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When she stiffened, I paused, brows knotting. I wanted to punch the nearest wall and shatter my bones for testing her good graces. I did my best to tread carefully, but she needed the truth. Moreover, she could handle it. “On our wedding night or on any night following as it will be your choice, Kryach may steal your soul, my lady. But rest assured, if he does, he will take my heart, too. For it is already yours.”
And when Finleigh ripped the mask from my loathsome face, when she crushed her mouth to my dried and desiccated one, I knew everything about my previous statement was true. A scarlet walker girl, a common thief had stolen the heart of the Corpse King.
* * *
At the end of sharing my past with Isla, of marking the severity of her expression—one of ivy green envy and woeful adoration to blush her cheeks—I squeeze her pale hand, and gesture to the little cavern opening where we stand. A cavern guarded by a wall of bones that moves by my hand alone. Isla tenses when I sweep aside those bones by the power of Kryach’s shades.
Her hand muscles tighten around mine as I lead her inside.
“Allysteir!” she gushes from my art. The bone sculptures I’ve fused with gold and gems from our mines. All sculptures of my past brides...to keephercompany when I am gone.
A shrill screech reverberates off the walls. Lustrous golden strands blossom in the darkness. And there are her vacant eyes. A fine ghostly mist ever-disturbs those once midwinter orbs shimmer beyond her gold hair. Isla wraps two hands around my phalange bones in the presence of my first refter bride, of...
“Finleigh,” I say, my voice no less adoring.
The moment I remove my mask and fling it to the ground to face my first bride, Isla squeezes so hard, she doesn’t fracture my phalanges.
She shatters them.
Iwasjealous.Until he flung his mask to the ground.
All my envy depletes to sheer awe. Because one truth I unequivocally understand: I do not love the Corpse King. I do not love Allysteir. Because his heart was never mine to conquer. Finleigh stole it centuries before me. And Aryahn Kryach took it to the kingdom of souls...
If only such a kingdom could be conquered by one such as I.
I should apologize for shattering Allysteir’s hand. Some of my floral power burst into my veins in the moment. Prompted by my emotions, vines had slithered from my pores. Small but armored with thorns, they’d somehow coiled around Allysteir’s phalanges as he’d shared the end of his story. They’d cratered his bones when he’d removed his mask. I should apologize, but I don’t.
All this time...
Finleigh, or what was once Finleigh, seems to have more consciousness than his other refter brides. While her eyes hold hollow ghosts, and whatever flesh she possessed withered from her skeletal frame centuries ago, she opens her mandible jaw and whips her head, shaking her long curls as gold as Isle gates, but she doesn’t attack. Upon narrowing my eyes, I discover the wig sealed to her scalp. After so many refter brides, I don’t shudder, but I do squeeze my shoulders and rub my arm as he closes the distance between them.
I cringe and turn my eyes when the Corpse King cups the sunken cheekbones of his first refter bride and presses one-half of his lips to her teeth. An icy crypt traps my blood channels, deadening them when I dare to spy on the private moment.
From the side, I witness his deformities ranging to his neck, but I am trespassing on their significant moment. I swear my intestines shrink and wither as he murmurs her name. I release my breath, and it floats away like a delicate, cleaving ghost.
“Allysteir...” I say softly after he turns from Finleigh. She snaps her head toward me, those spectral eyes honing in on me. “Is she...?”
Righting his mask, molding it to his features, he nods and explains, “Kryach took most of her soul, but he left me with a piece. Because she was my first bride and first love.”
First, I tread on the word. Yes, the Corpse King’s heart may be as immeasurable as mine...well perhaps not quite immeasurable, but there is a reason Finleigh is here while all his other corpse brides linger in the refter glen. No, she may not be his one love, but she is hisgreatestlove.
“A scarlet-walker girl...” I add, my pulse steady and tranquil because I am not jealous. But I am...curious.
Allysteir mistakes my words, slow-turning his head, half-lips grimacing. It’s another reason I respect him, for his passion, his ardor of defending this piece of a refter bride’s soul. He glowers, cording all his neck muscles. “You disapprove with your far morevirginalsensibilities?”
Donning one hand upon my too-generous mound of a hip, careless of how my plump and less than graceful belly responds, I snort. “You know me better, Allysteir. But I do want to know why the elders insisted on my virginity test.” I prickle, remembering how we’d bonded in the garderobe while I’d endured his mother’s poisoned barbed fingers to prove myself to my King. Could he ever truly be myhusbandwith this recent knowledge?
A visceral growl echoes from his throat. He turns to Finleigh, cups her cheeks, and bows his head to her brow. “None of that mattered before. Not until her. Fuck, he was jealous. Heisjealous! Jealous of me. Jealous of how a prostitute could love a mere corpse of a man but not Death!” Allysteir raises his voice, his shades thickening to a whirling nightmare to chill my blood. “How he’d reviled and hated her because she refused to bow to his shade and had the audacity to ignore him day after day and night after night.”
Not like how I ignored Ary, my brand of tempting him. Without realizing it till it’s too late, a hint of a smirk creases one corner of my mouth. A suspicious heat preys between my thighs. Yes, I’d reviled him since the wedding morn when he’d shown his true colors of fatalism and nightmares. A brutal stab of pain engulfs my heart from the precursor to the wedding night when Allysteir followed with his abuse.
But I knew. I knew in full equivocation what I was doing when I called Ary’s name and not Allysteir’s when Kanat attacked me in the library. An instinct bred from a desire for connection. My chest tingles. I loved the chase. I loved wooing him, driving him mad prior.
And on the night of my rebirth, Ary stayed! He watched, respected, honored, adored, and even worshiped in my dream at dawn while riding Ifrynna.
Was Allysteir simply a steppingstone?
“Death’s balls, it wasneverabout purity. It was about him not wanting the reminder of Finleigh for any following bride,” Allysteir proclaims, curling those phalanges, grating powder between them. “It became a convenient way to involve the elders to hold me accountable. Kanat most sincehewas the elder who slept with Finleigh. And one reason I hate him to this day.” He sneers, grunting while sifting his fingers through his bride’s hair.
