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Franzy’s eyes are glassy as she gazes at me, her smile faint. It was her comb. Thankfully she offers a feeble nod. I move to the next table.
It’s going to be a long night.
I openFinleigh’s supple mouth beneath my ruined one and pray to the gods.
Let it be her, please...
Her fingers struggle with my robes, desiring more, but I clasp her wrists and nudge them to each side to love her slow. No one has ever beheld my entire body, but Finleigh alone has viewed my true face.
Hope tortures me as my hunger deepens: an inferno smoldering to the region of my body which never decays thanks to Aryahn Kryach’s cruel fuckery. A malevolent twist. For centuries, the gods’ sick tricks and disturbed machinations have plagued the races of Talahn-Feyhran. I’ve simply chosen to accept their Curse so my people do not as all kings before me.
Finleigh. My fair-haired hero. It has to be a sign. Her eyes treasure my true face beyond my rotted corpse. After she’s received my cadaverous hands cherishing her body until my member throbs with need and she weeps from pleasure, I pause from her sweet mouth to stare at her, to capture this memory: the honey gold of her hair like the angyls to mirror her skin, the deep midwinter blue of her eyes which enraptured mine from the beginning, her mouth swollen from my deformed half, her cheeks flushed with lust, her perfect small breasts with rouged buds?ripe and puckered?the soft panes of her flattened stomach leading to narrow but round hips, her lithe thighs spreading to welcome me. All her flushed bride heat yearning to receive me.
Her generous warmth nourishes my heart, engulfs me. I don’t deserve her.
She whispers my name like a prayer, closes her eyes, and urges me in a promise, in a vow.
Despite how many times I’ve dissuaded her, resisted her, battled her, damn-near chased her away, Finleigh has accepted the risk. And once a bride accepts, nothing can be done. Kryach will have his fun. While I hover above my wife, his spirit lingers in my veins, in my blood, his essence hovering in my mind?invisible eyes observing, burning into my back. Ever he haunts these moments: the specter God of Death. My spine bristles with the knowledge, but I banish the thought of him and focus on my bride.
Kissing Finleigh again, tasting her sweet succulence, I ease inside her slower than an isle of ice. She stiffens, unleashing a whimper. Halfway in, I pause, careful and cautious.
I cup her forehead with my cadaverous hand. “Do you want me to stop, Finny?” I murmur her nickname, tender, granting her ample time to change her mind.
She shakes her head, dips her hand into my robe, and cups my skeletal hip, urging. “Please, Allysteir,” she begs.
My member pulses, pained, prepared to abandon control. Determined to move slow, I thrust deeper into her heat and trail my ravaged lips along her cheek, her jaw, her throat, her collarbone, lower. Her moan undoes me, triggering my swifter thrust. She closes her eyes, throws her head back, and clenches her sex around me.
Our eyes lock. Hers have turned to midnight blue storms, deep and pleading for more.
At last, I sink as deep into her as possible. Eyes never fleeing, I whisper her name in a petition as our pleasures unite, as she grips my hip and screams to the Isles, then falls against our bed.
Before her eyes turn to mine, void of anything but a swirling, gray, dark as smoke and shadows, I know.
Gritting my teeth, breaking one, I punch my fist to the bedpost, careless of how the phalanges fracture and tumble to the floor. Kryach’s laugh echoes in my mind but can’t snuff Finleigh’s animalistic growls or her teeth snapping as she thrashes. Her soul, her spirit hovers in the air?only visible to me and Kryach. I capture the memory, but he confiscates her spirit, reaps it, and leaves me alone with her scent?the aftermath of her flesh, the memory of her fingertips cradling my face.
After ordering a steward to remove my former bride, whom I will deal with later, I tear my robe and snarl at my reflection in the mirror, my renewed flesh. Finleigh has paid with her soul to buy me another cursed year of restoration...before I waste away. The cycle has renewed. For we are all god-pawns in their twisted games.
Guilt-ridden, I ball my restored hand into a fist and punch the mirror until it shatters and my knuckles bleed.
No, I refuse to be a pawn. Nor subject another woman to this hell. Even if it damns us all.
“Kryach!” I snarl at my reflection, at the shadowy sneer greeting me, “I swear I will never take another bride!”
* * *
Picking up the open-skull goblet, I rub my thumb along one of its star-gems, eye my gruesome reflection in the stone, and tip it without another thought. I inhale, savoring the Sythe blood burning my throat cavity on its way, droplets spilling from my flesh gaps and onto my nether-spider-silk robes. The same robes Aydon will don in my stead tonight along with the refter-tooth crown and nether-bone mask. Even if it’s been in my family for generations, I loathe the crown: a mockery of all past royal brides.
Wincing, I banish memories of Finleigh, of all my brides’ names, and turn to the mirror. Despite the ivory frame and its glassy wholeness, my reflection is broken. Tonight marks one year without a bride. And five hundred years of this Curse. Five hundred years of breaking my oath.
I open my robe to my chest, to the ribcage protruding from the flesh.
“Torturing yourself again, eh brother?” Aydon mocks, striding toward me.
I sneer at his reflection, at his brow lifting before shifting my robes over my corpse. “By all means, make yourself at home, Aydon. And your jokes still aren’t funny,” I remind him and make my way to the table, bones rattling as I grip the Sythe-blood decanter and slug its contents.
“Oh, that hurts, Ally. Seriously, you wound me,” he ridicules, digging the blade in while following me to our family portrait tapestry positioned above my bed: an intricate labyrinth of painted bones and teeth.
“You’re just sore because I did what you didn’t have the balls to,” I scoff and curl half my upper lip back since two can play at that game.
