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When he kicked the horse into an unnatural speed, I shifted out of balance, but he quickly steadied me against him, saving me from a fall. “Mortals are wayward creatures.”
“Toward the god who’s abandoned them.”
His low chuckle vibrated against my spine, but it held no humor. “Do you believe this is the first time mortals would rebel against a god? The living have chased me since the beginning of time like the waves chase across the seas, ever so predictable in their hither and tither with ebbs of worship and floods of them doubting my divinity.”
My stomach clenched, my mind going back to what Orlaigh had told me. Was this the life of a god? To be chased and chained, disemboweled and burned?
“Why?”
“Because I require flesh and bone to maintain the Pale Court,” he said. “Something mortals aren’t always willing to give up. The higher they are in station, the more they treasure the bone of their kin, as though it makes a difference to me if I drink from a baron or a beggar.”
Neither would I want Pa to span a bridge. “But the dead walk toward the Pale Court on a full moon on their own, anyway.”
“Only because I deny them to rot in the ground. I have no control over it. Naturally, the dead seek my closeness because I am their master.”
“Is it true corpses once burned?”
“The only curse I cast about the lands.” He nodded and pressed his lips into a grim line, a gesture so human, it looked out of place on the face of a god. “Of all the deaths I didn’t die, my little mortal, the one where they burned me at the stake for a fortnight was the worst. To this day, the stench of ash follows me, as if my skin somehow trapped it when it returned.”
The hairs rose on my arms as I thought back on the witch the priests had burned last winter, her high-pitched screams forever branded into my memory. Hemdale had reeked of singed hair for days, bitter and biting. Imagining Enosh screaming like she had…? For a fortnight?
Bile licked my throat.
“I’m sorry.” I didn’t want to be, but the apology slipped from my lips without consent. “Why did Lord Tarnem capture you? Because you wanted his wife’s bones or something?”
His deep inhale pressed against my back. “He sought me out nearly two centuries ago. Asked me to raise an army of dead for him so he could fight off a group of barbarians invading his lands. Gods ought not to meddle in the affairs of mankind, but… what he offered in exchange…”
I turned back to look at him once more. “Offered what?”
“His daughter Njala.” It wasn’t so much the name that offered me another puzzle piece to a picture I struggled to grasp, but how old traces of pain roughened his tone. “She was supposed to be my companion for eternity.”
Something pinched beneath my ribs, then again when I took in the features of a god gone ashen. “Did you love her?”
His features hardened, brow taking on an audacious curve. “Your question suggests that you think me capable of love, little one.”
At first, I hadn’t, but the longer I looked at him, the more I had my doubts. More than just his general smugness shone in his eyes, like little flickers of agony hidden behind an immaculate mask of cold-blooded ruthlessness.
It had cracks.
Nothing but fine veins weaving through it, scratching away at his usually arrogant demeanor, his divine superiority. Did I dare find out what was behind that mask? If he’d loved her, why would he have killed her? Perhaps Yarin had said it to twist my head?
When my temples ached from all the wondering, I looked forward again. “Orlaigh once told me you love and lust like any mortal.”
“Love is a painful curse,” he said. “Now I only lust, slaking it in the tight holes of my little treasure.”
I flinched.
Was that a blessing… or a curse?
I’d never wanted his lust.
Cared even less about his love.
“Did she have love for you?”
His fingers curled where his other hand rested on my hip. “Take a guess. I long to hear your judgment on this matter. Could a woman love this cruel bastard?”
My attention lifted to his shiver-inducing eyes, the smooth cheeks beneath without a single whisker, and the soft curvature of his lips framed by inky strands. Enosh was magnificent to behold, no mistake, a perfectly constructed trap to catch the silly hearts of young, unknowing girls.
