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Growling, guttural and low, I chuck the goblet to the floor, wishing the bones would break to oblige me with a painful distraction, but they don’t. All I’m left with are my thoughts and Kryach’s shades, his essence curling into my being.
Where the devil have you been?I demand and right my robe, trace an aimless circle on the table because it’s all I am: an aimless circle. A dog chasing its tail.
She is no devil, I guarantee you, Kryach responds. Well, she is half.
What are you blathering about, Death?
Secrets, Allysteir. Secrets you will never fathom. Ones she will know when her time comes. And I will stand at her side that day. And bow to her.
I snort, stand, and kick the goblet with my boot, my jaw pained.Aryahn Kryach, Zeyl Mortyy, Helyon, Thanades, Dagdya Crow, the God of Death...he bows to none, apart from the Highest God and Goddess.
Youwill bow to her tonight, Allysteir. You will give her the truth tonight, Corpse King. You will give her your crown, your mask, your robes, your wine, your blood, your flesh. She will take everything.
My chest heaves in the wake of his words. His shades penetrate me with a quietude of truth. No arrogant rumblings or driving me to my knees. What little blood I possess roars in my ears. Dark and insidious. And still, I tempt his patience, the Deathly temper.And what will you take?
Silence.
Even if Isla had not interrupted our conversation with her vines and roots throwing open the doors to our suite, thorns protruding from her pores and spiraling from her crown, Kryach would have given me nothing.
Her wide eyes smolder with glorious amethyst flames.
I open my mouth but don’t get the slimmest chance to speak. Isla coils her thorny vines all around my body. She launches me halfway across the room so my back crashes onto the bed frame, snapping my spinal cord. I gasp a whirlwind of sharp breaths through my nose. I seethe from the pain as she closes in on me. Her bridal gown sheaths snap behind her while her serpentine vines slither around my broken form. They fracture countless bones. I wheeze when one pierces my sorry excuse for shriveled lungs.
Isla straddles me. She rips the mask from my face and glares her amethyst daggers into my eyes unseated by flesh or skin—suspended within my skull cavities.
“Why are thereslavesworking the mines of Nathyan Ghyeal?” she demands in a snarling yell and punches the bed frame next to my skull.
A surge of air overtakes my lungs. Jubilation swells in my chest. “You reached the Unseen Section! You discovered the secret?”
The wrong words, the wrong words, the wrong words.
Isla slams her fist one inch near my body, sending a near vibration into my ulna bone. I count it a blessing she did not punch my chest since she would have undoubtedly shattered my rib cage. Her eyes narrow, and she tightens those vines. Her army of miniature blades digs into my flesh, shedding blood, defiling our bed.
I wheeze and respond with one word, “Aydon.” When she grits her teeth, eyes widening with white shock, with alarm, I know exactly where her thoughts are. Because I shamefully have watched those slaves, memorized their eyes, their broken bodies, their...flesh. “No, Isla. No harm will come to Franzyna,” I assure her. “She is a Princess of Talahn-Feyal.”
“And what of them?” She grits her teeth, digging those dagger thorns in deeper. “And how wouldshereact if she saw them? Half her race? If she knew her husband was their harsh taskmaster?” The skin around her eyes creases, pained. But she steels herself, hissing. “Shut down the mines.”
I shake my head.
Her eyes burn against mine. Her nails rake my cheek, stripping flesh to threadbare ribbons. I wince. I bear the pain and listen when she confronts me, her knees squeezing on each side of my hips.Oh, fuck...not now,I chastise my rising member. “Talahn-Feyal claims to respect human flesh the most.”
“Ourflesh.” As soon as the words flee my lips, I register the transgression. This is not who I am. No, itiswho I am because I have sacrificed everything to Aydon. For too long, I have used my suffering, my trauma as a weapon, So much of me wants to blame Kryach, but I accepted this Curse. I damn-well begged for it. Other Corpse Kings past have navigated the politics to care for their kingdoms, to take responsibility.
I abdicated.
Tonight, I pay the deepest price.
“You. Will. Shut. Down. The. Mines,” demands Isla, either ignorant or dismissive of my cock pointing to her heaven center due to her nearness. “At the very least, you will go to Aydon. You will speak to him. You will be the fucking Corpse King!”
At the mention of my title, I somehow regain my strength, my fortitude. I use those Death shades to break all her vines and shatter her thorns to smithereens. Spine healed thanks to Kryach, I thrust her to the side and reverse our positions until my black robes fold around her like a dark cocoon. Fuming, I stare at her through my baleful eyes in my unmasked, fatalistic face. “I am a rotting corpse, Isla. And I am nothing, nothing,nothingmore. Nothing withoutyou, my dark rose.” I hem her in, anchor her to the bed with my shades, forbidding her to do anything but thrash her pelvis, heave her chest, claw my robe, and arch her lovely throat.
“What does that have to do with?”
“Bloody boots and baybags, Isla! Don’t you get it, my Queen?!” I yell, exposing my fractured, stained teeth. She huffs beneath me, her breasts prodding loose from their fabric cage of a bodice. “This is the Curse, my Curse,ourCurse. Aydon wields the fullest power of the throne. I am merely the rotting corpse mask. And he desires you forhisQueen, his bed.”
“Oh, I can handle that pompous, silver-spooned, spoiled brat?”
I roll my eyes and interrupt, “I cannot contend with the full power of Aydonandthe elders, Isla. He would expect a fair trade for his political efforts.Youwould be the trade.”
