely registered how he lowered me onto the damp, cold ground. Somewhere, an insect buzzed. Something slithered around my ankle, wet and cold.

No, I had to get out of here. Had to—

“Shh…” Hand pressed to my sternum, Enosh pinned me into the dirt, letting a root poke against my neck as he brought his lips to my ear. “Seventeen days and nights is what you still owe me. The grave shall be your fire, all-consuming. Rot shall be the lick of its flames, biting into your flesh.”

“Rkhh!” I squirmed beneath his hold and, when he loosened it, I wrapped my arms around his neck and clamped my legs around his waist. “Hkmmh… mmh…”

“Let go of me.”

I held him tighter, clinging to him until my joints burned and the pop of knuckles resonated in the night. No, I would not let go. Would not let go. Would not—

“Even now…” An exhale sputtered from his lips with the same violence as his fingers trembled on my chest. “Even now, I want to take you into my arms… the cold, lying corpse that you are.”

Nothing happened for long moments. Neither of us moved as dirt rilled from the walls of my grave or came down in clumps where the children lined its edges. Was he… hesitating?

A spark of hope.

Please hold me!

I ran my hand from his neck into the weight of black hair still damp from the spring, pulling until his temple pressed against mine while he continued to kneel over my body.

No, he would not do this.

Not to me.

Right?

Enosh slid his arm under my back, not lifting me, though I sensed in the tension of his hand that he considered it. “How blessed you are to hate me so.”

Stricken with fear, I shook my head ever so slightly. Oh, I wished I could hate him the way any normal, rational woman would if she found herself in a grave beneath her undertaker. But I was not normal, for I was dead. And I was not rational, for my unborn child was likely alive.

“If only I could bring myself to hate you,” he whispered, his voice chillingly absent of any emotion, “perhaps then this age-old heart in my chest would not ache so at what I must do.”

His arms retreated.

My limbs slipped off him.

Panic pounded my head.

No. No. No!

He effortlessly climbed out of the grave, leaving me behind with my mind stunned. I trembled so violently, my limbs flopped about uncontrollably. Would he truly bury me alive? No, Enosh would not be this—

Something hit my eye.

I clenched both shut, swinging my hands to my face to rub the burn from them. But the assault continued with each shk of a shovel, followed by a patter of dirt raining down on me.

Nausea swept from my stomach, biting along my esophagus, only to trap itself inside my mouth. Oh, my god. He was burying me alive! No. No. No no no!

When another chunk of loam landed heavily on my chest, I turned around. I struggled myself onto swaying legs. Out. I needed out!

The dirt came faster from all directions, creating piles around me that seeped into my shoes, caught between my toes where it rubbed and itched. Each time I looked up, more of it hit my eyes, blurring the outlines of the children lining my grave.

In my panic, I clawed, dug, and scratched at the wall of compacted earth. I had to climb out. Had to—

A nail broke off, the flesh beneath too dark, and turning darker with each second. I stared at it as my stomach shifted, writhed, and swelled. Rot. I was rotting.

He was rotting me!

I screamed, but only grunts made it through the leather.

I waded toward a corner to try it there, but I kept on slipping, ripping off chunks of loam, helping with my burial.

Master, my mind wailed and screeched. Master, please!

My stomach heaved and my chest convulsed, amplified by the biting stench of decay that blew from my nostrils at each panicked exhale. Gravity abandoned me and I fell on my arse, my legs halfway buried in damp, cold dirt.

More came from above, pelting down on the roof of rotting arms as I buried my head underneath them. Back and forth, I swayed in a self-consoling manner, humming an old lullaby as my mind stiffened in the clasp of madness.

The shk of shovels and the thud of dirt faded against the comforting sound as my lips stumbled over the words. “…a-and the b-b-babe with the ro-hoasy cheeks… mmh… da da mmh… and fell to s-sleep. And if the babe’s still w-warm come morn…”

My voice faded away.

A gulp hiccupped from my lips.

My parted lips.

What was happening?

Detangling my arms from around my head, I brought a hand to my mouth, letting a dirt-caked finger stutter along my bottom teeth. My gag was gone. But how?

I glanced down at my finger, letting the moonlight glint off a nail already regrown with only a faint smear of blood remaining around its bed. Where was he? Should I look?

Carefully, so carefully, I allowed my gaze to drift upward. The shoveling had come to a stop, leaving the children to stare down at where I cowered in a grave half-filled.

The fine hairs along my arms rose at the eerie silence. It couldn’t be trusted. Shouldn’t be trusted. Seconds passed. Minutes. Maybe hours.

Where was he?

Did I want to know?

My diaphragm convulsed, trapped between the dread of sitting in this grave and the fear of what would await me outside of it. Had he left? Had this just been a lesson? Or was the true lesson waiting up there if I dared to climb out?

My eyes wandered to the pile of dirt at the edge. I could if I wanted to. Did I want to?

Shaken and scared, I pulled my buried legs from the dirt, rose, and staggered toward the edge. Once I stood on the pile, I let my foot find purchase right above a root. Another was in easy reach just above me, which I gripped to struggle myself out of the grave.

The children parted as I dangled at the edge, kicking my legs and pulling on bushels of grass. Once I had enough solid surface beneath my chest, I swung one leg up, then the other.

I stood and stepped away from the hole, shivering, clutching my arms to ward off the biting cold of night. Where was I?

Glancing around, I recognized the line of hills that cut through the landscape and the many boulders scattered here and there along the windy pastures beyond the Soltren Gate.

A heavy breath.

Not mine.

I shuddered. He hadn’t left.

Enosh sat only a few feet away from me on a boulder, his silhouette shrouded in darkness. Knees pulled against his bare chest, he held his head with a clutching grip to his tousled hair. Why had he stopped? Why was he… like this?

On instinct, my throat tied up and my foot lifted toward the grave, trembling at the coldness it promised. Maybe I should get back in there?

Enosh turned his head and looked straight at me, his cold, cruel mask gone, revealing a face contorted in pain. “Why can I not do it?”

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Chapter 13

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Ada

My bones chilled.

I hugged myself and took a step away from this man… this stranger who looked nothing like Enosh.

The branches of a nearby willow warped his features as they shifted in the biting breeze, casting shadows across the valleys of his sunken cheeks. From this angle, the moonlight reflected off his glistening eyes, leeching all color from his face to pale anguish.

My throat narrowed. A trick?

He rose and turned toward me.

My right heel lifted from the ground.

He stopped himself. “You are scared of me.”

“S-scared of y-you?” Equal parts of fury and fear shifted in my core, volatile and erratic, putting me on edge. “You to-ossed me into a hole, let me rot, and commanded child corpses to b-bury me alive. I’m terrified of you!”

His lips parted as though to justify his actions, only to press into a thin line as he lowered his head and raked a hand through his raven hair. He gripped the roots and yanked, mumbling beneath his ragged breath. He shifted from one leg to the other, not like him at all.

Who was this man?

He lifted his gaze to me once more, his expression so unguarded it showed every distressed crease between his brows, every agonized distortion along his twitching jawline. What was I supposed to do with that?

The next time his lips parted, an audible gulp resonated the night before he stepped toward me. “Forgive me… please.”

Hackles rising, I stumbled back until the skeletal remains of a child’s foot crunched beneath my heel. Enosh never asked for forgiveness, and certainly not with a please, making this stranger terrify me more than the god ever had.

Because I didn’t know him.

Didn’t know what to do, what to expect, or why he kept shifting his balance without pouncing.

I dug my dirt-caked fingers into my bodice, quivering under the stranger’s pleading stare. He paled with each passing second, as though Enosh’s mask of cruel indifference bled right off a face that looked ages old, wrinkled by the hardships of a hundred lifetimes.

He took another step toward me. “Little one—”

“Do not come near me!” I shifted my torso against the wall of little skulls and bony chests. “Leave me alone.”

His brows drew together, closely framing the pained look in his eyes. “I cannot.”

He took another step.

Slow. Deliberate.

And another.

Panic clogged my throat anew, and every instinct in my body told me to run. Run! Where? Anywhere that wasn’t here; anywhere that wasn’t with him.

“Come to me. Not to your master, but… to me.” Stalling his advance, he opened his arms, beckoning me into his embrace. “I only wish to hold and warm you.”

I fought the ghostly tug beneath my breastbone—how it pulled me toward the arms of a monster, with the warmth emanating from his fingers as a lure.

A trap.

No, I would not fall for it. Would rather drown than succumb to his promise of comfort. Comfort I’d wanted. Needed. Had begged for, only to be denied over and over again!

I didn’t want it anymore.

Not from him.

Refused to need it still.

I raised my hand as though it might ward off the devil. “I would find more warmth in the embrace of a corpse!”

He flinched. “Ada—”

“Don’t call me that!”

A dozen hairline cracks veined across my quiet heart, bleeding liquid anguish into my rib cage. Little one. Mortal. Wife. I could handle all those things, but not my name.

Not from his lips.

Not after… this.

Sidestepping along the line of children, I advanced toward the gate. “Do not come closer.”

He didn’t.

Nor did he allow more distance to grow between us, mirroring my steps up the slight incline.

I understood I couldn’t escape him, for each of my steps existed only at his permission. All I wanted was to run from this traitorous tug in my chest, this ache to throw myself into his arms—if only for long enough to prove that I could.

Another sidestep.

My foot caught on a rock.

I stumbled forward, paddling the air. By the time I regained my balance, Enosh had crept up on me, keeping less than a foot’s distance between us that quickly filled with warmth.

My eyes flicked to the gate.

I bolted.

Even before my foot left the ground, Enosh slung his arm around my middle and pulled me against the all-engulfing heat of his body. “Calm yourself.”

“No!” Anger flared to life at my core, and I shoved at his chest. “Let me go!”

“Never.” His other arm came around my waist, anchoring my hips against his body, submerging me in the scent of ash sprinkled over snow. “Call it obsession or call cruelty. I am close to calling it something else entirely.”

A scream dislodged from the back of my throat as I shifted and wiggled, fighting against his tight grip and its glorious heat with everything I had. But no matter how I squirmed, he only held me tighter.

“Shh…” he whispered against my ear. “Please forgive me.”

The way he hushed me and dared to ask for forgiveness fueled my anger into rampant rage. I squirmed, elbowed, kicked. My hands balled into fists, hammering his chest like a woman possessed while my mind tumbled into a frenzy.

It was too much.

Too fucking much.

The shock of my death, the child in by belly, the bitter loneliness of my miserable existence fraught with everyone’s scorn… I deserved none of this. Was tired of everyone pushing me around like chattel!

“I reacted in anger, for little terrifies me more than the thought of losing you.” Enosh’s voice turned rough and shaky. “But I ought not to have done this. Forgive me.”

“You buried me!”

Slap.

Enosh’s face jerked back, the imprint of four fingers rapidly shading the bottom of his right cheek where I’d struck him.

I froze for only a second before I lifted my chin. “Go ahead. Throw me right back in. Make it twenty days… make it a month!”

He swallowed.

He cupped the back of my head and pulled my face against his pounding heart, letting his lips brush over the shell of my ear. “I love you.”

His words fractured something inside me, pulling my legs out from underneath me. I didn’t want his love—it was too painful, too unpredictable, too damn destructive.

Enosh held on to me, trying to steady me on wobbly legs. Eventually, he gave up and let me gently sink to the ground, lowering himself with me as he kept hugging me, hushing me.

“I hate you.” For holding me the way I’d needed him to—instead of being his cold, indifferent self—turning me into a needy, trembling mess.

“I would rather have you hate me for eternity than not have you at all.” His lips brushed the corner of my mouth, kissing me as he brought one of my legs over his, positioning me astride him. “But at least allow me to love you.”

The way he pushed me down onto his growing erection sent a jolt through me. “No!”

“Shh…” he hushed me once more. “Is this not what you want? Not what you long for? My kiss? My attention? The heat of my cock between your legs?”

Squirming in his hold, I lashed out at whatever came into reach as my mind descended into violence. Red lines streaked his neck and chin where I scratched him while shrieking like a banshee.

Maybe I’d made it out of the grave, but my sanity had not. Or maybe I needed him to retaliate—to strike me, spank me, bury me. Anything to contain how I longed for him, ached for him to hold me tighter as I rocked my hips toward his.

But Enosh neither dodged my assaults nor made me stop. No, what he did was much worse. So much worse.

He let me.

Enosh tolerated it all, shoving a finger beneath my dress, pushing my braies aside before he ran a knuckle over my clit. “Keep going, little one. Scratch me. Strike me.”

I did.

My core heated with every scraping attack, each slap of my palm, burning away the sorrows that had worn me down for too long. Too long. Everything, from the gossip I’d endured and the judgment, to the unfairness, I released into my balled hands.

And it felt good.

Freeing.

A sudden swath of warmth against my cunt told me Enosh’s breeches had vanished. Leaning slightly back—his palms braced against the grass on either side—he lifted me up with his hips, increasing the delicious pressure against my sex.

That felt good, too.

Losing precision and vigor, I kept dropping my little fists against his chest with hollow thuds. All the while I shifted my hips faster, rubbing myself on his rock-hard shaft until my nipples grew to aching points, but… oh, it wasn’t enough.

“No, my wife would not want to escape me, would she?” He stared at me, the red lines on his face already vanishing. “For I am the beat in her heart, the blood in her veins, and the heat she desperately clings to.”

My insides clenched at the smugness hiding in his undertone, nothing but the trace of his arrogance simmering beneath the surface of his baritone. I observed the faintest twitch on his upper lip, as though his mask tried to return.

But I wouldn’t let it.

Refused to continue this madness.

I would shatter that mask tonight.

Instead of wasting time on another attack, I shifted my hips until his crown nudged my entrance. When I pushed back onto his cock, he clenched his eyes shut, letting his groan mingle with my whimper.

I quivered at the mercy of feverish heat and how I rocked him deeper into me. Mmm, how his cock pulsed inside me, hot and hard, warming me in ways he’d denied far too many times.

Enosh stuttered out a breath and let his forehead drift against mine. “Mmm, how nicely your needy cunt grips me.”

I thrust against him, joining in our shared rhythm as I succumbed to the warmth it provided—a shred of wicked comfort in a hell of eternal cold and heart-rending solitude. I chased every spark that tingled around my clit, every convulsion in my lower belly.

I shoved his chest until his back hit the grass, loving how it made him lengthen inside me. His hands wandered to my waist, pushing me down with each of his upward thrusts, letting my clit press against his hard body.

When Enosh’s breathing quickened, he expelled a guttural groan. “Say my name!”

I bore down on him, grinding and rubbing, until an all-consuming burn erupted between my legs. “Enosh—”

Scorching, sweltering, red-hot heat rippled across my core, spreading into every limb, into the tips of my fingers, my toes, and even into the roots of my hair. Everything tingled, sending a whole-body shiver across me, leaving my skin a landscape of pebbles and raised hairs.

Enosh sucked in a breath, stiffening beneath me. His hips stalled—they always did before he reached his peak. Gods were unpredictable; men were not.

I slipped off him and scooted up to his chest.

Behind me, his unfinished cock slapped against his stomach, but it was his agonized groan that brought a smile to my lips. Enosh stared up at me with widened eyes. He bucked underneath me uncontrollably, dug his hands into my waist, frantically shifted me toward his cock once more.

But it was too late.

He grunted and jerked underneath me as he spilled his seed over his stomach. Or onto the train of my dress? Who could say?

“Friction.” I leaned over, letting the tip of my tongue lap at his earlobe. “It is in your nature to move, buck, and rub in search of it. But remove it while you succumb to pleasure, and it hurts. You might be a god, my master, yet that won’t keep your cock from making you look rather mortal in this moment.”

His hand shot to my crown but a second later. “It seems as though you are begging for punishment.”

“It seems as though you stopped begging for my forgiveness.”

A beat of hesitation.

For the first time, my husband seemed positively stunned, choking on this damn arrogance of his. His face blanked, leaving every parting and closing of his lips utterly exposed with nothing left to hide behind.

With a sigh, he eventually released my crown, and a hint of pain moved in the depths of his irises. “Will you forgive me?”

That would depend on what forgiveness bought me. “You nearly buried me alive.”

“Only nearly, and not quite alive.” When I said nothing, letting the silence stretch thin between us, he finally nodded in defeat and raked a nervous hand through his hair once more. “I was… convinced you were scheming to escape and find refuge with my brother.”

“And you weren’t entirely wrong.”

He stilled, and even his chest stopped mid-inhale. “Explain.”

“You want my forgiveness for tossing me into a grave?” I sat straight, reacquainting myself with the man beneath the mask and how out of sorts he looked. “I will explain, but you will listen until I am finish—”

“Little—”

“No interruptions!” I ignored the snarl coming to his lips, the flash of teeth as though he were close to biting my mouth off. “Then you will take me to Yarin so he can confirm what I’ve told you is true.”

His lower jaws shifted and his eyes narrowed. “You have a great many requests.”

“And you have a great many things in need of forgiveness.” And it was time that he learned exactly why. “Do you want it, yes or no?”

“I shall be so quiet while I listen,” he ground out. “For your forgiveness, I shall do this.”

And I blurted it right out.

“Njala has been in love with Joah even before she came with you to the Pale Court. The affair brought Lord Tarnem no political benefit, so he broke it up and gave her to a god in exchange for an army.” I watched first confusion, then old misery crack through Enosh’s face in the shape of wrinkles webbing from the outer corners of his turbulent eyes. “She continued to see Joah whenever she left the Pale Court—something Orlaigh tried to talk her out of but could not. And so, she helped keep it a secret.”

His features hardened. “You sound rather certain.”

“Because I can prove it.”

Maybe. Hopefully.

I told him about the day I found Orlaigh scolding Lord Tarnem, how I couldn’t keep any food down in Elderfalls, and how the grains had sprouted. The more I told him, the more his body stiffened against mine. When I told him of my chat with Lord Tarnem, Enosh tilted his head back until his throat bobbed as he stared at the black sky.

“Enosh, the daughter you thought you lost was mortal for a reason… You were able to sense her because she was never yours.” I took his hand, flattening his palm atop my wounds. “This one, you cannot sense, not as what it is. But I know Yarin and Eilam sensed something. Tell me, have you ever felt anything amiss on me since I died?”

He didn’t move, didn’t speak.

Only gulped.

His eyes glistened with the wreckage of age-old beliefs and the destruction of a lie that had turned a loving man into an enraged god. His face showed every wrinkle of anguish forming between his brows, every twitch of shock jumping along his jaws, every tremble of doubt hushing across his bottom lip.

“I…” Shaking, his fingers brushed over my belly, “I have.”

Another spark of hope.

Another stab of pain.

As expected.

Enosh’s gaze trailed toward the child corpses as though he couldn’t bring himself to look at me, and something else shaped on his features—something I’d never seen on him before.

Guilt.

When he brought his eyes back to meet mine, he cupped the back of my head and tugged, only to let a whisper break against my ear. “Guilt and sorrow, hope and sin. The madness of their whispers lies within.”

Light blinded me.

I clenched my eyes shut and my ears pricked at the cacophony of moans and laughter, interrupted only by the clinks of metal against metal. The smell of moist air faded, along with the songs of crickets, quickly replaced with the sweetness of wine.

That, and Yarin’s voice.

“Oh, how I love surprise visitors. You have arrived just in time for the fun.”

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