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I pulled on the train of my dress, sour bile sweeping up my throat at the sight of bone spurs stretching the skin along my shins so taut it yellowed. “I should’ve expected no different from you, you fucking bastard.”
His chuckle echoed from the surrounding bone as he gracefully swung himself onto the horse behind me, his voice a purr across the side of my neck. “If my woman wants my prick up her ass, she only needs to say so, and I shall oblige.”
Nothing but a quiet threat, all while he caressed me into a state of dull acceptance, slowing my heart until it beat evenly. I didn’t hate him nearly as much for breaking my legs as I did for calming the rage pumping through my veins into a mere tingle.
And a comforting one at that.
Bastard.
Enosh wrapped his arm around my middle, anchoring me to him, which was a good thing considering I’d never been one for riding sidesaddle—and there was no saddle at all. “We’ll ride over those hayfields you claim to miss so dearly.”
“And see the sky you promised I would never see again.”
He grunted.
In that, I took some small comfort.
After Orlaigh gave me a satchel with bread and dried meat, we left through the Æfen Gate. Hooves clopped over stone and up the incline, back through the passage Augustine had dragged me through. At the surface, I clenched my eyes shut against a sun suddenly too bright for eyes accustomed to the dim glimmer of the Pale Court.
Enosh’s chest hardened behind me, his entire body rigid while the cracking of bones and squishing of flesh drove out the faint chirping of birds. “Keep your eyes closed for another moment.”
“Oh please, as if a carpet of smashed corpses is worse than how one of your decrepit servants dropped his jaws into my soup during the last meal.” When he made a gruntled sound at the back of his throat, I casually asked, “Will rot follow you to Airensty?”
“No. It is something I purposely do, going so far I can even distinguish between which body rots and which will not.” So I’d achievednothing.“Open your eyes. See your sky and your birds.”
I kept them closed for another five breaths, sucking in the moisture of the dew beneath us, the waft of soil climbing into my nostrils, and the first traces of winter berries lingering in the air. My lungs expanded until the leather bindings of my bodice moaned, sun and shadow playing over my face in a caress of warmth and cool.
My eyes blinked open and my heart ached at the sight of a crow circling the pink-streaked horizon. “It’s beautiful.”
Enosh glanced down at me, brushing one of my strands tousled by the breeze off my shoulder. “Indeed. So captivatingly beautiful.”
Did we speak of the same thing? My head turned to glance back at him, but I stopped myself. If it had been flattery, it meant nothing coming from his lips.
“Don’t you enjoy this?”
“Very much. But what I enjoy even more is the lightness coming over your chest after you’ve been so sluggish as of late,” he said, as if it came as a surprise to him that chaining a woman to a throne in a dim chamber might have this result.
His fingers stroked over my belly as if ensuring himself I was, indeed, still here, infusing my body with… nothing.
No prickle.
No pleasure.
So I wasn’t going insane after all.
Which could only mean one thing… “You have no control over my flesh out here, do you?”
“Only over the dead scattered across these lands.” As though he despised admitting it, his voice hardened. “Make no mistake, my little one, I have an endless amount of bone at my disposal to make certain you remain by my side.”
As if he needed such drastic measures. “You broke my legs.”
“Twisted,” he corrected with a sigh of annoyance. “A necessary precaution, because even gods are not all-powerful. The living are wicked, the lands we ride dangerous from what little you told me. I can’t satisfy my brother’s demand, keep you from running, and avoid danger all at the same time.”
“Danger? You can’t die.”
“No, but you can.”
“My god, are we ridingintobattle?”
