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I sneer. “He does have power.”
She shakes her head, grasps my arms, kneading the full flesh, the muscles. “Not over me. Please, Ally, I?”
“Don’t,” I interrupt, warning her, tensing. Finleigh’s name. My first. My truest.
If Kryach were with me now, he would have a smart remark about my first love, my first bride. He would goad me about how he has forced her into eternal servitude in his Harem of Souls. Disgust creeps my spine, breeding bile in my stomach. This is not how I envisioned the night going. No, Kryach did not reap all of Isla’s soul, but thisresistancemust be his trespass, his scar. I must thwart it.
Or he will come again, he will demand more. If the gods do not have the blood and flesh of our descendants, they will unleash refter war upon our lands.
“You will feel differently once our babe is in your arms for the first time,” I tell her without meeting her eyes. But all her muscles stiffen while she strokes the base of her throat for comfort. “Or when you carry our child.”
“When?” Isla whispers in shock, her hand lowering to her belly.
I lean away, eyeing the fleshy pouch. “When.”
“You didn’t follow in the line, Allysteir. Another can?”
I growl from her disbelief, from how soon she has forgotten my trauma. “Mymother, Isla! Not my father!”
She screws her brows lower. To my astonishment, Isla beats her fist against my chest. But this time, she disrupts no rib cage, cracks no bones. Frowning, I catch her wrist with my strong hand, phalanges buried beneath the strength of muscle, sinew, and flesh. I twist her wrist to the side, lower it to the bed to settle into a valley of corpus rose petals as she gasps. My chest twinges with emotion from how I conquer her. Too simple to pin her body. She freezes, petrified. Remorse twinges in my chest when I recognize the same expression as our wedding night.
Still, I battle this soul scar. How could she possibly conceive of reigning as Queen but not bear a child? For the first time in centuries, I am the King of Talahn-Feyal. I must make her understand.
But when I open my mouth, she lashes out, “You ignorant fool,” Isla spits in my face, trembling as I hover over her. “Aydon is in your mother’s line, too.”
I snarl and crush my pelvis to hers, grinding for one split second. “Aydon. Cannot. Produce. An. Heir.”
Her eyes widen in white shock. “What?”
“Why do you believe he has haunted your steps? And pursued you? If you can survive Kryach, Death itself, he believes you will be the one to restore his seed, his child.”
“Fuck it all, Allysteir! I don’twanta child! I don’t even know if Icanhave a child!” she screams, straining against my hands.
I huff, blowing frustrated wind in her face, and release her. “We will know soon.”
“What?” She rises onto her elbows, thrusting her bared, incensed chest out.
I roll my eyes and slide off the bed to clad myself in a fresh robe. “Kryach’s track record. All Queens who have survived him have born a child within the first nine months. Upon first consummation.”
Isla balls her hands and folds her knees under her. Eyes burning with acidic tears, impaling mine like hot, iron spears, she crouches on all fours and hisses, feral, “How could you not tell me this, Allysteir?”
“I assumed you knew.” I bind the robe sashes, face myself in the mirror, and nod proudly at the reflection. I hold the gaze, lingering, hand pursuing my cheeks to roam my jawline peppered in fine bearded hairs while I address my bride’s riotous reflection. “Surely, you did not believe volunteering as Bride of the Corpse King would hold no expectations.”
“Expectations...” she treads on the words before her vines attack. They drag me back onto the bed, so she may straddle me and dominate me as she did last night. “I’ll end it, Allysteir.” She gestures to her belly in a direct warning, her cheeks blanched, drained of all color. Utter disgust. “Before it can form. The Inker Queen...she has power and crystals. The Wisp-Shee King, he has herbs. Hell, I’ll go to Narcyssa, and she can bite?”
Triggered by the monarchical name, I reverse our positions with my limited shade power. I ignore her thorns lacerating my flesh. It will heal. I have flesh to spare now. “Do you truly have a death wish, Isla? Do you understand such a transgression? Withholding an heir? The consequence that could befall our entire realm?”
“More than binding slaves to your mines?” she challenges in a flagellating snarl while her thorns coil my neck to draw blood.
“This...” I bow low to her ear and hiss, continuing, “is Kryach’s scar. You said you were the Mistress of Death, Isla. Now, you have proven it.”
She overcomes me. Damn it to the Nether-Void, she overcomes me and strikes me again and again, bruising my chest, my arms, my shoulders, my cheeks in a tirade. Before I do something unthinkable, unspeakable, I flee the bed, our bed. I turn my back to her, delaying the onslaught of her vines with my shade power.
“I am off to the Hollows, my Lady Queen,” I inform her while approaching the door, forsaking her as my heart burrows lower. “When I return, I hope you will be in a better state.”
I open the door. Isla throws a pomegranate at me, but it slams against the door. I hear the fruit split open. The seeds tumble to the floor. Sighing deep, I press my forehead to the nearby wall. And mourn. Tears stream from my eyes; the fruit is not the only brokenness this night. Nor can I ever hope to repair.
Because all I do is fuck everything, destroy everything and everyone I love. Finleigh only forgave me because we fucked everything together.
